Stephen King is Still Underrated

“I had a period where I thought I might not be good enough to publish.”

– Stephen King

Stephen King’s latest collection, The Bazaar of Bad Dreams, comes out tomorrow (November 3rd). It is his sixth collection of short stories and tenth collection in total. At 68 years old, with millions in the bank, and almost 60 books and 200 short stories to his name, it would be natural for King to retire or slow down.

Instead, he’s still cranking out at least two books per year, adding to his legacy.

Yet, even if The New York Times backhandedly praises him as “not just the guy that makes monsters,” he’s still dismissed by the literary establishment and its self-important snobby followers as merely a writer of commercial fiction. He’s certainly no Franzen or DFW. If, at a stuffy, boring cocktail party on the Upper West Side, you were were to tell these people that you read King, their faces would immediately contort as if you asked hopefully if they were serving onion rings as an hors d’oeuvre. After all, as King once said, “I am the literary equivalent of a Big Mac and fries.”

The most egregious part? Most of those people have probably never picked up a King book for fear of what their peers may think if they were to see them reading one. After all, he’s just a horror writer that trades in blood and…