New Armand White take about Stephen King.
https://www.nationalreview.com/2023/08/stephen-king-prophet-of-the-apocalypse/During this month, I read for the first time The Long Walk and I'm close to finishing Thinner (73 pages left), both published by Stephen King when he used his pseudonym as a Richard Bachman.
I recommend everyone here to read The Long Walk, is actually good, not perfect, but even the typical patterns you find in so many of his books are less boring in this book. He supposedly wrote the book when he was 19 years old, but it's pretty obvious that he massively revised and changed a few things in the novel before it was published.
I found the book to be a solid allegory about the life of men as well as the Vietnam War. The characters are great, even the ones you're supposed to hate.
I give it a solid 4.5/5
Thinner is more liberal, focusing on the "corruption" and filth of the small white and wealthy New England communities and how gypsies are treated. If you can stomach that liberal tone, the book does have some nice stuff, especially the bromance among the protagonist, a descendant of Irish and an Italian who's a medbvll.
The protagonist is more "eloquent" and articulate than I imagined, as I've only watched the movie in the past and thought he was more goofy, some of his reflections are good and some of the other characters he's encountered so far are colorful and interesting.