Blogocentric Formulations

Changes (or lack thereof) in Stephen King

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SONG: "Changes"
ARTIST: Tupac Shakur
STATUS: Deceased (homicide, 9/13/1996)
ALBUM: [single] (1998)

Even though this single wasn't released until after his death, "Changes" is one of my favorite Tupac songs, and is one of the recordings that he's best known for. The song references many cultural hot-button issues, including the difficulties of living in the ghetto, mistreatment of black people by the police, and the war on drugs. Not only are the lyrics powerful, but it also samples another of my favorite songs, "The Way It Is" by Bruce Hornsby and the Range. The song earned Shakur a posthumous Grammy nomination in the Best Rap Solo Performance category; it remains the only posthumously-released song to ever be nominated in that category.

Shakur was an outspoken participant in the East Coast vs. West Coast hip-hop rivalry, most notably facing off against Sean "Puff Daddy/Puffy/P. Diddy/Diddy" Combs and Christopher Wallace a.k.a. The Notorious B.I.G. when he accused them of orchestrating a 1994 attack outside Quad Recording Studios in which he was robbed and shot five times. The rivalry continued for two years until Shakur was shot in a drive-by shooting while attending a boxing match in Las Vegas. He was shot multiple times and rushed to the hospital where he was alternately on life support, in a medically-induced coma, and in critical condition. He died six days later from internal bleeding.

Tupac is regularly featured on lists of the best hip-hop artists of all time, and his success includes regular appearances on the "highest earning dead celebrities" list, over 75 million records sold worldwide, and is frequently sampled and covered by other prominent artists.

                   

PROMPT: An author whose writing style and/or work habits I really admire is...


The guy whose work habits I admire is Stephen King. The man just does... not... stop. He writes two thousand words a day without fail, and in between novels he tends to churn out a variety of short stories and/or novellas. I mean, he's like the literary equivalent of a shark, never being able to stop. Over the years, I've read a lot of Stephen King's work. The most recent book of his I finished was:

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I felt like going back to some of his earlier work this year, and although I sometimes think he's running out of steam and has a tendency to make his books overly-long, the truth is that he's one of the few authors I've read who consistently and regularly generates new material and has been doing so over the course of nearly four decades. Every time I think, "Okay, he's starting to lose his touch" or, "It's been a while since he's come out with a really affecting book," he'll come up with something that completely surprises me. I still want to finish his Dark Tower series (I'm three books in), and there are a ton of his books still on my "to read" list, but I've got plenty of time to work my way through his bibliography.

As it turns out, his son Joe Hill isn't too bad a horror novelist either. I've read Heart-Shaped Box and have Horns and NOS4A2 on my Kindle, as well as his short story compilation, 20th Century Ghosts. Short stories and novels? Like father, like son, I guess.