Alan Jacobs defends Stephen King's books. Jacobs contrasts literary fiction, which "makes us see meaning, value, and loveliness—and sometimes emptiness and pain—in places where most of the time we don't see anything at all" to King's work, which "is less interested in illuminating the everyday than in placing his characters in extraordinary and absolutely decisive moments":
It is often said that such situations are unrealistic. This is incorrect; it conflates the unrealistic with the uncommon. People do confront such utterly decisive moments: A theater full of people in Aurora, Colorado confronted one quite recently, and some of them had only an instant to decide whether to save their own lives or protect the ones they loved. It doesn't get any more real that that. We can argue about whether Stephen King writes this kind of story well; but what's not really arguable, I think, is that such tales are worth writing and worth reading, even if beauty of language and subtlety of characterization get sacrificed along the way. Not all stories have to do the same things.
The Dish 