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From: chabot@amber.DEC (l s chabot)
Newsgroups: net.books
Subject: King != Faulkner
Message-ID: <239@decwrl.UUCP>
Date: Wed, 16-Jan-85 10:04:59 EST
Article-I.D.: decwrl.239
Posted: Wed Jan 16 10:04:59 1985
Date-Received: Thu, 24-Jan-85 19:47:08 EST
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And in FORTRAN:  King .neq. Faulkner

Terminally bored in O'Hare (which has some of the worst book selections of
major airports I've seen--for good ones try Philadelphia or SF), I finally found
a copy of Karl Wagner's anthology of the year's best horror and I bought it
since it had some reputable names: Jane Yolen, Stephen King, Tanith Lee, and 
others.  Okay, the first story is by King, and the anthologist describes it
as demonstrating that King too has capabilities as a regionalist just like those
big Southern writers.  Okay, so the story takes place in Maine, a place with
which King is familiar.  Okay: isn't naming your main character "Quentin" just
a little *too* much. 

Okay, so I'm a snob! !!  But, but, Faulkner was better at horror without 
involving anything as fantastic as an old man mysteriously filled with motor
oil and a piston: watching Quentin Compson buy flat irons and otherwise prepare
to walk into the Charles River; Sutpen's life repeatedly destroyed by his 
racism, finally resulting in his bloody murder by his hired hand; the former
soldier on a trip to visit the scenes from the war where he went crazy and shot
his companions and was twice decorated for being the only survivor; the old
woman who'd slept for years next to the corpse of the lover she poisoned. 

Faulkner knew horror.  Maybe this King story would scare not-too-bright kids or
something, I don't know. 

L S Chabot
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