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Originally Posted by BillSmithBooks
Wow...such unreasonable venom directed towards Stephen King.
Stephen King is a regular columnist for EW and so it was appropriate for him to comment on the passing of a literary legend.
The comparison to Britney Spears is quite demeaning...given the dark tone of his work and his considerable commercial and literary recognition, perhaps calling him Trent Reznor would have been more appropriate. You may not like Trent, but he has talent.
My take on it is that Mr. King was trying to express that it was a shame to lose such a distinctive voice. He was acknowledging that it was a shame that someone who had made such a mark on culture with such a small body of work had not chosen to share more of his work with the world (since there are suggestions that he did quite possibly continue to write after he withdrew from publishing).
King was also tipping his hat towards other authors whom we lost far younger, with a smaller body of work but who seemed destined for a tremendous legacy had we not lost them so young.
Not that Stephen King needs to be defended. He is one of the best-selling authors of the 20th and 21st centuries.
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One analogy that should never be made is comparing talent like Trent Reznor to Stephen King. Reznor is amazing, he's a pioneer, a risk taker not only in his music but in the whole approach to music. King is nowhere near as good as Reznor and never will be. He's a popular author, sure, he's a best-seller, but so are Dan Brown and James Patterson. Can you imagine Dan Brown writing a piece on Salinger?!
And my analogy was apt, because King is not in the same league as Salinger, and he never will be. Maybe if they'd approached Haruki Murakami or John Irving the piece would have made more sense.