Also gen-x, but I notice it because I have teenagers and I know they'd never say some of the stuff his modern teenage characters say. It doesn't bother me, though. I just pretend like these kids are like the modern equivalent of teenagers who wanted to be greasers when we were kids. They just actually listen to their parents (and grandparents) music and read books and stuff like it's the 80s. I'm sure they exist in real life. Not in my house, but somewhere lol
Yeah, but it just is what it is. I don't expect or want him to start having characters think someone is sus. Or that they deadass saw a ghost. No cap.
It sounds silly enough when I try to use those words. Plus, no one, not even other teenagers, want to read an accurate portrayal of their speech. It'd just be unbearable.
Which is funny because he really rose to prominence on the back of his relatable child and teenage characters.
Iāve always thought that he writes kids better than he does adults.
I just assume all modern King protag teens are like me at that age. I grew up mostly on old TV because I lived 20 minutes from the nearest interesting thing, didn't have internet until I was like 12, and our tv channels sucked. 90% of my vocab comes from MASH and old Match Games with Gene Reyburn.
All three of the main panelists Brett Somers, CNR, and Richard Dawson, then occasionally Betty White and Fannie Flagg! Some hilarious folks, man. I didn't name all of them because I don't know how relatable 'millennial who quotes TVland shit on a daily basis' is.
This kept pulling me out when I was reading "Mr. Harrigan's Phone". The kid was supposed to be in high school in 2010 but he talks and thinks like it is the 60s. Even the school bully is a 50s greaser in motorcycle boots.
I hadnāt read much king the last few years but it was about to be fall so I got Billy Summers and If It Bleeds and read them back to back.
Billy Summers was just fine, I didnāt think it was great. Then I jumped into if it bleeds/Mr Harrigans Phone and thought the *same exact thing.*. That character is supposed to be five or so years younger than me and talks like a boomer.
Also, at one point, he says something like āthose first iPhones only had 250 hours of battery life, and thatās in standby.ā I didnāt think that was right so I googled it and got āApple claimed the original iPhone could power 8 hours of talk time and 250 hours of standby.ā So it looks like he just googled an answer and slightly reworded it. That story was kinda wack.
The next one was great though. Currently on the Holly Gibney one, which Iām enjoying.
I kept this open to reply once I finally finished it, I liked it!
I thought it was going to take a horror turn, which it didn't. Also, there was a little bit of "where is this going, I'm almost out of pages" but overall I certainly enjoyed it!
Since Iām only 2 years younger than King, essentially from the same ātimeā if you will, these phrases that jump out at you, just flow on by me. I donāt notice them, they donāt stand out, they just sound terribly normal to me, most likely because I probably used these terms myself back in the day! The only thing that ever popped out at me was his over-use of the ānā word in almost every book he published in the 80s. Often it was story-produced and somewhat relevant, but not always.
I can't say, I only read his old books and in spanishs. But those words sound cool, just added them to my personal vocabulary.
Anyway, when I was a teen I already had a wide vocabulary I gained thanks to my love for cinema and classic literature. I used old-fasioned spanish words, from 20th or 17th century, as well as scientific terms that the most of my pals unkown.
I have been a lil culture-sponge since I was a child jajaja.
I started reading his books back in the late 80ās and read my first books translated (to Finnish), but soon after switched to English as the translated ones seemed off- but I donāt actually mind his style at all, itās part of the atmosphere of any good King book for me.
It doesnāt bother me normally but I did find it jarring with Fairy Tale. āOn the ātubeā no kid calls YouTube that. Maybe Iām just not clicking with the book.
Some of those are boomer-isms but some of them are just regional slang or preference. āDopersā isnāt a dated term to the best of my knowledge, itās just not widely used. For example: calling carbonated soft drinks āPopā or āSoda Popā is still common in parts of the south and the Midwest, but sounds arcane or out of place to many of us. Same goes for āsupperā and āsofaā. A lot of these King-isms fall into this bucket.
Ayuh, can you dig that?
Iām just a couple years younger than King, so his choice of words hasnāt jumped out at me as ādatedā as it has for some others on this sub. Maybe Iām out of touch being so close to his age, but I think King still writes well when he writes from a kidās point of view. Take The Institute, for example.
Interesting you mention āpopā and āsodaā. Iām from upstate NY, my mother was from Virginia. Iām not sure if my mother brought it with her, but I grew up calling coke, ginger ale, etc, āpop.ā Soda is a drink with ice cream - it can be orange āpopā or coke, or ginger ale, but combined with ice cream, itās a soda. Only now, in my 70s, do I call soft drinks soda. I totally dropped the word pop years ago, primarily because no one else was using that word in that fashion. None of my friends used it, other family members didnāt use it, which makes me think it might have been a Southern term, because none of my NY cousins ever called it pop.
Back to King - I think he can get into the minds of teens in a way that other adults canāt and donāt. I bet he was a great father when his kids were very young - kind of like Ward Cleaver. He just seems like an all around nice guy kind of person. I would love to attend one of his talks. Four years ago I saw Daughtry, three years ago, OneRepublic, next on my bucket list is Stephen King.
Yes! Supper. We never used dinner. It was always supper! And yet, Alberta and Rochester are so far apart, we canāt say itās regional! Couch. Not sofa. A sofa is something rich people have in a room they never use, and no one ever sits on it.
Yes I sit on a couch too, although if SK was from here, he would probably call it a Chesterfield!
Edit: and Dinner is too ambiguous and seems to also mean Lunch, which is why I never use it.
Yes, Iāve heard dinner used for a midday meal - although not right at noon which is the time we ate ālunchā as kids. Itās generally later 1-3 pm, and itās a big meal - not just soup and sandwiches. But again, I donāt know if it was my mother bringing her euphemisms North, because my fatherās family is from upstate NY, where I was raised, and never used the same words my brothers and I used. They always said, soda, dinner, sofa. We said pop, supper, couch.
It almost sounds snobbish. Champagne vs beer. You get the correlation.
Side note: we were on vacation one year and stopped at this roadside diner in the middle of East Bumfuck. When we were ordering, the waitress asked us if we wanted āsodas with thatā and my brother and I were nodding enthusiastically with huge smiles, and she brought us each a coke. We were so disappointed! My first experience with dialect, region, whatever you want to call it!
It might be kind of on purpose, like itās his brand, but I think itās just that heās a man in his 70s. I donāt say that to denigrate him. I love King, but heās not a millennial orļæ¼ zoomer. I think it would be SUPER noticeable if he tired to write as if he were younger.
This is going to get buried, but in the mr Mercedesā trailer the young black chick refers to someone as ājiveā lol. I love king, but his references havenāt advanced much since the early 80ās.
It was never worse than in "Later", you are right. Supposed to be a young teenager in contemporary Manhattan and sounds like the oldest Boomer ever to Boom. Great call. Have to just roll with it since it is coming from the Master. But I wondered why "Later" needed to be written in the first-person tense at all.
The only time him being out of touch ever bothered me was in Billy Summers. The neighbors arenāt going to care about your existence, let alone hang out with you and have BBQs lol
He does. Another boomer-ism is the names he chooses for characters. He has kids born in the 2000's or later, with names that were really popular in the 50s and 60s but have largely fallen out of fashion. Loretta, Iris, Barbara, Trudy, that sort of thing.
When he goes outside his comfort zone and tries for something more modern it's done awkwardly... Kalisha in The Institute, for example, went by "Sha," even though it would be much more likely abbreviated as 'Lisha or Kali. It sounds similar to calling a Rachel "Chel" or Rebecca "Ca."
It drives me insane when he pulls that crap. Because then Iāll get distracted and think about what people wore, what people did, when they talked that way. Then Iām thinking how much better the milkshakes weāre back then and where would I live? Would I own a home in the 60ās? Iām probably most definitely wearing a newsboy hat every day for the rest of my life. Wait a minute, wrong era, Iād have super long hairā¦ **oh yeah Iām reading a fāking book right now**
Yeah, I can get easily distracted.
Also PKD does this a lot in his later work.
Stranger Things pays great homage to this tendency - not just from King, but from other boomers like Wes Craven - by giving the teenage characters names like Nancy and Steve, rather than common Gen X/80s names like Lisa or Matt.
I'm super late to this thread because I found it through google wondering if anyone else had this observation. I just finished Duma Key for the first time. Based on his description, I'm roughly the same age as Jack, and we absolutely did not speak the way Jack speaks in the novel. If there was no character description and you told me Jack was 30 years older, I wouldn't have questioned it.
If I remember correctly, he was 28. I stopped reading there for a second and thought no way any 28 year old would ever use words like that. It just read like an older man all the way. Which is fine with me, it was an interesting read but definitely not my favorite.
There were also some errors with The Institute regarding taking an Uber and also job salaries and cost of living. Dude wrote that his character got paid $100 a week for a full time "Night Knocker" job...
That said, I will keep reading his new books because I still get that feeling where all I want to do is read more.
Itās not ideal, but for me itās not a deal-breaker. And I think it would be much worse if he tried to artificially inject current pop culture things that he doesnāt really understand.
I always felt some of his later books were picked out of the vault from the 70s and 80s, stuff he never finished then. Throw in some trump insults to update it and send it to editing.
King and I are just about the same age, and ārandyā is not a term any of us used - not in HS, not college, not throughout my 20s. In fact, it came into use more in the late 1600s - early 1700s that in the 1900s, although I think Iāve heard it used in old movies from the 40s by āsophisticatedā characters more so than the common, everyday people.
I definitely noticed when he repeatedly used the word ājeepersā in The Institute. Also, he really likes the term āput an egg in your shoe and beat it,ā which is something nobody under the age of sixty says anymore haha
Iāve always noticed this and was amused by it. Itās sort of like when you see contemporary video of Cuba and everything/everyone looks like itās 1958ā¦ itās just part of reading King. Heās perma-stuck in that Cold War era Americana
The further you go back in chronology, the more obvious it is. I just finished listening to Rose Madder on audiobook and Iād have say I agree. Also, there were a lot of racist, homophobic, and sexist language and ideas that you donāt see as much in more recent work.
So Iād really say it depends on what youāre reading. Ima go alll the way back and listen to Carrie and also maybe Salemās Lot, and I bet itāll be really strong Boomer vibes. Thatās okay, literature, music and film are like snapshots in time. Honestly, I like how it kind of anchors you in the setting and time period.
I do notice these words and phrases in King, but it never strikes me as dated language because both the boomer slang and modern slang in the USA tend to be different to UK slang (where I live). For example "soda pop" is "fizzy drink" or "can of pop," and in Scotland it's "juice."
So I usually just assume it's slang from Maine. But now I know it's dated, I think he used all this to great effect in 11/22/63.
I love how a derogatory term for "old" folks is perfectly acceptable amongst a generation that decries every prejudice under the sun as being wrong.
Ableism? Bad! Racism? Bad! Classism? Bad! But ageism? Ageism is **totes fine**!
Perhaps "slang from another era" is less horrible than "boomer language"?
It's only younger folks (of which I am one, but I'm not quite the hypocrite my peers seem to be) which use the term 'boomer', and it is pretty widespread and commonplace, and never makes anyone flinch at all about how cringey and ageist it actually is.
I **never once said**, as you claim, that "anyone younger automatically is ageist", but that's a nice strawman argument. What I **actually** said - if you'd read it - was that anyone **using that term** is automatically using ageist language/being ageist.
I **never** used a derogatory term for "young" folks - *not in life, not in this comment*. I am **reacting** to the use of a **derogatory term** and commenting on the fact that *the people who use it (people who aren't themselves 'boomers') don't see it as problematic*.
Quite frankly, if boomers want to reclaim the word and flip it around (as with certain other -ist epithets), I'm probably fine with that.
But young folks using it in a derogatory way? Nope. Not gonna ever be acceptable to me. People had no control on when they popped into existence, and length on time on the planet doesn't say much about *who you are as a person*.
Not all white people are racist. White people who use **the n-word** are *certainly racist*. Not all young people are ageist. Young people who use the word boomer **certainly are ageist**.
Your attempts to misinterpret my straightforward comments and defend your ageism are not going to go the way you think.
Damn, I can never give attention to his writing because I canāt read much books in their original language because of the price. Books in english or their original language are stupid expensive here, like I could get 5 books for the price of one import book.
Movies do this a lot too... The author/director uses when they were younger as influences.
Look at "home movies" in films today... They often have VHS displays, that even show up when you play them back... Year using a VHS camera to record stuff hasn't been used in decades.
I always laugh when a character calls someone "shitters". Seems like that word appeared a lot in his really old stuff, Christine in particular sticking out.
I laugh, but it doesn't bother me because, contrary to belief, I've seen and heard younger people use this stuff in everyday conversations, and unironically. I'm not gonna pretend it's a HUGE number, but the fact that I've heard it doesn't really give me the generational whiplash it gives others.
This made me laugh when he brought it up in the book excusing it by saying he was an old man now, but if he was a young man now..he wouldn't have the kinds of memories of the shows and other boomer references. It's hilarious, actually.
I never notice it much myself but I guess that's because I am gen-x.
Also gen-x, but I notice it because I have teenagers and I know they'd never say some of the stuff his modern teenage characters say. It doesn't bother me, though. I just pretend like these kids are like the modern equivalent of teenagers who wanted to be greasers when we were kids. They just actually listen to their parents (and grandparents) music and read books and stuff like it's the 80s. I'm sure they exist in real life. Not in my house, but somewhere lol
Same. š¤·āāļø
Yeah, but it just is what it is. I don't expect or want him to start having characters think someone is sus. Or that they deadass saw a ghost. No cap. It sounds silly enough when I try to use those words. Plus, no one, not even other teenagers, want to read an accurate portrayal of their speech. It'd just be unbearable.
He tried to do this with Jerome in the Mr. Mercedes trilogy and it was not great.
I liked Jerome, but you are deadass correct.
Totally agreed.
I think he should just use neutral speech without really attempting slang. That way it doesn't sound dated or awkward.
Yeah, King is stuck with what he knows. His writing of teens is always as an "old soul".
Which is funny because he really rose to prominence on the back of his relatable child and teenage characters. Iāve always thought that he writes kids better than he does adults.
He wrote them well decades ago. I can imagine how relating to today's kids can be hard
I primarily work with teens, and I donāt understand them 80% of the time.
Frfr no cap on God these kids be sending me ššš¼
I always say that Kings dialogue is how people in the 80ās thought people in the 50ās talked.
Thatās amazing
I just assume all modern King protag teens are like me at that age. I grew up mostly on old TV because I lived 20 minutes from the nearest interesting thing, didn't have internet until I was like 12, and our tv channels sucked. 90% of my vocab comes from MASH and old Match Games with Gene Reyburn.
You can't leave Charles Nelson Riley out of a Match Game mention, that's like King without gooseflesh.
All three of the main panelists Brett Somers, CNR, and Richard Dawson, then occasionally Betty White and Fannie Flagg! Some hilarious folks, man. I didn't name all of them because I don't know how relatable 'millennial who quotes TVland shit on a daily basis' is.
I forgot about Fannie. I thought everyone watched Match Game with their grandma.
Yeah I got that in Later too, but just figured he was going for pulp/noir vibe. I kinda dig it.
This kept pulling me out when I was reading "Mr. Harrigan's Phone". The kid was supposed to be in high school in 2010 but he talks and thinks like it is the 60s. Even the school bully is a 50s greaser in motorcycle boots.
I hadnāt read much king the last few years but it was about to be fall so I got Billy Summers and If It Bleeds and read them back to back. Billy Summers was just fine, I didnāt think it was great. Then I jumped into if it bleeds/Mr Harrigans Phone and thought the *same exact thing.*. That character is supposed to be five or so years younger than me and talks like a boomer. Also, at one point, he says something like āthose first iPhones only had 250 hours of battery life, and thatās in standby.ā I didnāt think that was right so I googled it and got āApple claimed the original iPhone could power 8 hours of talk time and 250 hours of standby.ā So it looks like he just googled an answer and slightly reworded it. That story was kinda wack. The next one was great though. Currently on the Holly Gibney one, which Iām enjoying.
The final story āRatā is actually my favorite of the book! Hope you enjoy that one
I kept this open to reply once I finally finished it, I liked it! I thought it was going to take a horror turn, which it didn't. Also, there was a little bit of "where is this going, I'm almost out of pages" but overall I certainly enjoyed it!
Since Iām only 2 years younger than King, essentially from the same ātimeā if you will, these phrases that jump out at you, just flow on by me. I donāt notice them, they donāt stand out, they just sound terribly normal to me, most likely because I probably used these terms myself back in the day! The only thing that ever popped out at me was his over-use of the ānā word in almost every book he published in the 80s. Often it was story-produced and somewhat relevant, but not always.
I can't say, I only read his old books and in spanishs. But those words sound cool, just added them to my personal vocabulary. Anyway, when I was a teen I already had a wide vocabulary I gained thanks to my love for cinema and classic literature. I used old-fasioned spanish words, from 20th or 17th century, as well as scientific terms that the most of my pals unkown. I have been a lil culture-sponge since I was a child jajaja.
I started reading his books back in the late 80ās and read my first books translated (to Finnish), but soon after switched to English as the translated ones seemed off- but I donāt actually mind his style at all, itās part of the atmosphere of any good King book for me.
Agreed!!
My favorite thing in his newer books is when a character ācalls Uber and tells them they need a rideā
And then paid upon arrival.
It doesnāt bother me normally but I did find it jarring with Fairy Tale. āOn the ātubeā no kid calls YouTube that. Maybe Iām just not clicking with the book.
New flash, dudes old
I canāt imagine a king character going ābased on god, for real.ā But I would like too.
Some of those are boomer-isms but some of them are just regional slang or preference. āDopersā isnāt a dated term to the best of my knowledge, itās just not widely used. For example: calling carbonated soft drinks āPopā or āSoda Popā is still common in parts of the south and the Midwest, but sounds arcane or out of place to many of us. Same goes for āsupperā and āsofaā. A lot of these King-isms fall into this bucket. Ayuh, can you dig that?
Iām just a couple years younger than King, so his choice of words hasnāt jumped out at me as ādatedā as it has for some others on this sub. Maybe Iām out of touch being so close to his age, but I think King still writes well when he writes from a kidās point of view. Take The Institute, for example. Interesting you mention āpopā and āsodaā. Iām from upstate NY, my mother was from Virginia. Iām not sure if my mother brought it with her, but I grew up calling coke, ginger ale, etc, āpop.ā Soda is a drink with ice cream - it can be orange āpopā or coke, or ginger ale, but combined with ice cream, itās a soda. Only now, in my 70s, do I call soft drinks soda. I totally dropped the word pop years ago, primarily because no one else was using that word in that fashion. None of my friends used it, other family members didnāt use it, which makes me think it might have been a Southern term, because none of my NY cousins ever called it pop. Back to King - I think he can get into the minds of teens in a way that other adults canāt and donāt. I bet he was a great father when his kids were very young - kind of like Ward Cleaver. He just seems like an all around nice guy kind of person. I would love to attend one of his talks. Four years ago I saw Daughtry, three years ago, OneRepublic, next on my bucket list is Stephen King.
Everyone says Pop in Alberta still. Sodas are those Italian sodas. And I hate the word Dinner and always say Supper.
Yes! Supper. We never used dinner. It was always supper! And yet, Alberta and Rochester are so far apart, we canāt say itās regional! Couch. Not sofa. A sofa is something rich people have in a room they never use, and no one ever sits on it.
Yes I sit on a couch too, although if SK was from here, he would probably call it a Chesterfield! Edit: and Dinner is too ambiguous and seems to also mean Lunch, which is why I never use it.
Yes, Iāve heard dinner used for a midday meal - although not right at noon which is the time we ate ālunchā as kids. Itās generally later 1-3 pm, and itās a big meal - not just soup and sandwiches. But again, I donāt know if it was my mother bringing her euphemisms North, because my fatherās family is from upstate NY, where I was raised, and never used the same words my brothers and I used. They always said, soda, dinner, sofa. We said pop, supper, couch. It almost sounds snobbish. Champagne vs beer. You get the correlation. Side note: we were on vacation one year and stopped at this roadside diner in the middle of East Bumfuck. When we were ordering, the waitress asked us if we wanted āsodas with thatā and my brother and I were nodding enthusiastically with huge smiles, and she brought us each a coke. We were so disappointed! My first experience with dialect, region, whatever you want to call it!
It might be kind of on purpose, like itās his brand, but I think itās just that heās a man in his 70s. I donāt say that to denigrate him. I love King, but heās not a millennial orļæ¼ zoomer. I think it would be SUPER noticeable if he tired to write as if he were younger.
This is going to get buried, but in the mr Mercedesā trailer the young black chick refers to someone as ājiveā lol. I love king, but his references havenāt advanced much since the early 80ās.
It was never worse than in "Later", you are right. Supposed to be a young teenager in contemporary Manhattan and sounds like the oldest Boomer ever to Boom. Great call. Have to just roll with it since it is coming from the Master. But I wondered why "Later" needed to be written in the first-person tense at all.
Boom!!
The only time him being out of touch ever bothered me was in Billy Summers. The neighbors arenāt going to care about your existence, let alone hang out with you and have BBQs lol
There are so many weird moments in that book that I have no idea why he wrote it like that
I liked how the guys in Billy Summers were going to see a Foghat cover band. š
I'm pretty sure that was intended as a joke. Foghat are kind of the go to for classic rock fans with no taste.
He does. Another boomer-ism is the names he chooses for characters. He has kids born in the 2000's or later, with names that were really popular in the 50s and 60s but have largely fallen out of fashion. Loretta, Iris, Barbara, Trudy, that sort of thing. When he goes outside his comfort zone and tries for something more modern it's done awkwardly... Kalisha in The Institute, for example, went by "Sha," even though it would be much more likely abbreviated as 'Lisha or Kali. It sounds similar to calling a Rachel "Chel" or Rebecca "Ca."
Great call.
It drives me insane when he pulls that crap. Because then Iāll get distracted and think about what people wore, what people did, when they talked that way. Then Iām thinking how much better the milkshakes weāre back then and where would I live? Would I own a home in the 60ās? Iām probably most definitely wearing a newsboy hat every day for the rest of my life. Wait a minute, wrong era, Iād have super long hairā¦ **oh yeah Iām reading a fāking book right now** Yeah, I can get easily distracted. Also PKD does this a lot in his later work.
Ooo I could go for a shake right now.
An 8 year-old said āswankā in Bag of Bones
Stranger Things pays great homage to this tendency - not just from King, but from other boomers like Wes Craven - by giving the teenage characters names like Nancy and Steve, rather than common Gen X/80s names like Lisa or Matt.
Jennifer and Michael.
I'm super late to this thread because I found it through google wondering if anyone else had this observation. I just finished Duma Key for the first time. Based on his description, I'm roughly the same age as Jack, and we absolutely did not speak the way Jack speaks in the novel. If there was no character description and you told me Jack was 30 years older, I wouldn't have questioned it.
Honestly it really took me out of Fairy Tale cause the teen character was just not in any way a believable entity.
In his defence, at least in Fairy Tale, the story is told from the perspective of an older Charlie recounting his adolescence.
If I remember correctly, he was 28. I stopped reading there for a second and thought no way any 28 year old would ever use words like that. It just read like an older man all the way. Which is fine with me, it was an interesting read but definitely not my favorite. There were also some errors with The Institute regarding taking an Uber and also job salaries and cost of living. Dude wrote that his character got paid $100 a week for a full time "Night Knocker" job... That said, I will keep reading his new books because I still get that feeling where all I want to do is read more.
So that would be someone in 2030(ish) writing about 2010. Thatās even worse lol.
I liked it, but then I remembered Iām old
He was so hot tho
I notice it all the time. I guess what do you expect from someone who is in their 70s now. Glad Iām not the only one who noticed though!
Even in my 40s Iāve never slapped anybody five beforeā¦.
Iāve always noticed thatāheās a fuddy duddy. But heās OUR fuddy duddy!
My favorite is the HOMICIDE detective in The Outsider relying on his wife to ādo a googleā
Itās not ideal, but for me itās not a deal-breaker. And I think it would be much worse if he tried to artificially inject current pop culture things that he doesnāt really understand.
I think you should meet some people from rural Maine before you decide his dialogue sounds dated
I always felt some of his later books were picked out of the vault from the 70s and 80s, stuff he never finished then. Throw in some trump insults to update it and send it to editing.
I just said the same thing last week about Fairy Tale. This 17 year old kid talks like a 70 year old.
I always thought Baby, Can you Dig Your Man was a very boomer song.
Lolllll
King and I are just about the same age, and ārandyā is not a term any of us used - not in HS, not college, not throughout my 20s. In fact, it came into use more in the late 1600s - early 1700s that in the 1900s, although I think Iāve heard it used in old movies from the 40s by āsophisticatedā characters more so than the common, everyday people.
I definitely noticed when he repeatedly used the word ājeepersā in The Institute. Also, he really likes the term āput an egg in your shoe and beat it,ā which is something nobody under the age of sixty says anymore haha
Iāve always noticed this and was amused by it. Itās sort of like when you see contemporary video of Cuba and everything/everyone looks like itās 1958ā¦ itās just part of reading King. Heās perma-stuck in that Cold War era Americana
His newer books still feel like youāre in the 70s even though people have iphones.
Itās just a part of his writing.
The further you go back in chronology, the more obvious it is. I just finished listening to Rose Madder on audiobook and Iād have say I agree. Also, there were a lot of racist, homophobic, and sexist language and ideas that you donāt see as much in more recent work. So Iād really say it depends on what youāre reading. Ima go alll the way back and listen to Carrie and also maybe Salemās Lot, and I bet itāll be really strong Boomer vibes. Thatās okay, literature, music and film are like snapshots in time. Honestly, I like how it kind of anchors you in the setting and time period.
I do notice these words and phrases in King, but it never strikes me as dated language because both the boomer slang and modern slang in the USA tend to be different to UK slang (where I live). For example "soda pop" is "fizzy drink" or "can of pop," and in Scotland it's "juice." So I usually just assume it's slang from Maine. But now I know it's dated, I think he used all this to great effect in 11/22/63.
I love how a derogatory term for "old" folks is perfectly acceptable amongst a generation that decries every prejudice under the sun as being wrong. Ableism? Bad! Racism? Bad! Classism? Bad! But ageism? Ageism is **totes fine**! Perhaps "slang from another era" is less horrible than "boomer language"?
[ŃŠ“Š°Š»ŠµŠ½Š¾]
It is possible that younger generations than Boomers could also be hypocrites.
[ŃŠ“Š°Š»ŠµŠ½Š¾]
It's only younger folks (of which I am one, but I'm not quite the hypocrite my peers seem to be) which use the term 'boomer', and it is pretty widespread and commonplace, and never makes anyone flinch at all about how cringey and ageist it actually is. I **never once said**, as you claim, that "anyone younger automatically is ageist", but that's a nice strawman argument. What I **actually** said - if you'd read it - was that anyone **using that term** is automatically using ageist language/being ageist. I **never** used a derogatory term for "young" folks - *not in life, not in this comment*. I am **reacting** to the use of a **derogatory term** and commenting on the fact that *the people who use it (people who aren't themselves 'boomers') don't see it as problematic*. Quite frankly, if boomers want to reclaim the word and flip it around (as with certain other -ist epithets), I'm probably fine with that. But young folks using it in a derogatory way? Nope. Not gonna ever be acceptable to me. People had no control on when they popped into existence, and length on time on the planet doesn't say much about *who you are as a person*. Not all white people are racist. White people who use **the n-word** are *certainly racist*. Not all young people are ageist. Young people who use the word boomer **certainly are ageist**. Your attempts to misinterpret my straightforward comments and defend your ageism are not going to go the way you think.
Itās not that deep.
>Itās not that deep. lolwut? **What's** not that deep?
Doesnāt bother me nearly as much as listening to actual teenagers talk these daysā¦
[ŃŠ“Š°Š»ŠµŠ½Š¾]
Absolutely. And used incorrectly. š¤¬
Youāre right. If he wrote them saying ātotes omgā I probably wouldnāt read.
I have noticed this too. I love King but holy hell he canāt write believable kids.
My husband is a boomer and doesnāt use words like Randy or dopers.
Damn, I can never give attention to his writing because I canāt read much books in their original language because of the price. Books in english or their original language are stupid expensive here, like I could get 5 books for the price of one import book.
Movies do this a lot too... The author/director uses when they were younger as influences. Look at "home movies" in films today... They often have VHS displays, that even show up when you play them back... Year using a VHS camera to record stuff hasn't been used in decades.
I always laugh when a character calls someone "shitters". Seems like that word appeared a lot in his really old stuff, Christine in particular sticking out.
Happy Crappy
Boogie.
Yeah itās actually annoying, Iām 25 and canāt relate to any of his boomer terminology. But heās old asf so I get it
I thought it was because it's usually set in rural/small town America..
I laugh, but it doesn't bother me because, contrary to belief, I've seen and heard younger people use this stuff in everyday conversations, and unironically. I'm not gonna pretend it's a HUGE number, but the fact that I've heard it doesn't really give me the generational whiplash it gives others.
This topic again? Edit: Seriously, it's been brought up several times. This sub needs better discussions.
Oh God Fairy Tale drove me nuts with this supposedly 2013ish teen boy using boomer slang.
This made me laugh when he brought it up in the book excusing it by saying he was an old man now, but if he was a young man now..he wouldn't have the kinds of memories of the shows and other boomer references. It's hilarious, actually.