Truewest: "The Rock Bottom Remainders" are a really bad rock band. Amy Tan and Stephen King are members.

Wasn't Dave Barry in that too? He's a humor writer out of Miami.

Yes, Dave Barry, Scott Turow among others. I don't think Meyer will be invited to play any time soon.

I've been meaning to comment on this because there's something ironic here.

Stephen King, too, has been criticized as not "literary" worthy. When he received the National Book Foundation's Medal for Distinguished Contribution to American Letters in 2003, book critic Harold Bloom was widely quoted as saying it was "another low in the process of dumbing down our cultural life."

J.K. Rowling has frequently been on the receiving end of similar criticism for being a woefully inadequate writer. So it seems elitism is alive and well in America. There is a very clear pecking order at work here and Stephen King is letting everyone know that he is, at least, better than Stephenie Meyer.

I think these critics fail to take into account a very important distinction between writing ability and sales data. Through sheer selling ability J.K. Rowling, Stephenie Meyer, and, yes, Stephen King, have way more literary cachet than they probably deserve. So what. They have succeeded in finding audiences. I'm inclined to cut Stephen King some slack. Probably they caught him on a bad day. I also happen to think he's he's a darned good writer.

Truewest wrote:

"The Rock Bottom Remainders" are a really bad rock band. Amy Tan and Stephen King are members.

Get out of town! Had no clue, thanks.

geo wrote:J.K. Rowling has frequently been on the receiving end of similar criticism for being a woefully inadequate writer.

I'm inclined to cut Stephen King some slack. Probably they caught him on a bad day. I also happen to think he's he's a darned good writer.

I read this one article on the net about JK Rowling's HP and there was one old dude, I've forgotten his name now, but he was said to be a famous tongue-lashing literary critic. He said the Harry Potter series was "ungrammatical...It gave me a headache." or something like that. Woah....

I think Stephen King's an amazing writer, too.

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Right here, right now.
- Wolf

It seemed like all writers have to go through some kind of a hazing by being considered hacks before their sixth or eight novel.

Even though I do not like Twilight myself, it seemed Meyer put a lot of effort in 'them lotta pages.' She wrote like four books before anyone heard of her, good or bad. It makes me curious to see why Stephen King does not like it.

I tend to be a fan of stories that truely shows the darkness in one's heart like Lord of the Flies, The Painted Bird, and the small minded petty evils in Salemn's Lot.

I remember reading "Salems Lot", I love vampires and this was my introduction to Steven King. The vamps in "Salems Lot" were scary, ugly creatures. Anne Rice turned the vamps into more relatable creatures. I have to confess, I loved some of her earlier Vampire Chronicle novels. I felt sorry for the poor humans. Maybe King doesn't like the idea that vampires have now become more humanish. We can see it in "Twilight" and also the HBO show "True Blood". I am looking forward to the new season.

Steven King is a true horror writer. I don't know if "Twilight" could be called a true horror novel. Stephenie Meyer is not in the same catagory as King maybe he was just defending his genre.

Yes, that the difference between real horror and vampire romance novel. The characters in Salemn Lot's, they were beautifully drawn in details, their small little evils, corruptions, and sins, violence and brutally toward each other, it was as if they were preparing the town for the coming of the head vampire who was pure evil. The vampire himself did not come shambling until halfway through the book. There was nothing romantic about these grotesque creatures for they are the undead. They even perverted the concept of Catholic religion when the head vampire made the priest drink blood from his chest. The scariest thing was not the vampires but the corruption of small town folks with monsterous secrets.

Both movies can not do justice to what Stephen King did. He evoked real blood churdling horror about vampires while Meyer only wrote a vampire romance epic.

I forgot to add that Stephen King was not really sexist when he derided Meyer. He is a rabid fan of Shirley Jackson and often used her writings as a example of perfect paragraphs like the beginning of The Haunting of Hill House.