The Praise is Always Tempered

Terrence Rafferty, in a generally positive review of SK's Full Night, No Stars, tempers his praise for the book by writing things like:

He’s essentially the same grab-you-by-the-lapels literary showman he was in the pulpy, punchy horror stories he used to peddle to men’s magazines... Unlike most writers, he seems never to have become bored with his own peculiar gifts — to have tired of the wonderful toys left under the tree for him when he was a kid.
...
This naked pleasure is King’s secret ingredient: it makes his work — good or bad — weirdly irresistible, even addictive. And it disarms criticism, as boyish enthusiasm often does. You might feel, as I do, that “Fair Extension,” the deal-with-the-Devil story in Full Dark, No Stars, is too glib and casual to bear the moral weight it aspires to, but it seems almost rude to say so. You might also think (as I do) that the long suspense story “Big Driver,” about a woman who suffers and then violently avenges a roadside rape, is a bit too easy for King... You could think that. But you wouldn’t really feel good about it.

I still don't understand why people begrudge SK's ability to just tell a damned good story. Is his prose great? No. Do his quirks - use of italics to indicate interior monologues or mental interruptions, the integrating blue-collar bonding that two characters inevitably share - grate after a while? Of course. But his stories are almost always entertaining, and usually scary as hell too. I don't have any problems with that. In fact, if you turned SK into a better prose writer - if he lost what Rafferty calls his "pulpy" writing - you'd probably lose the qualities that make him so entertaining, and I wouldn't want that at all. Three cheers for lowbrow literature!