I just finished Cujo, which Stephen King wrote back in 1981-2, when he was hooked on who-knows-what. He actually claims not to remember writing Cujo, but, while it's definitely not his best work, I really respect King now.

Well, kinda. My plan was the read Firestarter written while he was clean (a good example of his typical work) and then read Cujo (a good example of his unrefined drugged-up style) and then I'd know how good of an author he actually was.

After following through with that plan, I'm beginning to see that King, like Grisham and Crichton, is really formulaic (with the exception of one clever twist at the end of Cujo which gives it a semblance of a moral).

Most of his books are about some extreme form of mental abnormality (fear of clowns, insomnia, pyrokinesis, etc, but mostly irrational fears), a specific evil that is in some way related to that abnormality but never the same thing, and vague, benignly-positive force that works behind the scenes.

Read It, possible his best work, if you don't believe me. There's always turlewax.

Of course Stephen King isn't scary. Do I need to tell anyone that, at this point? But he is a master of technique, using polysyndeton, and all these other really cool things-you-can-do-with-words, effortlessly even in Cujo.

His stories rarely have a moral beyond the whole "Good over Evil" thing (which is not a moral), and you can usually tell who is going to die next, but he has real, well-marketed talent, and I think I've learned a few things from him.

Mainly, it was an excuse to read two Stephen King books when I'dve otherwise been forcing classic literature down my throat; it was such a nice break, after Cooper, to read something crisp and easy, yet nonetheless well-written.

And now to go read The Structure of Scientific Revolutions. Sigh.