Said Stephen King, quoted in "Stephen King on dementia — ‘I’m afraid of that happening to me’/The bestselling author, 77, talks about why he writes every day — and says each time he can’t remember the right word he worries: 'This is the start'" (London Times).
“I don’t really care about AI. My sons [Owen King and Joe Hill] are both writers … and they’re all hot to trot about AI and how awful it is for writers.... I just think that it’s a foregone conclusion that people are going to write better prose than some kind of automated intelligence.... I think that once there is a kind of self-replicating intelligence, once it learns how to teach itself, in other words, it isn’t going to be a question of human input any more. It’s going to be able to do that itself. And then … have you ever read The Time Machine by HG Wells? In it, a Victorian scientist travels to the year 802,701...
I like how he has the precise year, down to the 1, still in his mind and worth saying as a challenge to the fiend, Dementia, that wants to infiltrate and destroy.
"... where he meets the Eloi, a childlike race frolicking in the ruins of human civilisation, while a subterranean species called the Morlocks work machinery and feed on the Eloi. We’ll become the Eloi and AI will be the Morlocks and they’ll basically run everything. Once you teach AI to write a novel, a good novel, it’s going to be a different ballgame. I like to think that I can stay ahead of AI in the time that I have left."
He's 77. I'm not much younger. I'm 74, and I'll admit to similar morbid optimism: How bad can it be in the time I have left?
***
The word King wanted... did you think of it? I did. It's: solipsism.
***
Speaking of getting the precise year, down to the 1... when I first published this post it said "I'm 73." I got my own age wrong... by precisely 1 year. If this post were a page of a novel, it would foreshadow my death — brain first — on August 31, 2025. Meanwhile, like Stephen King, I'll keep writing every day as a way either to keep the mind alert and flowing or to provide a window into its decline.
***
Gah! I mean August 31, 2026!
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I mis-state my age daily. I'm allowed to, I'm old. I'm allowed to do a whole bunch of things now that I'm old that I wasn't allowed to do when middle aged or when young. I revel in my new found freedoms - especially to forget.
Imus said he was 66 but read at a 68 year old level.
King is a hardcore lefty. He has never had a truly working brain.
King has been demented for years. Too late for him to start worrying now. Creep.
I went through a horror phase way back when, and enjoyed King's books; while he sometimes resorted to the gross-out, he knew (and wrote about the fact that) it was the lowest way to try to grab a reader. Then I got over it and he stopped writing horror (as far as I know), and while I tried to get into his other work, I never could. I admire him as a working writer, non-lit'rachure variety. (I can't actually think of a lit'rachure writer whom I think of as a "working writer.") I think that politically he's a doofus, and can't understand how the person who wrote The Stand can also be a progressive.
I did think of the word, but I share his feeling. I'm 71, and looking over my shoulder in fear of dementia. It's already taken my wife from me
Narcissism.
At age 80 I forget names. My theory is that there's a place in my memory where names are stored, and it has deteriorated. But if I look up a forgotten name, it gets stored in another fresh location from which I have no trouble calling it up.
I thought the first installment of "The Matrix" was thought provoking. Humans as batteries... while we dream away in a manufactured reality.
The franchise didn't pan out for me, w/ boring chase scenes.
In my experience, I’ve always associated solipsism with the hormonal changes of puberty.
Which made me wonder whether young school shooters live in the extreme and see the world around them as just a manifestation of their own thoughts.
Especially now in the age of artificial hormones and pharmaceuticals.
I enjoyed his earlier stuff way back when, when he still had real creativity, but I feel his merit as a storyteller has eroded with time. And I've seen this before - I think it's derivative of gaining fame. He's become an insufferably pompous ass. These types never seem to understand that their outrageous success has fed an overweening belief that they are superior, and this is reinforced by their personal interactions - everyone is either toadying to the star, or content to let them think they're superior, as long as it keeps them separate at a comfortable distance. If you're successful, the first thing you ought to be feeling is gratitude, not superiority.
King lost his compass long ago.
Would recommend that King download Doris Day singing some wisdom,
Que sera, sera
Whatever will be, will be
The future's not ours to see
Que sera, sera
What will be, will be
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xZbKHDPPrrc
Matthew 6:34,
#Me, #MeToo, #MeMeMe
I'm looking forward to forgetting a lot of the past.
they’re all hot to trot about AI and how awful it is for writers
The phrase "hot to trot" made me think they were in favor of it, until he ended with "how awful". I can't remember ever hearing "hot to trot" in a way that didn't mean someone was eager for something/to do something.
"At age 80 I forget names. My theory is that there's a place in my memory where names are stored...."
You made me think of the Billy Collins poem "Forgetfulness":
The name of the author is the first to go
followed obediently by the title, the plot,
the heartbreaking conclusion, the entire novel
which suddenly becomes one you have never read, never even heard of,
as if, one by one, the memories you used to harbor
decided to retire to the southern hemisphere of the brain,
to a little fishing village where there are no phones.
(the full poem is here: https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poetrymagazine/poems/37695/forgetfulness)
I always tell people I am a year older than I really am (78 going on 79). Gives me a chance to get used to the idea while still telling myself, "Ha, fooled them, I am not really that old."
The tippler is found sitting at a table littered with empty and full bottles. The Little Prince, curious and innocent, asks why he drinks. The tippler replies that he drinks to forget. When asked what he’s trying to forget, the tippler admits it’s his shame at drinking. This circular logic baffles the Little Prince, who finds the man’s behavior absurd and pitiable. The tippler is trapped in a cycle of drinking to escape his shame, yet his drinking only deepens it. - Grok
I read Stephen King voraciously when I was younger, including all his bachmann short stories. I recently picked up Duma Key at the airport. It gets good reviews, but I haven't started it yet.
I can never remember Warren Beaty's sister's name, but it comes to me after a couple of minutes, but I never forget that she is a great actress in a lot of movies I really liked, and Warren Beaty's sister.
The funny thing is that I like her movies way more than those of her brother, I can't think of one that I have watched twice, but whose name I have no difficulty recalling.
OK, I would watch McCabe and Mrs Miller again if it came up as a suggestion.
King is right to keep writing, even though no one does their best work past age 75 (for people how want George RR Martin to finish his series, be careful what you wish for.) Your brain is very much something you use or lose. Old people who don't do anything don't last long. Keep doing something, keep talking to people.
*removes shoes*
"Am I working in base 10, binary, or hex?"
When you stop seeing me here, you can draw the obvious conclusions. Old men are stubborn.
As a writer King would never pen a sentence when a paragraph would do.
I am terrible at recalling names. I take comfort in the knowledge that I was terrible at recalling names when I was young.
I read everything King wrote up into the late 1990s. However, I either outgrew him or he deteriorated as a writer- probably a combination of both. My feeling is his books became too gruesome to hold my interest after I read Desperation. I have read only one of his novels published after that- Under the Dome which I didn't like and struggled to finish reading- even forgot that I had actually finished reading it for a while.
Stephen King is the MacDonald's of horror fiction.
As a writer, I have found myself searching harder in my brain for the proper word to use, a word that would come to me quickly in the past. I also have problems with the names of others in conversation with a person -- a name I should know and recall very easily. I am 70 and this started about two years ago. The only way to combat it or slow it down is to write every day. I exercise my brain.
Remote, long-term memories are the last to go in many kinds of dementia. My grandma forgot that she'd had lunch with me yesterday long before she forgot my face and name. She forgot me long before she forgot my mother.
Maybe King's problem has more to do with all that cocaine he took, and being a drunk for 30 years.
I knew (or guessed) the word was solipsism. So I guess I'm not senile yet.
Stephen King relied too much on types and cliches. There's always the Dean Norris type sheriff or other official. There's always the Spielbergian band of kids.
I never read any of his books or stories, but the televised versions always seemed to be padded with a lot of futzing around to fill up the episodes. The makers rightly judged that there was more in the books than a 90 minute movie could hold, but didn't see that there wasn't enough material to stretch out for episode after episode.
Inside, I'm thirty. Outside I'm sixty-nine. There is a term for that, but can't recall it just now.
We enter old age thinking we're Prospero. Caliban and Ariel are in check and know better than to fuck with the master. It's a fine time. I much prefer senescence to adolescence.......But Lear is waiting in the wings, very eager to strut his stuff. We'll see how it goes. My Caliban, formerly such a troublesome fellow, died a natural death, and my Ariel, never one to fly so high or so fast, now rarely takes the trouble to get out of bed. It's not an unpleasant life, but there are storm clouds on the moors.
Stephen King's books were in dire need of deep editing. There is SO much filler than it is a long slog to read one.
I was asked at the pharmacy for the last four digits of my phone number. I could remember the digits but had to work on the order--I asked if I could just prove myself with my address, which was acceptable.
I used to pride myself on my memory for names and faces, but in recent years it has been nothing to brag about.
Stephen King and all his works are mysteries to me. I've never been a fan of the genre(s?) that he works in and other than The Shining have not seen any screen adaptations that I know of.
Relax, no need to worry, you will or you won't lose it all. I often can't say the word I want to say, but it comes to me because it's in there somewhere. I don't have short term or real long term memory loss. My mind is fine. My body not so much. I find it painful to walk, but reading and understanding are as good as ever. I am 88, and of course I know I am in my last years, but I don't plan to stop living because of it. My fear is lasting too long and my children will be burdened with my existence. That fear is not great enough to say I want to die, it just means I don't want to be a burden. I can't comment on the King books or his health, I never read his book and am not sure I would have liked the man in person. That's just me.
Check out Glenn Reynolds’ latest thoughts on just turning 65. A little more upbeat!
https://open.substack.com/pub/instapundit/p/report-from-the-other-side?r=pk339&utm_medium=ios
Here's something more upbeat on the subject of forgetfulness, from Sesame Street long ago:
https://www.dailymotion.com/video/x2uyng2
"I just think that it’s a foregone conclusion that people are going to write better prose than some kind of automated intelligence"
That statement is totally unsupported by facts. Not only do most people not write very well, but human writing is getting worse because of technology doing more and more of the writing for them. We're at an age now where people just give the AI the synopsys of what they want and the AI writes it. The next step will be for people to see the AI writing as "good writing" move away from reading clunky, emmotional, imperfect, human writing.
I think that Stephen King would be surprised by how accurately an AI would be able to copy his writing style.
King's a Red Sox fan who hates Trump. Nuff said.
King isn’t insightful. Billy Collins is.
I use AI to help me remember words that my brain is spacing out on. It's very good that way.
Shirley MaClaine Took me a minute.
I used to be able to answer the Jeopardy! questions before the contestants buzzed in. Now sometimes I remember during the commercial…
My Mother had Dementia or Alzheimer's, and eventually it took everything from her. Her first symptom was losing direction when driving, so we bought her a GPS to help with the navigation, not realizing there was more to it. She was surprisingly laid off from her job in the Defense industry, she was a Field Security Officer (FSO). Perhaps they knew more of her affliction than we did, but she loved working and was very upset about not having it anymore.
It was a slow dance with a thief. No big changes or anything super noticeable, just little, subtle differences. Then suddenly, out of nowhere, she started asking who we were. And then the constant repetition of questions. "Where am I?", "What time is it?", "Where's Daddy?"
I hope and pray every day that Science can find a remedy. No one should have to go through what she went through. It's a silent thief that takes everything of value.
When someone has as much success as King had by the late '80s, or when someone wins the Nobel Prize, that person no longer gets edited--to the detriment of their work. Almost all writers dream of the day that they are successful enough that their own vision prevails over editors, publishers, marketroids, etc., but it usually doesn't work out very well for them. For King the wheels started to fall off with IT. A good editor could have done wonders for that book, but instead it's a baggy mess with a horrible, ridiculous ending. And although there were some decent books after IT, in retrospect they're mostly forgettable, in part because what King was actually best at was depicting people living through the 1970s economic disaster and collapse of the American lower-middle-class. The horror elements of the story are fully integrated with the curdling of the American Dream in the decay of both the physical and social world and the shaky persistence of the old ideals and traditions. Whether the monsters caused the rot or the rot created the monsters doesn't matter--their existence is a brute fact to be dealt with, and that's what makes the early books more than just formulaic genre writing.
My late wife had Alzheimers. One day at a neurologist's, the doc pointed to me and asked her, "Who's this?". She couldn't answer. I wish he'd never asked.
As poor as my memory is becoming, it's better than my wife's. We can discuss a topic one day and two days later she has no idea.
A lot of it is the isolation of poor hearing/tinnitus. She is always telling me about the stuff she reads linking hearing loss and craziness, and I just say, "I know, dear, I know."
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