To say that Stephen King is not an elegant writer … is putting it mildly. But inelegance is not precisely the problem in "The Shining."… [In] "The Shining," memories and fantasies often find themselves pretentiously enclosed in parentheses. Sometimes non-punctuation or italics are used—quite arbitrarily—for gimmicky stream of consciousness effect. Occasionally we are subjected to all capitals in parentheses with triple exclamation points (!!! ON BOTH MARGINS !!!)! This is Mr. King's way of being climactic….

Mr. King lifts images and plot fragments from books (Poe, Blackwood, Lovecraft) and films ("Diabolique," "Psycho," "Village of the Damned") as if his characters and readers are indeed noticing them "for the first time."

Occasionally Mr. King seems aware of his triteness, but instead of playing the awareness for laughs, he offers apologies. In one scene, a character has an epiphany over a wasps' nest: "He felt that he had unwittingly stuck his hand into The Great Wasps' Nest of Life. As an image it stank. As a cameo of reality, he felt it was serviceable." Like an admission of guilt, the apology only makes things worse….

To be sure, "The Shining" does have its chilling moments. There is a bathtub apparition that, though derivative, is wonderfully frightening. And there are others, though the hyperbole and stylistic fumblings make an equal number unintentionally funny.

H. P. Lovecraft once remarked that "atmosphere is the all-important thing" in this genre. A compelling atmosphere can make us forget the clichés. But since atmosphere is so much a function of style—which Mr. King hasn't developed yet—the clichés in "The Shining" stand out in ghoulish, jeering relief. (p. 8)