I have never been so happy in my entire life. I want to stand up and punch the air and scream and sing and learn how to do cartwheels so I can, well, do cartwheels:
“Stephen King On ‘Twilight’ Author: ‘Stephenie Meyer Can’t Write Worth A Darn’”
Key Moment of Joy (emphasis mine):
“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.“
I want to get it put on a t-shirt.
He has plenty more to say on exactly why her books are so popular — I think he’s 100% right, for the record (though he said it with far less bile than I would have) — but the important bit was right there, mates.
Ever since starting my anti-Twilight crusade, I’ve longed to know what the Master’s* opinion of this dreck was, and frequently Googled “Stephen King Stephenie Meyer” or “Stephen King Twilight series” hoping to find out. The only results I ever got back, however, were Stephenie Meyer multiple links to the Stephenie Meyer quote, ”I just know I’m too much of a wuss for Stephen King’s books,” (that’s what you want to hear from a popular writer who writes stories about “vam”pires) (and check out her mention to actual scrapbooking) and Stephen King once remarking in the publishing world’s failure to count Meyer on the bestseller list with her “Twilight” series because her audience is primarily teens. He wasn’t sticking up for her so much as for YA authors in general, and how, essentially, they need to be given bigger props — which made me feel a little better; at least he wasn’t a fan of her writing the way he is of Rowling’s. But still, I wanted to hear him say something more, calling the books out for the dreck that they are. And I’d really given up on hearing from him about it; I figured that either they were too far off his radar screen for him to have read one, or maybe he just didn’t want to comment on then out of, I dunno, pity or something.
And then, THIS. I’m so happy I think I could cry. You can bet I’ll be buying that March 6-8 issue of USA Weekend and framing it.
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* Stephen King is my hero/idol/writing-icon, if anyone was unaware of this.
You know I thought of Buffy when I read “The Master,” right?
Oh, and YAY. Too bad he didn’t come out with this sooner, though.