LITERARY RAP BATTLE: STEPHEN KING VS JAMES PATTERSON
A twice-weekly republish of the best of RatLinks to help you get through quarantine
RATLINKS REDUX
At the present moment, I would hazard that cabin fever is taking hold and boredom has begun setting in.
Over the past year, most of the RatLinks reader feedback was “I like it but, it’s just too long.” In an effort to provide some necessary entertainment we are going to republish some RatLinks stories you may have missed. As it seems we all have some time on our hands.
A ‘new’ installment will come out every few days.
Love this? Hate it? Just want to chat? Interested in dialing in as a podcast guest?
Lines are open and operators are standing by - evan@ratlinks.com
WHAT IS A SYNONYM FOR BEEF
Stuck at home I re-watched The Running Man my thirteen year-old-self’s favorite movie.
For the uneducated, The Running Man is a 1987 American dystopian action film directed by Paul Michael Glaser and starring Arnold Schwarzenegger, María Conchita Alonso, Richard Dawson, Yaphet Kotto and Jesse Ventura. .
Said differently - an action movie with two governors.
Recently released shot of Tesla’s new CyberTruck? No it is not.
The plot of the film is as follows:
In the year 2019 (TODAY?), America is a totalitarian state where the favorite television program is "The Running Man" -- a game show in which prisoners must run to freedom to avoid a brutal death. Having been made a scapegoat by the government, an imprisoned Ben Richards (Arnold Schwarzenegger) has the opportunity to make it back to the outside again by being a contestant on the deadly show, although the twisted host, Damon Killian (Richard Dawson), has no intention of letting him escape.
While I love Arnold and this movie, what surprised me most was that this movie is actually based on a novel. A novel written by the one and only Richard Bachman.
Ah, Richard Bachman, I love that guy.
Wait a second who is Richard Bachman?
You know, the guy who wrote Rage, The Long Walk, Roadwork in addition to The Running Man.
Turns out, The Running Man flew out of Bachman within a single week, compared to his normal three month time frame to complete a novel.
Bachman described his process for this novel as one written by a young man who was angry, energetic and infatuated with the art and the craft of writing.
Still don’t know who Richard Bachman is?
Hello Friends. Does the name Stephen King ring a bell?
Obviously, but what does that have to with Stephen King? Wait one second are Richard Bachman and Stephen King the same guy?
Let’s go to the source:
Back in the early days of my career there was a feeling in the publishing business that one book a year was all the public would accept but I think that a number of writers have disproved that by now. I'm one of them and the guy who writes the Along Came the Spider books is another one who's written two or three books a year. (Stephen King taking a veiled shot at James Patterson, see below for more)
The name Richard Bachman actually came from when they called me and said we're ready to go to press with this novel, what name shall we put on it? And I hadn't really thought about that. Well, I had, but the original name—Gus Pillsbury—had gotten out on the grapevine and I really didn't like it that much anyway, so they said they needed it right away and there was a novel by Richard Stark on my desk so I used the name Richard and that's kind of funny because Richard Stark is in itself a pen name for Donald Westlake and what was playing on the record player was "You Ain't Seen Nothin' Yet" by Bachman Turner Overdrive, so I put the two of them together and came up with Richard Bachman.
King calls himself a writer, but chose the name Richard Bachman over Stark Overdrive?
King planned for Richard Bachman to be his alter-ego for life, just like:
J.K. Rowling writing as Robert Galbraith
Garth Brooks performing as Chris Gaines
Donald Trump pretending to be no less than three different people, John Barron, John Miller and David Dennison.
Miley Cyrus’ apparent alter-ego Hannah Montana (still unproven).
King’s plan lasted about a week when a bookstore clerk named Steve Brown unmasked King. Leading to Brown interviewing King for the Amazon Fake News Washington Post.
MY (BOOK) STACK IS BIGGER THAN YOURS
More importantly, this was one of the first times readers became aware of the King/Patterson beef. The literary equivalent of the east coast / west coast rap battle.
In the rap game, a diss track highlights a rivalry. Pusha-T, who you may remember from the Succession Theme Remix, famously released a diss track hating on Drake entitled “The Story of Adidon” telling the world about Drake’s love child.
Much the same, King ramped up his beef in an interview with The USA Today, the SOURCE for trademark news delivered daily to your hotel room, saying “Patterson is a terrible writer, [though] he's very successful” as well as tweeting this about Patterson:
I get it. James Patterson catches heat for pumping out tons of books, but I can’t hate on James Patterson. Patterson knows exactly who he is - one of the top-selling authors of all time and we all know success brings out the haters. Haters who hate that Patterson is a successful author that doesn’t really write his own books.
Instead, Patterson writes a very detailed outline that is then handed to a ghostwriter. I watched Patterson’s MasterClass and he appeared charming, insightful and didn’t deny any part of his process. Instead hoping you listen to him, use his outline method and become wildly rich.
Patterson at first took the moral high road “breaking Stephen King’s balls by saying positive things about him.”
Eventually, King got to him, leading Patterson to write an unpublished book The Murder of Stephen King, a novel that features a detective named Jamie Peterson attempting to save King from the man who is trying to murder him.
Patterson pulled the plug on the novel because he didn’t want to cause "discomfort" to King especially after blurbing his own book again.
Patterson concluded “I know I’m not a terrible writer. That’s a little over the top” adding that if King wrote a novel called The Murder of James Patterson he “would definitely want to read it.”
QUARANTINE READ
Are you staying inside this quarantine season?
Need a book recommendation?
STEPHEN KING
Shawshank Redemption by Stephen King
Andy Dufresne, a banker, was convicted of killing his wife and her lover and sent to Shawshank Prison.
Too lazy to read? Shawshank is also a fantastic film.
JAMES PATTERSON
Filthy Rich: A Powerful Billionaire, the Sex Scandal that Undid Him, and All the Justice that Money Can Buy: The Shocking True Story of Jeffrey Epstein by James Patterson with John Connolly & Tim Malloy
A fast-paced investigative novel about Patterson’s Palm Beach neighbor Jeffrey Epstein. From the girls he employed as masseuses at his home, to the cops investigating the appalling charges against him, FILTHY RICH examines all sides of a case that scandalized one of America's richest communities.
The book is worth reading if you are interested in this story, but it still doesn’t clarify one important point.
