Stephen King Vs Stephenie Meyer: The Controversy

Stephen King Vs Stephenie Meyer: The Controversy

By Marciano Guerrero

Guerrero, Marciano. "Stephen King Vs Stephenie Meyer: The Controversy." Article Alley. Yedda, 4 Aug. 2009. Web. 8 Mar. 2010. .

Summary: This article begins by giving a quote that Stephen King said in a recent interview. He said “Both Rowling and Meyer, they’re speaking directly to young people… The real difference is that Jo Rowling is a terrific writer and Stephenie Meyer can’t write worth a darn. She’s not very good.”

Guerreo then says that from this interview King gave the impression that he was jealous of young popular writers. Fans of Stephenie Meyer well telling people to not buy his books and that he has no popular books today so he cannot see a young writer succeeding.

The author then states that he has read almost all of Stephen King’s books and not one of Stephenie Meyer’s books, so he bought a copy of Twilight and read it. Guerreo then gives an excerpt from the first paragraph in chapter 8 of Twilight. After the quote he picks apart the entire thing. He says it’s inartistic, childish, and as Truman Capote would call it she is “typing” not writing. The whole paragraph is just subject, verb, object. To compare her writing he then bought several of Jo Rowling’s books of the Harry Potter series and he was surprised. He said Rowling is a master of writing. There were balanced sentences, rhythm, and rhetoric. Because Stephenie Meyers writes for children her books are not consider literary by critics and he say that eventually she will just be known as “Mark Twain, C.S. Lewis, Kipling, and Dickens. “

To finish the article Guerreo concludes by saying that Stephen King might be right in his criticism of Stephenie Meyers, but not because he is jealous, but because she “isn’t writing at all, but typing.”

Analysis: From this article I get a sense that Marciano Guerreo agrees with Stephen King. He does not say he hates Stephenie Meyers writing, just that she writes childish.

Response: I disagree with the article. Marciano Guerrero is basing his opinion on one book and more specifically on one paragraph from Twilight. If this were my article I would at least give a list of horrible paragraphs, but he can only state one. This to me comes across that he had to search for one and finally 152 pages into the book in chapter 8, he finds one.

He also says he bought Twilight and then says he bought several Harry Potter books and has read almost every Steven King book. He is not equally comparing all three authors so I don’t think he has a valid point.

As far as what Steven King says I would think he would have to be jealous in some way. This article says he has written several books and I do not know of one of his books, but people across the world know of Stephenie Meyers and it has only been 7 years since she started writing.