I've really missed the Obi train, I don't know how as he seems infamous and I do enjoy the 'characters'. Is he TC offensive ??

Obi used to be fine. Long-winded and naive, but at least agreeable and listened to reason. Then one day he became so insistent his view was the right one even when it was pointed out that A) he was misinformed (I think that had something to do with Christianity which, him being an athiest Jew, he knew less than nothing about despite his protests) and B) argued he was right when his reason one thing was bad was the exact same reason another thing was good (writing for money - Stephen King versus Shakespeare - bringing back a character who was written out for money - I forget who he hated but Arthur Conan Doyle did the same thing with Sherlock holmes). That was when I muted him. It was like he had suddenly had a stroke and gone from DA Harvey Dent to Big Harv aka Two Face.

But what I really love is this...
"Well, again, I don't mind criticism, I just prefer folks have the class to tell me upfront or, heck, post a public thread to which I might respond."

I did post a public thread. He could have rebutted anythign anyone said in it. At the time I wouldn't have seen it (hence my statement he need not post) but he was styill free to post it and the others could have responded to his rebuttal and even said "Hey Draug. UnmuteObi so you can see what he wrote here" and I would have. It took someone else telling me about this thread to make me unmute him and hunt the thread down.

But I am so glad I did...

ROTFLMFAO copter.

Fagnaur, evaluating somebody else's Forum behavior.

How magnanimous of Fagnaur to un-mute obi.

I'm sure that obi is planning the celebration bash at this very moment.

I love celebrations when do I get my invitation???

Here's your invitation to harrass Obitard some more (or me if you prefer). :-)

Man, this is so juvenile. Mute - unmute - mute - unmute.
Sounds like my daughters when they were in primary school. 'She's not my friend anymore!' Till next week.

@Timur, I think you mean all girls in primary school

OP: No one cares about you as much as you think they do, you odious narcissist.

Who the feck is OP, you odious-narcissist-basher? BTW There's a law against that now, don't you know?

Dear, I thought this had ended finally...I suppose not.

Well, to address that little part at the end there:

@Draug:

Well, first, let me say what a complete and total honor it is that you have apparently decided after days of cajoling that you may as well un-mute me and give me a chance, as if I ever asked for one or, indeed, as if the honor of having your ear--especially given your previous postings--was a prize I coveted so very dearly.

So thank you for deigning to come down off your self-appointed pedestal to grant a mere mortal such as myself a second chance, really, in a world where entire nations and continents average out to below the international poverty line, an election year, North Korea becoming as internally stable as TC was bipartisan, and my concerns regarding how in a recession like this I'll be able to get a job, afford the health insurance I need, and be able to live anywhere close to the level of comfort my parents enjoyed...

Despite ALL of that, my primary concern was your approval of what I sometimes have to say on an Internet forum, and after you'd lambasted me, so again, thank you so very much, your approval really is just THAT important to me, of course.

(Now, if I've been muted again after that, so be it, in any case, muted or not, on we go...)

"Then one day he became so insistent his view was the right one even when it was pointed out that A) he was misinformed (I think that had something to do with Christianity which, him being an athiest Jew, he knew less than nothing about despite his protests)"

Well, I'll leave aside the obvious, namely, that you do not HAVE to be a Christian to comment on Christianity--if you do, then boy were David Hume, Bertrand Russell, Friedrich Nietzsche, and like-minded icons I can never hope to approximate misled, and how silly Dawkins, Sagan, A.C. Grayling, and the late Christopher Hitchens all were and are as well.

I am perfectly capable of commenting on Christianity, thank you.

But anyway.

What, pray tell, was I "misinformed" on? If you're going to lay a charge, please, substantiate it; perhaps you are correct, and if you are, then backing it up should be no trouble, and should illuminate us all, myself included, so please, back up your accusation with evidence, if you please.

Also, I DO express my views as if I believe them to be the correct views as...well, they're my views, and it seems odd to me not to be confident of one's views in a debate until they are proven to be erroneous; I've shifted before (obviously, as I was agnostic and outspoken against the New Atheists when I first joined the site and now here I am an atheist Jew, as you put it, and frequently quoting Mr. Hitchens, and on a lighter note, I went from insisting Doctor Who was nonsensical and just a silly show that couldn't be fun to watch to owning DVDs of said silly show and enjoying it; I AM NOT "Constant as the Northern Star," I CAN be persuaded, Draugnar, you just need to back up your argument and convince me. UNTIL then, in a debate, I hold my views to be correct the same way a prosecutor, I must assume, would assert the guilt of a defendant until it is proven to him that the defendant is innocent if, indeed, he or she is.)

I am not an absolutist, Draugnar, I simply seek to argue my points strongly, and with a conviction I find impossible if I consider my points to be incorrect until they are proven incorrect; it seems alien to me that you can make a point with as much conviction as is required for an effective argument without believing in your points--again, unless they are proven to be incorrect, and then, well, you can hardly argue the sun orbits the Earth once Copernicus and Galileo effectively smash Aristotle's idea to bits, can you?

"and B) argued he was right when his reason one thing was bad was the exact same reason another thing was good (writing for money - Stephen King versus Shakespeare - bringing back a character who was written out for money - I forget who he hated but Arthur Conan Doyle did the same thing with Sherlock holmes)."

NOW THIS ONE I remember, so let me explain my position again, so you can see if you misunderstood me, perhaps, or even agree with me (or, perhaps, everyone will agree with you and say I am wrong here, that's how a debate between two adults works.)

Here we go.

This was a discussion of Stephen King, ladies and gentlemen and, if you know my literary tastes, probably know that I am no fan of Mr. King's sometimes-cited reputation that he holds with some as "the Poe of our age."

I think anyone familiar with the two enough would naturally take that as akin to saying J.K. Rowling is the Homer of our age; to be clear, I don't have a problem with HP, but in the same way I think it's absurd to liken even King's best works--I'd cite "Carrie" as a good one of his--to one of Poe timeless masterpieces--and if you have enough conviction to tell me why you think something like "Carrie" is as good or better than, say, "The Cask of Amontillado" or "The Masque of the Red Death" or, probably Poe's gem among gems, "The Fall of the House of Usher," please, by all means, tell me why--I would say it's likewise silly to compare the HP "saga", fun as it is on its own, to the epics of Homer, Mallory, and so on. For those who are, perhaps, more apt to say "Obi, the HP stories came out in installments, so wouldn't it be more fair to judge them against serials rather than works of epic poetry?" I will readily accede to that point, and then ask if you would rank any of the books alone or, indeed, all seven together as one work as equivalent to a masterwork of Dickens, such as "A Tale of Two Cities" or, my personal favorite of his, "Great Expectations," and if we wanted to leave Dickens out of it and try another, I'd ask if HP could be matched against Dostoyevsky's "The Brothers Karamazov"--which was in fact serialized as well--and have HP come out equivalent or on top. If there are those saying right now "That seems unfair to compare HP to those legendary works and authors," that's sort of my point, that while Rowling's HP may be good for what it is, to compare it to other serialized works and say it's "the next ___" seems absurd...it's not until we leave the first-string authors of that age and reach the second-string--in terms of influence and how widely read they are, not necessarily quality--authors of the serialized format we may even BEGIN, I'd argue, to find a work and author Rowling and HP can start to stack up against...I'm a great fan of Thomas Hardy's work, but we could more easily try Hardy vs. Rowling or even, in terms of literary relevance and influence, Hardy vs, King than we might King/Rowling vs. Dickens/Dostoyevsky/That Crowd...and even THEN I don't see HP or "Carrie" beating a masterpiece like Hardy's "Tess of the D'Urbevilles" in terms of either a serialized story or a work of fiction overall. To wrap this first point up--because there's a second point here that Draugnar raises that certainly, I feel, he probably cares more about than this one--and address the last elephant in the room, someone might very well say, "Obi, you're being completely unreasonable pitting a children's fantasy work against those adult classics, that's not matching them by genre" I'll say fine once more, and ask how many here would take HP over LOTR, or the Chronicles of Narnia series, which is as close to a genre match for HP to works at least approximating what's in or at least sometimes in "the canon" of Western Literature...I doubt few WOULD take HP over CoN (and yes, I know it employs a liberal amount of Christian imagery and symbolism, that's fine, doesn't mean I hate it, after all, I already cited two authors--Dickens and Dostoyevsky--and two works--"A Tale of Two Cities" and "The Brothers Karamazov"--which are heavily steeped in Judeo-Christian symbolism and imagery, and after all, as I've stated time and time again, after "Hamlet"--and yes, those who recall this discussion the first time, around, I AM coming to the Stephen King/Shakespeare, Money/Frequency of Writings element that Draugnar likely bases more of his charge off of--my 2nd-favorite work of all-time is John Milton's "Paradise Lost," and THAT is about as Judeo-Christian in type as you can get) OR over LOTR.

My point in ALL of that?

I disagree with the ranking of King, am not a fan of his style or works overall, and his reputation that is cited as being a second Poe of sorts does not at all pan out for me in the same way HP vs. ANY of what I just set it against doesn't work for me, either--lofty comparisons require some pretty lofty literary quality, staying power, and influence; I don't think King has the literary quality to even approach Poe, his staying power cannot at all be factored in to being anywhere close to Poe's as the man is still alive and still writing, and the same may be said of his influence, far too early to tell, ESPECIALLY for such a lofty comparison...as I said, it's as silly as if I were to compare HP to any of those works and authors I did (and lest you think I'm picking on poor HP, I WILL say that yes, I did enjoy the books when they were out, yes, I think they will have some staying power--though again, we can't really tell yet--and, in terms of contemporaries, I WILL say I'll take HP over Twilight or The Hunger Games as works easily, while adding as a last addendum to all this that THG, for as flawed as I still think it is, still has so much more merit than Twilight, lest you think I belittle or denigrate it by lumping it in with that trash--and to end this entire bit and come full circle in a way before we come to the real fun of the Shakespeare/King/money issue, I said before that I can be persuaded to change my views...I originally called out THG without reading past the first few pages, was told to read through it, I did and listened to the whole audiobook of the first book, and admitted I was wrong to chastise it prematurely and that I had been wrong, though again, I still say there are a great many flaws with it and it could have been something truly special if not for those flaws and some authorial laziness, but that's for another day, another thread, another tangent.)

Everyone still with me? Probably not (and yes, my posts ARE long-winded, but I enjoy writing and analyzing, especially when it's literature, and you ARE after all free to skim my mounds and mounds of text) but in any case, as I said, I enjoy this and we have another, more pressing charge to come to, so here we go:

NOW, the Shakespeare/King/money/frequency of writing bit I've been building to so much.

Let me first reconstruct my postion briefly, and then I'll illustrate it vs. the quote of Draugnar's above; if you would rather skip to that portion below where I'll be dealing directly with Draugnar's quotes, feel free, and then I suppose if my view is vague or unclear there you can check back up here what my initial stance on this is, and why I feel the way I do about it.

OK.

The two main points made here in respect to the quality of King as an author and his works' relevance and quality are the frequency with which they came out, the volume of work he has at the age he is, and this idea of "writing for money" which I'll address first.

Dr. Samuel Johnson--a writer and critic I thoroughly dislike, he may be the author I've come across I agree with the least and despise the most--infamously wrote (to paraphrase) that the ONLY REASON ONE SHOULD WRITE is for money.

I DISAGREE.

HERE we have a bit of a problem, as already the charge is on everyone's mind, "Obi! Your favorite author is SHAKESPEARE, for Heaven's sake! He wrote his plays for MONEY! He had a patron, and after all, his histories--"Richard III" to name a particular one--were written in large part to be pro-Elizabeth propaganda! HOW can you be so hypocritical to get on King and Johnsons' cases when Shakespeare, in fact, wrote for money, as most authors worth their salt have done throughout Western Literary history?!"

And I answer--I DON'T begrudge Shakespeare, or Johnson, or King for writing for money. I'm a capitalist, after all, and while I think they're awful books and it makes me cringe what an insult they are to feminist authors who preceded her, I'm fine with Stephenie Meyer's "Twilight" books selling like hotcakes. Fine. That's how the market works, and I can't blame her for wanting to cash in when she clearly has a cash cow on her hands. Indeed, I can't blame the movie studious for adding an additional movie to the franchise, as again, if it makes money, and doesn't conflict with government or safety regulations, your product is fair game to sell, and you have every right to try and get rich and enjoy being rich.

That being said--who here will say they think "Twilight" is a work whose quality demands inclusion in the Western Canon of Literature?
I dare say no one, or very, very few?
To state the question again, who foresees the "Twilight Saga" films being listed with the Godfather films or the LOTR films or even the Rocky films as a great film series? Each of the film series I mentioned had at least one Oscar for Best Picture in there...does anyone seriously foresee the Twilight films joining their ranks?

So, there is a difference, then, between commercial and critical success.

"Obi, that's obvious, we all know that a Playboy isn't exactly on par with Proust...ahem, as much as I read that for the ARTICLES, of course!"

Well then, take another look at Johnson's statement--does he say a thing about quality in it? No. JOHNSON just says the ONLY REASON TO WRITE IS FOR MONEY...PERIOD.

So the obvious objection there is, of course, something like porn--it sells, so if the only reason to write is for the money, why is it Playboy isn't finding its way on any Literary Top 10 lists, or winning accolades from the powers that be?

The obvious answer, and the one that everyone is likely way ahead of me on, is that money is NOT the only reason to write something, nor is monetary success the only standard to judge an artist by

Even Johnson himself seems to have realized this, as shortly after his declaration that the only reason to write something is for money, Johnson published some of the first truly influential criticism of Shakespeare's works, and that's criticism that is still read and cited by Shakespearean scholars today, and Johnson said...

That he didn't like a great many of Shakespeare's plays ("Macbeth," "Othello," and "Twelfth Night," I believe, to be two of the more famous examples, along with his head-scratcher of a statement that the "To be or not to be" speech was so horrific and improper somehow that he considered it to be a near literary atrocity) because...

He felt Shakespeare was often lewd, his characters lacking morals, and the violence of the Tragedies and sexual openness of the Comedies to be improper.

And of course--he's right (except for the improper part, of course, unless you want to be wholly Puritanical here, in which case, I've lost you pages and pages ago.)

Shakespeare WAS lewd, violent, and had plenty of gore and sex...but if ALL of that sells...and DID sell well in Shakespeare's day (he did make money off his work) and has continued to sell (with an admitted low point in the immediate aftermath of Johnson's criticism, though even then Shakespeare, while not as popular as he was to figures like Ben Jonson and later Milton and certainly not as astronomically popular as he was and has been from the Romantic period of Byron, Keats, and onward ever since, essentially) and ALL THAT ONE SHOULD WRITE FOR, according to Johnson, is MONEY...

Why call Shakespeare a failure, then, when by the standard of making money off his writings, he was, and continues to be, one of if not the most successful author in the English language, and indeed, Western Literature?

The answer was one Johnson revealed out of his own contradiction, and where King enters into all this--

That money is NOT all that matters, something else does as well, and as Johnson, somewhat intentionally and somewhat unwittingly, demonstrated, that other something is "quality," or whatever we decide makes up "quality" in a literary work.

And that was the crux of my argument--that while King was and is a SUCCESSFUL author, no doubt, he was and is nevertheless not one I'd rank highly in terms of QUALITY.

PART of this charge, to tie all this together before we get to the nitty-gritty of it all, was the sheer amount of work King has churned out.

And here is where Draugnar and others posed the following--

"Wait! Obi, you can't be serious! In a writing career that spanned about 25 years, Shakespeare churned out 37 different plays, 38 if you're going to count "The Two Noble Kinsmen" which he came out of retirement briefly to help co-write"--and I will count that one, though for the record and to anyone who cares (probably no one, but I've gone this far, so may as well have fun with all the remaining things I have left to say) I'd still consider "The Tempest" to be his last "real" work, as that's his solo ending and the epilogue speech given by Prospero in particular shows Shakespeare's departure from the theatre world, but I digress--"and that's a RIDICULOUS pace, Obi! 38 plays in about 25 years! That's more than 1 a year! HOW can you get on Stephen King for the volume of works he's put out?"

Well...a quick Wikipedia search:

Taking his "listed" novels, his "Dark Tower" novels, and novels written under a pseudonym...

Stephen King has written 52 novels.

I'd like to remind everyone at this point also how much LONGER novels are than plays, as if I needed to, and that your average Stephen King novel, while not as beastly in length as some novels--"Les Miserables" for one, though I'll admit to really hoping to finish that, I've read the beginning of it and select other parts and know the story, ECSTATIC a film version based upon the stage musical/opera adaptation of it that I love will be coming out in December just a couple weeks before "The Great Gatsby" also hits theatres, so that should be a rocking December for me, but again, I digress--the average Stephen King novel is no F. Scott Fitzgerald novel, to use one of the references above, that is, it's not short, and is far more comparable in sheer size and length to, say, a work of George Eliot or Henry James than Fitzgerald, who tended towards more lithe novels.

The point?

That's 52 novels--and not short novels, either...do you really think ANYONE would have the time to churn out 52 full-length novels and have them all be "good?"

52 (and counting) novels in 34 (and counting) years for King...

Versus 38 plays in 25 years for Shakespeare.

"That's still ratio over 1:1 for works/years for each, Obi."

Yes, but again, PLAYS are far shorter...let's take the average play--not his longest ("Hamlet") or his shortest ("The Comedy of Errors") or even the shortest of the long Tragedies ("Macbeth," I believe, if you go by just the amount of text alone) and let's take something in the middle of the middle, say..."Othello," that's VERY roughly approaching just around the median length of a Shakespeare play, and a good representation of Shakespeare's work to boot.

STILL, that play is MAYBE scraping near 100 pages in most standard print versions...I have versions that has it at less than that, but we'll be generous to Mr. King and call it 100 pages worth of work for Mr. Shakespeare here, give or take a few, depending on what version you have, what kind of copy your book/actor's script/director's script/anthology/etc. has it at.

We'll also be generous to Mr. King with this upcoming comparison again, and use a tragedy here and NOT a comedy, for a reason to be made clear now--

EVEN if we take "Othello," about the middle of the Tragedies/Histories length-wise and a decent example of that subset of Shakespeare's work...that again scrapes around 100 pages, give or take...

Which is about 1/3 or 1/4 the length of the Stephen King novel EASILY.

If we take the average of his Comedies, it's probably closer to 1/4 the length, if not less; if we factor in the "spacing" factor, and note that the amount of pages for Shakespeare increases because of the spacing that occurs in a play due to the fact that sometimes you'll get a line that has one or two words only on it, and sometimes, if you have a version of the text that supports it, you'll have prose-portions of the text presented in straight meter, and thus not using up the whole page again...

Take THAT into consideration, and 1/4 the length is a generous estimate on average.

NOW.

38 / 4 = 9.5

So, if we take the shorter length of a play vs. a novel into consideration, that NOW becomes roughly equivalent to 4 Shakespeare texts for every 1 King text in terms of length...

Suddenly it's an equivalent of 9.5 texts over those 25 years..vs. 52 texts over 34 years.

Round that up to 10 to be generous again, and 10 vs. 52...

Not a math genius, but King's volume of work, then, on JUST plays vs. novels, is 5.2 Shakespeare works for every 1 King work.

One of if not the greatest writer in the English language, and one of the most prolific...

And King is out-pacing HIM 5 to 1...does someone still want to argue that it's still entirely quality for King, that he was just bursting with so many ideas that he has written on average 5 works to every 1 work of William Shakespeare's at a roughly comparable rate over a roughly comparable period of time? (Shakespeare died in 1616, and King is still only 64, so we're likely to only see those numbers go up for King, barring his quitting the authorship game or a tragic accident.)

"Hang on, Obi," some of you (well, whoever is left) are bound to ask, "You're going to get on KING for churning out works and not necessarily having them be works of art, when Shakespeare STOLE most of his plots?"

Indeed, Shakespeare's not only the greatest dramatist in the English language, he's probably it's best plagiarist as well, and if he were writing college papers today he'd get sent to the dean and expelled within a semester or two for being a very naughty little cheater. ;)

Still, I feel it's important to say two things here:

1. The old, tired phrase "It's all been done before," also heard in a variant form as "Nothing is new anyway," and that recycled plots are not something new and weren't new for or exclusive to Shakespeare in his day, and everyone stole from everyone, to which some may NOW say "Well, Obi, then what's the problem with Stephen King churning things out like a factory when originality isn't necessarily the stand-alone hallmark of literary greatness?" to which I answer with

2. T.S. Eliot's often-quoted statement (one I personally love) in which he states, to paraphrase, "Immature poets imitate; mature poets steal, and make what they steal better by doing so, adding to it and it's previous versions..." and so on and so forth. Eliot--effectively, in my opinion--argues Shakespeare (and Dante and others, including himself) do just that--steal plots and character archetypes and themes from other authors, but make them better along the way via their own touches, thus adding something new and producing a superior product. Take any of Shakespeare's most famous stories, and you'll find nearly all of them he took from previous tales and, in just about every instance, made the story better--"The Merchant of Venice?" Taken from Christopher Marlowe's "The Jew of Malta" with that little added change of making Shylock into someone at least resembling a human being and not just an anti-Semitic caricature and monster via his mistreatment, tragedy, and the fact Shakespeare gives some of his best speeches to him, including the one everyone remembers, the "Hath not a Jew eyes?" speech. Even if you disagree with me and still say the play is anti-Semitic--I don't think it is or, to be more exact, I think that it was progressive for it's time, at least, and especially given Marlowe's version, I'll take Shakespeare's at least partial-allowance for tolerance over nothing at all, especially given how hypocritical the "good guy" Christian Venetians are depicted in the play--we can try again. "Romeo and Juliet" comes from several older sources, including older Greek stories, but one of the most direct sources that is cited is Arthur Brooke's "The Tragical History of Romeus and Juliet" (and no, that's not a typo, it's "Romeus" in Brooke's poem.) Changes? Adding Mercutio and the Nurse--if you've ever seen or read this play (and I think I can assume most here have, given how often this is taught in high school and college) you know how invaluable the comic relief of those characters are to the tone of the piece, how entertaining they are, and how thematically important they are as they give Romeo and Juliet, respectively, someone to confide in about the whole ordeal--as well as the age (other sources have Juliet as being 16 or so, with Romeo still being older, and so instead of a teenage love affair we arguably have a "We Need an Adult!" moment with an overage Romeo and an underage Juliet, and NO, marriages at 16 were still not the norm back then, more acceptable, but still not the norm, and certainly the work loses some of its luster when it's a far-older man with a young girl rather than two young lovers) and changing the timescale of the piece from months to a matter of days in which they fall in love (less realistic, but that's sort of the point, as Mercutio and especially the Nurse point out, it's rather absurd for the two to be leaping so far with such little time together, it's more of a lust affair than a love affair and, thus, their deaths is more the death of two youngsters with youthful potential and a budding romance quashed than a perfect romance destroyed.) Still not convinced? We'll go one more and take a work Eliot would certainly not have counted as one of Shakespeare's best--"Hamlet" itself, which draws from older works such as the "Ur Hamlet" and Thomas Kyd's "The Spanish Tragedy," and while I like Ky'd work, Shakespeare's is really superior, and I don't feel I have to go into detail here, as I feel I've made my point here and, after all, it's "Hamlet," for goodness' sake, most often cited as the preeminent work in all English literature--whatever Shakespeare added or took out or changed, it certainly seems to have "make the work better" and memorable, hasn't it?

The point of all of THAT?

Yes, Shakespeare, along with King and Poe and Dante and Eliot and so many authors, stole quite a bit, but again, rare is the instance a writer comes up with a completely new idea or plot, and as Eliot said, it's taking the old and improving it and reworking it and making it BETTER that is at least part of the hallmark of literary brilliance, or at least the ones that seem to last...and can this be said of King?

I'll leave that for you to decide, though if you do say he's done this...well, I gave examples for Shakespeare--can you give examples for King, of how he's taken the old and improved it? He CERTAINLY hasn't invented works and plots clear out of the blue with no stealing whatsoever...again, even one I'll commend, like "Carrie" (and there's a reason I keep mentioning it, and I'll say why in a minute) can be seen as derivative of previous works, or that other works have done similar things, or had similar aspects, and so on and so forth.

So I DON'T think that the quality of King's works THERE holds up.

"Obi, this has been bothering me for a while now" you may ask (if you're even still there, which I sincerely doubt, as this is turning out to possibly be longer than my initial post on this whole Stephen King/Shakespeare thing, but I'm having fun with it, and really trying to make my points again, so here goes) "but you're tilting the whole 'King has a ridiculous volume of work' argument unfairly and you know it--154 sonnets?!"

A sonnet is 14 lines, as I'm sure you know.
Add ALL the sonnets together, and you still don't even make a DENT in the overall volume of text that King has vs. the amount Shakespeare has.

"Shakespeare wrote several long poems, too!"

I know--I actually rather like "The Phoenix and the Turtle," I think that's overlooked and should be read a bit more, but that's another story.

Add THOSE in, and they STILL don't come close to making up the gap between the two, not even CLOSE.

What's more, if we're going to delve into the different aspects of their respective canons, then King has quite a few short story collections--and I don't need to say that a short story, just ONE is longer than a decent amount of those sonnets put together, I might add, and that's SEVERAL short stories...and several short story COLLECTIONS.

So, even MORE text, and finally...

There are the non-fiction works and articles the man writes, adding even MORE text to King's canon.

If at this point you STILL want to argue that he can honestly have given adequate time and resources to making each and every one of those "works of art" as it were, or that he didn't likely just churn a fair amount of those out for money, regardless of quality, then I'll try one more thing--

It's not uncommon. F. Scott Fitzgerald wrote a fair amount of shorts he didn't care for or about too much because he had boozed away a great amount of his money by that point and was in some dire straights. Similar incidents for some of their shorts (and even some novels) are true of other authors as well.

So I ask again--do you REALLY think King was putting his all into each and every one of those texts, given the sheer volume of what he has and what he's still churning out like a factory?

To which I might add--as I said, Fitzgerald wasn't exactly proud of some of those shorts (or some of his screenwriting jobs, to go another route, and lead into something else) and while he didn't mind shorts too much, and indeed liked doing them to an extent, he did like to look them over and do them carefully, which he couldn't always do near the end because of the financial situation he'd landed himself in, and so in his case it was a matter of churning things out to get a paycheck.

King is in no such financial difficulty--does he really need to churn them out like a factory? Can he not spend more time fine-tuning them or, perhaps, redirect that energy into writing something different from his usual two or three modes?

With Shakespeare you have a plethora of different modes and genres--

Revenger's Tragedies, Ambition Tragedies, Histories, A Coming of Age/War Epic in the Henriad, Romantic Tragedies (to make up his Tragedies), the Histories (if we give Henry IV 1 and 2 and Henry V for the Henriad and Richard III, "history" that it is, to the Ambition Tragedies, then we still have plenty of material here), the Romances he wrote late in his career, the Comedies (and there are enough permutations in there, again) and then you get into what are called "The Problem Plays" which seem intended, maybe, for a genre but are either experimental ("Troilus and Cressida" is seemingly written as a tragedy, but between it's not keeping in form with most other tragedies as neither title characters die and, indeed, there's a lot of love and comedy in the play, so it's seem by some as a dark comedy and by others as more of an examination of relationships through the two title characters through all the ups and downs and how relationships don't HAVE a cut-and-dry lofty ending, tragic or comic, in most cases, and then there's others such as "The Merchant of Venice," which was originally classified and performed as a comedy but now is viewed by some as being something of a social commentary and satire that cuts both ways against Shylock as well as the Christians instead of just demonizing former) and so on, without even getting into the difference in poetry and prose and how he wrote sonnets, longer poems, and plays in various forms.

With King, you can trace him from "Carrie," and you can feel a sort of formula.

"Shakespeare is SO formulaic, Obi! How can you even MAKE that charge against King?!"

Shakespeare does have a formula, but as I've shown above, he deviates quite a bit from it; I'd actually blame part of this on public schools and how they teach Shakespeare, I think they ruin quite a bit of it by teaching the wrong plays (you are NOT going to get "Hamlet" or be able to follow "Richard III" when you're 15 and just starting to learn Shakespeare, and "Romeo and Juliet" is a story everyone already knows so few feel the need to closely pay attention, plus it's not exactly a play that is known for getting the male demographic pumped and ready to see it...I'd probably recommend more comedies--"Twelfth Night" is one of his best and one that stands up pretty well today, has a great film version and all, or "The Taming of the Shrew" and "Much Ado About Nothing" have enough sexual puns and a quick enough pace to engage a teenage audience, and their language is reasonably accessible compared to other Shakespeare plays--and then if I had to teach a tragedy, "Macbeth," it's the shortest tragedy, a damn good one, and you can have lots of fun with that around Halloween, and there's plenty of action to keep guys involved as well as some of Shakespeare's best lines, but again, I digress) too often as well as stressing the 5 Act Structure and Iambic Pentameter too much; those are vital starting points with Shakespeare, but far too often teachers will just leave it there, and it makes it seem as if all the plays are rigid, and they're not. Aside fro all having 5 Acts (and just about all plays then had five acts, that was just the accepted structure of the time) there's a great amount of variance with the meter and lines and language and so on; about the most I can charge Shakespeare with here is that generally int he Tragedies you have a key death in Act 3 (Polonius, Mercutio, and Tybalt, to name three off the top of my head) and a major "death scene" in Act 5 as the end draws near, but then, that's not altogether different from most dramatic works, that is, in MOST dramatic works something major (in classical works, often a death or something comparably tragic) will occur near the middle, and then there's a dramatic ending, and again, many dramas end with a death, and this trend continues long after Shakespeare--Tess from Hardy's "Tess of the D'Urbervilles" dies at the end, Sydney Carton gives his life heroically at the end of "A Tale of Two Cities," Gerald dies near the end of D.H. Lawrence's "Women In Love," Laura has her heart broken and her glass menagerie shattered in Tennessee Williams' "The Glass Menagerie," Boxer dies in Book IX before Napoleon's complete betrayal of all the animals fought for by walking on two legs in Book X both come at the end of Orwell's "Animal Farm," and we can go on and on...I'll end by showing this continues up to contemporary works (yes, I read those, too!) with The Father dying at the end of Cormac McCarthy's 2008 masterpiece "The Road."

So, again, that's not so much Shakespeare being formulaic as the above #1 I gave, that is, "No ideas are new," and "It's been done before," the question is how WELL you do it, and what you ADD to it.

END OF PART 1 (Had to split this in two via Word!)

Shakespeare (and all the other authors I just mentioned above) add so much new and brilliant aspects to their works, even though "it's been done before."

What is it King adds that's so new?

He pens the screenplay for many of his novels?

First of all, even if I took that as counting:

1. Nothing new, Arthur Miller actually penned the acclaimed film version of his acclaimed McCarthyism-allegory "The Crucible," and Tennessee Williams penned the screen versions of "Cat On a Hot tin Roof" and "A Streetcar Named Desire," and I can go on and on here, so it's not as if King could be counted as being a revolutionary in helping make his own novels adapt to the silver screen, and

2. That's MORE TEXT we can count for King, so that's even MORE he churns out...and how many of his film adaptations are good, folks, and how many are a cash cow? For every "Carrie" or "The Shining" or "Misery" there's a "The Tommyknockers" or "It" or "The Langoliers" miniseries and so on...in fact, if I WERE going to compare King's film adaptions to those of others who have adapted their works to film...well, again--Arthur Miller and Tennessee Williams, look at their acclaimed, often award-winning adaptations, and look at King's hit-and-miss career adapting his works...this may be attributable to the fact that Williams and Miller self-adapted less of their works, but that's sort of my point--

THEY DID *NOT* just churn out adaptation after adaptation like King does, but chose carefully what they wanted to adapt, worked on it for a period of time, and released them...they didn't do a mass work on a screenplay adaptation AND write a new novel AND new short stories AND a new non-fiction work AND write articles all the time AND do guest-lecturing and the like as well.

There's not enough time and not enough energy to do all that WELL--they chose to pick and choose and strike a balance and (for the most part) what they turned out reflects that and is praised as quality work (Williams suffered a decline during the second half of his career, which can be attributed to his problems with alcohol, critics changing taste and the savage reviews his works often got in this period, or just that he'd run out of good ideas, and it's probably a mixture, though some of those works are now being reevaluated and his reputation's experienced something of a renaissance since his death...in any case, he can't be accused of over-producing and thus having his work drop off in quality or relevance as a result, as I'm charging King with here.)

"Alright Obi!" cries the two or three near-comatose folks still listening, "We get that point, but come ON, even if it wasn't as much as King that was still a lot Shakespeare produced...and you have to be fair, Shakespeare wrote some duds!"

Yes. Yes he did. Everyone does.

(I'm WAY past writing one right now, this is so far past a dud I daresay it's a bomb!) ;)

But anyway--sure, Shakespeare wrote some plays that were are considered bombs.
He also wrote some plays that were quite popular and NOW are considered duds?
Examples of each?
His audience was very mixed for "King Lear," now considered one of his masterpiece works, as "Lear" had generally ended with King Lear restored to the throne rather than, well, the mess of egotism and back-stabbing and the fall of a great man after a great career that drives the drama in Shakespeare's version.
Plays they liked that are now considered duds?"
"The Comedy of Errors" (and I agree, it's the worst of his plays I've read, it's not completely awful, but it's just sketchy and flimsy with a lot of dated jokes and it just doesn't pan out or age well in the end outside of the fun you can have as an actor with the whole doubling/twin act thing, but even that was done better in "Twelfth Night) and "Titus Andronicus" (which was VERY popular in Shakespeare's day, as it was his first and bloodiest tragedy, with near 15 deaths, very gruesome deaths, and it's essentially the Shakespeare equivalent to a slasher/torture flick with some interesting themes on the vicious circularity of revenge, family, and then just how sad Lavinia's lot is in the story--her dad hates her boyfriend, said boyfriend is then stabbed right in front of her, she's caught, roughed up, pleads for death in the face of rape, only to be turned down by her rapist's mother who tells them to go rape her and then brutalize her, which they do and leave her with her hands and tongue cut off so she can't reveal who did this to her and stranded in the middle of a forest until he uncle finds her, and she spends the rest of the play in unspeakable agony until he father breaks her neck out of mercy to just put her out of her misery...now THAT is a sad, sad life, that makes Ophelia's lot in her play look like skipping through the flowers and sunshine singing "Hey-nonny-nonny" all day! ...Anyway, it being a dud? Oh, yes--well, after Shakespeare kicks the bucket, tastes change come the Reformation, and everyone looks at the brilliant poetry and prose of "Hamlet," "Romeo and Juliet," "King Lear," "A Midsummer Night's Dream," and Shakespeare continues to hold a position of high acclaim...and then they look at "Titus" With all that gore and vicious rape and the Sweeney Todd-like ending and rather coarse and harsh language and are HORRIFIED, with many for centuries trying to show that there was NO WAY the "all-perfect" Shakespeare could have written something as "disgusting" and "crude" as this...as such everyone from those Reformation critics to Samuel Johnson to the 180s critics even down to T.S. Eliot all called Titus a "travesty"...it hasn't been until VERY recently, say, the post-Vietnam era, that the play's begun to experience a bit of a critical reappraisal, partially because with how violent our movies, TV, and video games have become "Titus" is still shocking but not as unheard of as it was for previous audiences, and partially because in the wake of the most violent century ever, a play as violent as "Titus," where revenge is shown to be horribly destructive to the point of pointlessness and where the most innocent character is the one most badly dealt with and, indeed, in a play with no real hero or moral, "Titus" has revived just a bit in light of the grim times we live in...but for centuries, after it's initial popularity, it was considered one of if not THE single worst play by Shakespeare.)

But the same may be said of King--all those books and short stories and articles, you're going to have some bombs.

Now, in my initial go at this, I listed every one of Shakespeare's plays vs. every one of King's novels, to measure them bust by bust and masterpiece by masterpiece.

This is now so long I don't think that's really feasible, so I'll instead come at it this way--

If I ask you to name as many Shakespeare plays--and we'll be fair here and say name "good" Shakespeare plays only, since I'll accede to the fact that we all, myself included, can probably name plays of his that aren't the best and some--"The Comedy of Errors" comes to mind--that wouldn't be remembered at all if they didn't bear the name of "Shakespeare" on them--as you can...well, how many can you list?

Hamlet? Othello? Macbeth? Romeo and Juliet? Julius Caesar? A Midsummer Night's Dream? Twelfth Night? Taming of the Shrew? Much Ado About Nothing? Henry V? Richard III? King Lear? The Merchant of Venice?

And we can still go on for a bit before hitting the skids, as it were, and coming to those on the "Comedy of Errors" level.

Can we do the same with Stephen King? He has even MORE material, surely he should have even more come to mind?

Carrie...The Shining...The Shawshank Redemption...The Tommyknockers (though I wouldn't count that as a good one per se) Misery...It (again, listed because I can think of it, not because I think it's good)...11/22/63 (and that one I know only because at Barnes and Noble they had it on display forever and I had to walk past it to get to the Poetry section with Pablo Neruda and Emily Dickinson and T.S. Eliot and all of those folks.)

I can't name as many as I could the Shakespeare ones myself...
I couldn't name as many GOOD ones as I could Shakespeare ones...
"OBI! YOU HAVEN'T READ ALL 52 BOOKS! HOW CAN YOU SAY--"
Have you read all 52?
But I'll be exceedingly fair here and try this one more time--

Name Shakespeare plays that are are memorable, has been influential, and/or is quotable and known to most people in some form...

I keep ALL the ones I mentioned above, and I could probably add some if we're going for influence and memorable lines and characters (adding Falstaff alone would give me three more plays, and he's pretty memorable and has stood out)...

What about Stephen King?

Carrie. I keep coming back to Carrie. Why? Because that's the most original work of his I can think of (that I have read, to be fair, but again, unless anyone here has read all 52 of his works, allow some slack here, I'm not charging that most folks here most know most of Shakespeare's works to form an opinion, so let it go both ways) and I think for many people that's one of the most memorable characters and books.

The other--and the one I'd expect to top the list because of the movie version and Jack Nicholson's performance--is "The Shining."

That's two.

If I add The Shawshank Redemption and Misery...that's four.

Can anyone else name a truly memorable (and for a GOOD reason, I remember "It," but only for how silly it was) Stephen King novel?

Maybe a tougher question--can anyone name, besides Carrie and the Nicholson character (I can't be bothered to look up his name, everyone knows him at this point as the Jack Nicholson-Shining-Character anyway, I think) a truly memorable Stephen King character?

Now for the REAL stumper...name a memorable Stephen King QUOTE, one from one of his works.

Go.

...Now that everybody's quoted at least one line from the awesome Crazy Jack Nicholson Shining character... ;)

Name another.

Can you?

Apply that to Shakespeare, and I don't even HAVE to start the quote fest--that contest is won in a SECOND. There are so many quotable Shakespeare lines, phrases, and entire monologues or speeches that it's a wonderful absurdity unto itself.

Go back to the characters, and again--I don't need to name names, because Shakespeare wins hands down once again in terms of memorable characters that everyone knows.

How about memorable moments?

Here King fares better--in part because I think he's far better at setting a mood and scene than he is giving a memorable line of dialogue or a truly three-dimensional character, though to his credit his early works are good at setting a scene, he does have some great moments--and we can name a few...

But once again, I dare you to try and out-name King Moments vs. Shakespeare Moments...I think I could play that game with 3/4 of the plays tied behind my back and win JUST with the Tragedies alone...hell, I could probably win with just "Hamlet, "Romeo and Juliet," and "Macbeth" alone...MAYBE even just "Hamlet" alone, it's 5 Acts vs. the entire canon of Stephen King novels, and I STILL bet there are more scenes that people would recognize from "Hamlet" than all of King's novels put together, and almost certainly if I add just R&J and "Mabeth" as well.

"That's no fair, Obi, Shakespeare has been around 400 years, it's no surprise his lines, moments, and characters are so memorable to us... Stephen King only goes back to 1974."

Well, first, I don't believe saying this WAS a fair fight--hence why I thought the defense of King's volume of factory-produced text the first time was odd.

But let's be fair and drop Shakespeare altogether, shall we, I think we've all heard just about enough from the Bard today (well, not be, but then, I'm an oddity...one that's probably garnered a mute back from Draug for all this, but you know, typing all this about literature has been fun, and in the end, that's what it's about, fun and debate.)

Didn't I say earlier that I despised how some called King a second Poe?

Let's use Poe, then, shall we, as HE was famous during his lifetime, and is more modern, and the comparison between the two is what started me off here, was it not?

So, same questions:

Poe vs. King...works people know--go!

The Masque of the Red Death, The Gold Bug, The Black Cat, The Tell-Tale Heart, The Cask of Amontillado, The Fall of the House of Usher, The Two Auguste Dupin Stories, Annabel Lee and The Raven (if we include poetry; I didn't with Shakespeare, I figured including that would just pile it on even worse.

Maybe not everyone knows all of them, but most people will have at least heard of most of them, still good enough to edge King, likely.

Memorable lines?

Well, until we get something besides the Jack Nicholson lines from "The Shining"...

We can pretty much win this with arguably the most quotable and best poem in American poetry, "The Raven" alone...add in "Annabel Lee," "The Tell-Tale Heart," "The Cask of Amontillado," and so on, and Poe wins again.

Memorable characters?

Carrie and Jach Nicholson's Character...

Versus The Raven's Narrator (I'll leave out The Raven and Lenore, just to be extra generous, though you could probably at least count the former as he does speak), Annabel Lee herself (I'll leave out the Narrator, as both narrators of those poems are gloomy, so we'll be generous again and count them as one, Gloomy Poe Narrator to rule them all, as it were, at least here), Fortuanato and Montressor from "The Cask of Amontillado," the murderer from "The Tell-Tale Heart," Auguste Dupin, the various members of the House of Usher, Prince Prospero and the Red Death himself from "The Tell-Tale Heart"...

And we can go on, but Poe wins again.

And on and on we go...

"But I can name PLENTY of Harry Potter characters, Obi...and you know what, I read more Harry Potter than Shakespeare back in the day--because I'm not a freak like you--so does that mean that J.K. Rowling now, according your own system, has bested the mighty Bard?"

Well, if you'll recall, I mentioned INFLUENCE way back when...

I said that it wasn't quite fair to apply that to J.K Rowling and Stephen King as, well, they're still alive, still writing, and influence often takes time to recognize (though there are exceptions.)

So, to that end, as a quick little drop-in:

Edgar Allan Poe is commonly credited with the invention of the detective novel and the first great, memorable detective in Auguste Dupin (who would influence Conan Doyle's creation of Sherlock Holmes, no less), so points there for Poe, not only at the height of the Gothic/Dark Romanticism movement, but inventing a whole new genre of fiction.

Shakespeare?

All he did was invent around 2,000 words and phrases.

So...yeah...pretty influential, those two...and as much as I enjoyed HP, I don't think it can make the same claim (though I WILL give it credit for encouraging kids to read at a time when not as many were anymore, so it does get some "influence" points there.)

Can we say the same of King?

If someone can, please--give the extent of King's influence.

Again, I concede completely, not a fair question to ask, as that part of a literary legacy often comes later, I'm just saying, if someone DOES want to go down that road...well, how exactly do you propose to do so?

"Obi, Draug mentioned something about 378 pages back about Sherlock Holmes coming back from the dead for money--"

Right.

So I think I've made my position clear, that I think Stephen King is, at this point, very much just churning out a largely-uninspired glut of works for a buck (which again, is fine morally and economically, I'm just challenging him artistically, from that angle, as with Stephenie Meyer, he has every right to milk a cash cow if he wants, free enterprise IS a good thing, so long as it doesn't boil over too much into a mess) and that, while I DO PRAISE STEPHEN KING for his earlier works--I've spoken kindly of "Carrie" and "The Shining" throughout this epic, you'll recall--I think he's now a mandate-driven hack of a writer who doesn't have anymore stories to tell so much as money to make, and that I THINK--and this is just speculation on my part--when his turn for literary evaluation comes in the decades that will follow, his name and star will dip severely, and while he probably won't fall completely off the radar or never be read or heard of again (I think a couple works--again, I've mentioned Carrie and The Shining ad naseum--will buoy his reputation, as will the fact the's held the rather lofty position of Most Well-Known Living American Author for a good decade or two now) I don't think he'll be remembered anywhere near as prominently as he is today, anywhere near the likes of Poe or Shakespeare or, for that matter, a Thomas Hardy, George Eliot, or Toni Morrison...

I've made ALL of that clear? OK then.

Herein lies the issue of being a "cash cow." See, Sherlock Holmes died.
Or, at least he was originally intended to.
If you don't already know, such was the popularity of his character that Sir Arthur Conan Doyle ressurected years later with more stories, hence the story "The Empty House," where after the last-intended Holmes story ("The Final Problem") Holmes seemingly plunged to his death over the Reichenbach Falls in Switzerland with his arch-nemesis and most well-known adversary, Professor Moriarty, we learn that Holmes actually devised a way to not fall into the Falls and survive, but then went into hiding abroad for years (to explain the gap in real-time between Holmes stories) to avoid the wrath of the remnants of the Moriarty crime syndicate and solved crimes abroad under an alias until a mystery brought him back to 221B Baker Street, takes down Colonel Moran, who had been Moriarty's right-hand man, and it's back to solving crimes in the London fog for Watson and Holmes.

Now, is this a cash cow ploy?

To be honest...I'm not sure.

I'll admit that certainly seems like something you could say is a cash cow, except Conan Doyle...

Well, not only did he not need the money--we was pretty fairly off at the moment, I believe--but he was pretty well done writing Holmes. He didn't hate his character, but he wanted to move on to writing "more serious" works, which is understandable, he was a talented author and I'm sure he wanted to write a great tome like Hardy or Dickens or Austen (though I'm not a fan of hers myself) or Twain and so on and so forth.

So...he didn't have to bring back Holmes, and didn't really care to. He'd moved on.

Why did he write Holmes again?

Two reasons are generally given, probably equally true to an extent--

The public really loved Sherlock Holmes, he was a very popular character in serialized magazines, and those were, after all, sort of the equivalent to what episodic TV series are today--

And we've all seen shows that were cancelled but, due to fans outcry and insistence and a strong desire to have the show back, such shows or franchises...well, have come back.

Star Trek is a good example--

The original show was going to be cancelled after two seasons, a huge fan mail effort got a third season, and after it went off the air, strong fan interest and good ratings in syndication--not to mention a little movie called "Star Wars" that made science fiction movies really popular again--got Star Trek back on the big screen, where it had big successes (and failures) until finally another show, TNG, was greenlit, and that brought 4 more movies...3 more TV series...and then Star Trek waned for a while...but FAN INTEREST helped it to come back again, and the 2009 film was a huge hit, so, surprise of surprises, a sequel is on it's way for 2013, all-but-guaranteed is another film to follow, and there's talk that if those both succeed there could be a new TV series.

If it makes money, publishers, be they for movies, shows, or serialized literary magazines, will want them to go on.

Cash cow?

For the magazine, maybe, but not so much for Conan Doyle, he wasn't exactly clamoring to go and get Holmes back out there to wring some more cheap cash out of him, *he* was truly done with him--it's just that he'd created such a great character that no one else was.

The other reason?

Well, Conan Doyle did writer other good works, but of course he's linked with Sherlock Holmes--that's what he was known for then, and what he's known for today.

If everyone kept telling YOU that they loved your hit TV show so much and that you were simply brilliant and that they wished you would bring this character you created that is so beloved back...and really, you have nothing else right now that's getting you anywhere near that sort of fan love and acclaim...

Wouldn't you be tempted to bring back your TV show and character to enjoy it all again?

It's not as if he was Shakespeare bringing Hamlet back from the dead, or reviving Sydney Carton so the guillotine didn't kill him at the end of "A Tale of Two Cities" and he could return and live happily ever after to "that England which [he] shall see no more" and completely ruin the ending and message of a set, complete tome of work...

He'd given his serial an ending, but that was just it--it was a SERIAL. Those can continue on and change...

If you're still somehow awake through all of this still, you might wearily say "Now wait just a damn minute, Obi, I've slogged through 9 million pages of this dreck, and I DISTINCTLY REMEMBER you citing Dickens as someone who wrote serials, and "A Tale of Two Cities" WAS published as a serial through 1859 before it was collected and published as a complete novel, so how can you say a serial can continue on and change it so Sherlock Holmes death was undone when you just said that to change Sydney Carton's climactic death, one of the most brilliant scenes with one of the most beautiful speeches in all of English literature, would be a travesty?!"

Simply put--

There are different types of TV shows, and different types of serials.

You can revive Star Trek as a TV series, no problem--it's a series of one-off episodes (or at least the original show was, the later ones still mostly had one-off episodes with an added mixture of more story arcs and even some show-long arcs) and it ends when the cast, crew, and/or studio decide they want it to end.

By that same token, then when the studio wants to bring it back, it's not a problem--new captain, no longer a kickass Iowa ladies' man named Kirk but, rather, the most British-sounding-man ever to bear the name "Jean-Luc Picard" who's all-class, intelligent, and loves his tea and Shakespeare...new ship, new crew, and bam! new Star Trek show!


But you can't do that with all TV series--

For instance, you can't bring back "The West Wing"--that was a planned-out show from the beginning about how a presidency might unfold in "real-time" or close to it, covering the 8 years of President Bartlet's presidency in 7 real-time years and seasons...and once a President has served two terms, that's it, game over, time to get someone else in, and they did that, ended with President Jimmy Smits, er, Matt Santos in the big chair in the Oval Office, and Martin Sheen's President Bartlet flying home to New Hampshire.

It's been years since the show has ended, it ended perfectly, and the actors have aged out of their roles and they're not really ones you can replace, not in a show like this, and the shows, rather than usually being one-offs, were usually written to interconnect with one another and thus form a long arc over entire episodes and sometimes even entire seasons, some spanning the length of the show...

So it was like a novel or a play in that regard--no one-offs, so once it ends, it ends.

Dickens' serials (especially those such as "A Tale of Two Cities" are like "The West Wing," ie, written to be interconnected and thus once it ends, it ends...

Conan Doyle's Sherlock Holmes serials were almost without exception one-offs, with a small amount of carry over from one serial to the next, so they were, by their design, eternally-self-contained and thus the story was always open-ended; if Conan Doyle ever wanted to write another one, he could do so without upsetting some pre-planned structure that had woven all the stories together and culminated in Holmes' falling over Reichenbach Falls.

NOW.

I don't recall who my "cash cow example" was last time, but I can guess, so I'll take a crack at it again with-if I'm right--the same example, and if not, a fitting one...

George Lucas and "Star Wars."

NOW.

Which of the two examples does the original, no-tampering, shown-from-1977-1983 Star Wars saga sound like?

It HAS "episode" int he title, and yet it's not episodic, or at least, it isn't episodic in a self-contained, one-off sort of a way (the first one is, but that was because it was the first one, and unless you're making LOTR and KNOW you'll be able to make the sequels, it's generally a good idea to make the first one self-contained and good in its own right before you leave loose threads and create a mess that doesn't get a sequel and stands forever unresolved.)

A New Hope, Empire, and Jedi are VERY MUCH interconnected...well, it's not very much like a Dickens serial (Obi-Wan doesn't sacrifice saying "It is a far, far better thing that I do than I have ever done before..." and there are no grubby old men in high-collar suits and top hats pinching money off the poor) but it's interconnected the same way the serialized parts of "A Tale of Two Cities" or one of those serials are...

There's a clear beginning, middle, and end, and it's clear that it's all meant to mesh together as such and that it's meant to end where it does, no sooner, no later.

Same with the Star Wars saga--beginning, middle, end, it fits perfectly, begins perfectly, it ends perfectly, nothing extraneous, nothing need be added or taken away.

And then...well, then we had the Special Editions that Lucas releases and makes hundreds of millions off of.

Adding special effects and extra scenes and such.

...Alright, we can let that go without accusing Lucas of milking a cash cow, after all, the man said many times he wanted to do things back them but couldn't because of limitations, right? So let's go ahead and take his word for it...why, if you wanted to be VERY generous, you could even point out that Dickens even had slightly different versions of the ending of "Great Expectations" all ready and written, and the one he chose was the one he was told would go over better and sell better, though he had feelings for both (I prefer the slightly grimmer one with Pip and Estella not quite reconciling as near to happiness as they do in the version he went with initially myself, both both are good versions and both are there for the reading) so if we wanted to be extremely kind to Lucas, we could say that even Dickens made some alterations for the sake of selling a story just a bit more.

STILL...Dickens knew when to STOP telling a story.

(Unlike me, who clearly doesn't know, after hours of typing, when to stop typing a response likely no one will ever read, but oh well, Dickens wrote for fun, and so do I...granted he also had talent and made money off it, but you can't have everything.) ;)

Now, where as I?

Oh, right--Dickens knew when to STOP with a story and when to LEAVE IT ALONE.

Lucas...gave us Episodes I, II, III, and thus forever stained the legacy of his story; once you said "Star Wars" and everyone thought of a brilliant trilogy of movies that told a fun story that could be kind of epic at times when you were a little kid watching them and were still decently enjoyable when you grew up...

Now...Star Wars is a joke with a story forever marred by nonsensical, ham-fisted-in prequels that, taken as their own separate trilogy and story, is riddled with holes and doesn't fly whatsoever, and taken with the other three movies drags the whole of the saga down for the sake of George Lucas making more money and not knowing when to stop milking the cash cow.

"Lucas said he wrote those stories way back at the beginn--"

Yeah, and I planned to still be typing this after 6 hours, too.

...If anyone wants to seriously float that..."idea," go ahead and start a new thread, I suppose because, well...

No one's buying it, least of all me.

So THAT is what I mean by milking a cash cow, and how I distinguish between Conan Doyle not doing so--or if you want to accuse him of doing so, doing so at the behest of others and doing so benignly in regards to the rest of his Sherlock Holmes stories, that is, "The Empty House" wasn't a reboot or ret-con or prequel that ruined the rest of his body of work--and George Lucas egregiously doing so.

But, to show I'm fair...

It's OK he went ahead and made another Indiana Jones.
Why?
Same reason it was OK for Conan Doyle--the Indy films are mostly one-offs, so while "nuke the fridge" has entered the lexicon in a negative fashion, it isn't as if "Raiders of the Lost Ark" now has been tarnished, or there was a great epic line of Indy stories all interconnected and Indy 4 ruined them all; you can argue that 3 was a nice way to end it with Indy riding off into the sunset, but hey, that's up for everyone to decide, the point is, it didn't INTRINSICALLY harm an already-existing set of stories that interconnect.

Sherlock Holmes and Indiana Jones aren't, after all, too far apart...neither is 007 or Doctor Who.

And ALL have long-running serials (some in literature, some on TV, some on film.)

Dickens' serials like "A Tale of Two Cities" and George Lucas' serial "Star Wars" were interconnected stories...

Dickens knew when to stop and have his story end and not milk the cash cow for more fun stories by having Sydney Carton cheat death and run off to happiness with the girl of his dreams, thus upsetting the whole Christian/self-sacrifice/corruption vs. courage/love triangle themes and motifs that he had planted all throughout the story, building one serialized chapter on top of another.

George Lucas did NOT know when to stop, and in writing prequels--and prequels that have logical implications for the standing trilogy at that--tarnished what WAS a story that had been finished and was fine the way it was, stand-alone, interconnected and perfect, and like that child who places building blocks one over the other on top of a structure that's wobbling until it all comes crashing down...

He didn't know when to stop, and THAT'S why I call him a cash cow.

If I were to add Shakespeare in very quickly, same thing--you have Henry VI 1, 2, and 3 culminate in Richard III, and then you stop--the tetralogy has been told, you're DONE.

Same with Henry IV 1 and 2 and Henry V--a good coming of age and war epic for Prince Hal/Henry V, and Shakespeare doesn't exploit a good thing, and leaves the story where it is, and ends it with Henry V as he had laid out, and doesn't milt the cash cow...

The CLOSEST that can be said to his doing that there is using Falstaff out of time and place for "The Merry Wives of Windsor," and...well...

The common theory behind THAT play is that Elizabeth I loved the character so much she commissioned another play with him in it to be performed for her...

Aaaaand when the Queen of England is the ruler of the country and can still have you put in the stocks, retract your patronage, or kill you if you refuse, when she says she wants to see the funny Sir John Falstaff in another play, you say "Yes, your Majesty" and set to work writing "The Merry Wives of Windsor" without complaint.

;)

OK.

That's the best I can do.

At least for now, that's the best I can do to make my case...and I feel a wave of muting oncoming, but oh well, it just means that this will be even more meaningful than when I usually end with it--

THE REST IS SILENCE! :)
(Funny thing, guys—I just went to post this…and I got a message I have NEVER gotten before—“Message too long!” xD I BROKE WEBDIPLOMACY’S FORUM! XD Well, copy and paste to Word, I suppose, and split it into halves…according to Word, this is 33 full pages and over 12,000 words…IN ONE NIGHT!) :D

tl;dr indeed!

But I'm sorry, I don't care, it was WORTH IT just to see the website ITSELF tell me "Sir, you have written FAR too much, I can't take it all at once, I'll explode!"

:D

tl;dr; absoilutely...

Obi, as I've said to you before (and in the other threa dnthis one), I do like you. But Jesus you type some long ass batshit. Try organizing yout thoughts. Break them into paragraphs. And then strip out the unnecessary crap. I bet if stripped down to just the point you were trying to make with one or two examples for any given arguments, that would be two or three paragraphs; not a fucking chapter from the beginning of A Tale of Two Cities.

http://chzgifs.files.wordpress.com/2012/02/funny-gifs-me-too-bro.gif

Funny you should mention A Tale of Two Cities, Draugnar... ;)

But I did, I spaced them out...there are some bricks in there, but I couldn't tell they were from the little type window down here, and there's space as well...

Ah well--it was fun to type it, anyway.

Oh, and I should point out, I have stood up for you in the past. When assholes like maple go after you, I'm there for you. As far as being a critic of Christianity, anyone can be that. But when states uneqauivocally what was meant by a specific chapter and verse and takes it out of context, twisting it to meet their needs, then no, one doesn't know what the fuck they are talking about. And when one insist believers must b e deluded etc, etc, etc, and there is no way they could possibly know that God exists etc, etc, etc, and then one isists they can prove God doesn't exist, etc, etc, etc, then pone is just fucked in the brain. You can prove a negative and you can't speak to another's experience with God. Therefore you are full of shit if you say a believer is deluded and never had an experience because god doesn't exist. You would first have to prove either A) God doesn't exists (which can't be done) or B) that if God does exists he doesn't talk directly to people through their spiritual heart (which also can't be done).

You *can't* prove a negative. I've got to get this eye surgery soon. My vision is really getting bad...

I'm not trying to prove a negative in regard to religion, I'm saying there's no reason to believe there is a God, and that the God of the Bible, if we were to believe in Gods, is an egregious, callous, wicked character indeed, and that certainly no one should believe in THAT God--

Firstly, because of a lack of evidence, and secondly, and on the matter of faith--since you can believe something solely on faith, I admit--that to believe in such a God, knowing what that entitles and what such a God textually does and is said to so and demands and the Orwellian implications of such belief...

I would say it is better to rail against such a God's existence than to praise such a monster.

But that's for another thread, and one that'll be upcoming as it is, and I'm really already doing this debate formalized--and with a set word count, so no need to worry about 33-page epics like the one above--so, really, this is a conversation for another time.

Well, I have been asked to be an impartial judge on that debate mostly because I neither believe God absolutely exists but I also don't deny his possible existence. But we'll handle that later. I will point out that the oft maligned God of which you speak is the God of the OT, the Talmud, the Septagint. It is not the NT God and in most every case ever pointed out I've read, it can be argued that God's actions built character and made a point. But that is for another thread.

Oh, and see, you can make succint, direct, and readable posts that argue your case without boring your readers to tears and suicide/murder.

succinct...

I'll count "suicide after reading" as an accomplishment--so powerfully ponderous was my writing it brought about action (and "reduced the surplus population!)

OK, Ebeneezer. Or should I say Obineezerobineezer? :-)

obi-twerp.

You've typed over 12,000 words in order to respond to FUCKING FAGNAUR?

Why are you alive?

For Christ's sake, lock yourself in a room with a Luger and do the graceful thing.

Now maple, don't be harsh :) - but thanks for answering my unasked question (how many words?).

Obi - damn . . . I think that was longer than the main point in my capstone

Draug - dont be bashing Tale of Two Cities, it hurts my feeling when you do that ;)

Never! It's my second favorite Dickens novel (I still love A Christmas Carol) with Oliver Twist right behind it. But the opening is almost as lengthy as some of your posts! It was the best of times; it was the worst of times...

I think it would be my third favorite. 1. Great Expectations 2. Oliver Twist 3. Tale

anyway sorry to hijack the thread :)

It was the best of posts, it was the worst of posts (but certainly the longest.) ;)

1. Great Expectations
2. David Copperfield
3. A Tale of Two Cities

Either of you ever read Bleak House? I have it but haven't read it yet.