So, I got a bunch of magazines out of the library the other day, including the August issue of Esquire, because according to the cover, it had a story by Stephen King in it.
Well, okay, a story by Stephen King *and* Joe Hill, his son, but still.
And it turned out to be Part 2 of a short story, but whatever, and I started reading, and it's this story about people lost in a cornfield. And they can't get out. And there are other people in there who are threatening them ...
... wait a minute! Where have I read this before? A story about a cornfield, and scary people, and oh yeah, they made a movie out of it ... Children of the Corn! That's it! This story is, like, a total plagiarization of Children of the Corn! I wonder if the person who wrote Children of the Corn knows about this! Let's see ... let's google "who wrote Children of the Corn" ...
... Stephen King. Stephen King is now plagiarizing himself.
I wonder why. Is this going to be a new thing, now? Instead of remaking movies, they're going to start remaking books? Like, "Hell, that was a great story, thirty years ago! Let's slap a new coat of paint on her and trot 'er out again!" Or ... Well, I can't imagine that ol' Stephen did this for the money - I'm sure he has plenty - did he do it for his son, who is also an author? "Here, son, your writing career's been in a slump lately - take this old cornfield story of mine and rework it and hell, slap my name on it, too. Nobody'll notice."
And let me just say right now, if you have a famous parent? DO NOT GO INTO THE SAME CAREER FIELD. Do you really want to spend your entire life being compared to your DAD? No? I didn't think so.
But back to the cornfield story, I just can't figure out why they did it. Any ideas?
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
4 comments:
Was it a new story? I think Stephen King has often written short stories that he later turned in novels. Maybe it was previously unpublished or something? Or maybe it was intentionally a spinoff of the Children of the Corn ?
It could have been a reprint, but it's also possible that it was the same cornfield. Stephen King's characters all occupy the same world, and sometimes they revisit places - the characters in Needful Things end up on Cujo's farm, and the guy from Salem's Lot winds up stuck in Roland's world in the last few gunslinger books. Now I have to go get my hands on this Esquire bit...
Kate, definitely a new story, written with his son. And I couldn't find anything on line mentioning an intentional tie-in of this story with COTC, although I DID miss Part One of the story, so for all I know there was a whole PARAGRAPH at the beginning about how it is now the COTC cornfield, thirty years later ...
and Holly, yeah, nothing wrong with using the same places over again, but it was just ... odd. You mentioned Cujo - It was as if he had written a "new" book about a woman and her son trapped in a car by a rabid dog.
I dunno. Maybe it's just me.
Oh, yeah, he "steals" or recycles his own stuff. You can't write three billions words and not do it. Dean Koontz is doing it now, too. but I love them, so I forgive them.
Post a Comment