Stephen King: Victim of His Own Success

Just shut up and write your increasingly less scary stories. Stephen King in Time:

So I said something to the Nightline guy about waterboarding, and if the Bush administration didn't think it was torture, they ought to do some personal investigation. Someone in the Bush family should actually be waterboarded so they could report on it to George. I said, I didn't think he would do it, but I suggested Jenna be waterboarded and then she could talk about whether or not she thought it was torture.

Fine Stephen. Since you want US intelligence services to eschew a proven method of interrogation so untorturous that leftist street performers voluntarily undergo it at demonstrations, we suggest that one of your children be placed at a high value terrorist soft target for the duration. Sauce for the goose.

We are more and more disappointed with Mr. King, who used to write nice horror stories, but whose editors are apparently too cowed by his success to point out to the novelist that he slipped, sometime around Gerald's Game, into self-indulgent, feminized pap.

Good news for Dean Koontz, whose work is equally prolific and untainted by King's cynicism and literary affectations.