Wit & Attitude Quote by Mickey Spillane

Spillane is doing two things at once: policing the border and tipping his hat across it. The setup, "Now I'm not crazy about him", is a classic hardboiled feint - a tough-guy disclaimer that signals taste, hierarchy, and rivalry. It reads like a detective squinting at a suspect before admitting the evidence is solid. By the time he lands on "but he's a great a writer", the compliment feels earned, not automatic. That little "but" is the hinge: it turns personal preference into an argument for craft.

The subtext is less about King than about legitimacy. Spillane came from a midcentury world where "serious" literature and commercial storytelling were supposed to live on different planets, and where genre writers were trained to expect condescension. King's success, sprawling and populist, can look like everything an old-school pulp craftsman is supposed to resent: scale, mainstream acclaim, the sense that horror got invited to the big table. Spillane's line acknowledges that resentment without letting it win.

There's also a backhanded generosity in the phrasing. He doesn't say King is "important" or "literary". He says "great a writer" - a blunt, workerly metric. Spillane is praising the thing he values most: the ability to move pages, command attention, deliver. It's an endorsement that doubles as self-defense: taste is subjective, talent is not. In a single sentence, he keeps his swagger, admits a rival's horsepower, and reminds you that the pros know skill when they see it - even when they don't like the song.