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Richard Bachman: Blaze

I got a few pages into "Memory," before deciding it was crap and shelving Blaze next to all of my other finished novels.

Remember, this was something that a younger (better), version of King wrote, only edited and overseen by the older one. I have high hopes for Duma Key, but I believe his extravagant verbosity will return with a vengeance.
 
The short story at the end of Blaze. It's the "seed," story that led to Duma Key. And, on an interesting side note, it's also a pile of crap.
 
I hate to be the voice of the eternal optimist here, but Stephen King is four times the writer Saul Bellow will ever hope to dream of becoming. I just finished a horrid novel that he wrote and have ordered Blaze to hopefully have a better reading experience.

So Eyez, you going to read with me chapter by chapter?:D
 
SFG75 said:
Stephen King is four times the writer Saul Bellow will ever hope to dream of becoming.
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Saul Bellow won't be becoming much of a writer any time soon. He's six feet under. Which Saul Bellow novel was it you read? I've tried The Actual and The Adventures Of Augie March but just can't find a way in to his books. I know that Shade is the same.
 
Stewart said:
Saul Bellow won't be becoming much of a writer any time soon. He's six feet under. Which Saul Bellow novel was it you read? I've tried The Actual and The Adventures Of Augie March but just can't find a way in to his books. I know that Shade is the same.
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I've read Ravelstein and More Die of Hearbreak, both bland, boring, and insipid. Didn't know he was deceased, though for the books written, he still comes in second to King.
 
Yeah, he died two years ago. Still, despite his books being boring and whatnot, they obviously had an impact on somebody, as his 1976 Nobel Prize in Literature demonstrates. I love the fact that Nabokov called him a "miserable mediocrity". :D
 
Stewart said:
Yeah, he died two years ago. Still, despite his books being boring and whatnot, they obviously had an impact on somebody, as his 1976 Nobel Prize in Literature demonstrates. I love the fact that Nabokov called him a "miserable mediocrity". :D
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LOL-Good quote, fitting too.:D Seriously though, I don't see what all the hub-bub was about with him. I knew he was a "heavy" and he can sprinkle some amusing, witty comments in a given chapter, but other than that, there's just....nothing. It was seriously difficult to cover more than thirty pages a night-I should've given up on More Die of Heartbreak. I'm just disappointed the blurb writer didn't write it. I will say that I have a profound respect for the writing of Gore Vidal, now there's a writer!. King would obviously come in second to him, but Cell stomps the daylights out of what I've read by Bellow.

I understand that folks don't like King, but for readability and interest, he isn't all that shabby. Now I'm going to catch all sorts of flak for this comment, Eyez has already PM'd me about not believing King is the greatest living writer out there today(he's still alive right? ;) ) I know, I know Eyez, I just don't think he is, sorry.:rolleyes:
 
The best writer ever is someone who writes a full-length novel and then burns the manuscript.

And then grows up to be an accountant.
 
That must be you.

No. The best writer can burn a whole manuscript.

And then rewrite it again (even better) in another 3 days.

His name is Robert Louis Stevenson--a master compared to King.
 
Well, I was actually thinking of Misery when I posted that little comment, but hey. Besides, I don't burn things I write. I scroll down the tab bar and delete them. Much different.
 
You a writer, Sevenwritez?

I would like to read some of your stories, if you don't mind.

To get a sense of where you are. ;)
 
Yes.

It's juvenile crap.

But that blurb was hilarious. I was laughing my guts out. :D You'll see if you ever get the time to read it.
 
eyez0nme said:
Yes.

It's juvenile crap.

But that blurb was hilarious. I was laughing my guts out. :D You'll see if you ever get the time to read it.
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Amazon shipped it out yesterday-I'm excited as I can't wait to see how the criticism matches up.:cool: Come on, read it again, it's not often that you get to re-read a best selling contemporary author who will be remembered for generations to come.:D ;)
 
It's like a good B-flick at the cinema that you go to by yourself with a bucket of popcorn, not expecting much more than a few entertaining treats. You leave the theatre happy and satisfied, but it is not a movie you talk about long after or bring up in conversations when regarding film with a group of friends. By the end of the week, you forgot the movie's name, the main gyst of the plot (there was baby, right? And soem guy, a ghost partner...hmm), but what you remeber for certain is that it was something that brought a warm, if modest, smile to your face.
 
Received the book yesterday and read the first four chapters. I have to say that the foreward made me chuckle a bit. It reminded me of Vonnegut's style in regards to referring to himself in Breakfast of Champions. The "footnotes" with witty musings was also a cheeky element. In regards to the story, I have to say that the overall plot is a definite winner. A big, dumb criminal and his imaginary "smart" partner who is deceased. I loved how Blaze would go in and out of the realization that George was really dead. The blurb of this book mentioned that it was "touching" in that you felt sorry for the criminal in it. I was curious as to how King would attempt to convey this, and he did a good job on page 30.

Sometimes when he was in the country he would sleep in a barn adn wake in the night and go out and look at the stars and there were so many, and he knew they were there before him, and they would be there after him. That was sort of awful and sort of wonderful. SOmetimes whne he was hitchhiking and it was going on for November, the wind would blow around and flap his pants and he would grieve for something that was lost, like that letter which had come with no address. Sometimes he would look at the sky in teh spring and see a bird, and it might make him happy, but just as of ten it felt like something inside him was geting small and ready to break.
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The abuse scene where
the father threw Blaze down the stairs not once, not twice but three times was a real attention getter. King can shock you and he didn't mellow.

So far, so good.
 
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