Read the book. I was in the same camp as you. Most of his writing is just hack nonsense. But, some is well written (The Stand, Misery, Shawshank, The Green Mile, Cujo, for example). He's just inconsistent.

Seriously, read the On Writing book. It really set his theory up for me to understand exactly why he's inconsistent. You can read his books and tell when he's thinking and processing, versus when he's writing to pay for a car or house or whatever.