Dark Tower - Stephen King

Busey. Yeah.

http://static.tumblr.com/b6f509c91223fa8313d0031c47c81f66/ec00kw5/4Zsmwknqq/tumblr_static_shawnee_smith_-_julie_lawry_-_the_stand.gif

For the record, he turned out more like Will Arnett as Gob Bluth, master illusionist.

I guess I’m rereading this now, well, Wizard and Glass, and I literally stopped to come and write how fucking great this scene is and I had forgotten it, for shame:

Roland squeezed Rusher’s sides; the horse trotted toward Jonas. And suddenly Roland knew something. As with all his best and truest intuitions, it came from nowhere and everywhere—absent at one second, all there and fully dressed at the next.

“Who sent you west, maggot?” he asked as he passed Jonas. “Couldn’t have been Cort—you’re too old. Was it his father?”

The look of slightly bored amusement left Jonas’s face—flew from his face, as if slapped away. For one amazing moment the man with the white hair was a child again: shocked, shamed, and hurt.

“Yes, Cort’s da—I see it in your eyes. And now you’re here, on the Clean Sea . . . except you’re really in the west. The soul of a man such as you can never leave the west.”

Jonas’s gun was out and cocked in his hand with such speed that only Roland’s extraordinary eyes were capable of marking the movement. There was a murmur from the men behind them—partly shock, mostly awe.

“Jonas, don’t be a fool!” Lengyll snarled. “You ain’t killin em after we took the time and risk to hood em and tie their hooks, are ye?” Jonas seemed to take no notice. His eyes were wide; the corners of his seamed mouth were trembling.

“Watch your words, Will Dearborn,” he said in a low, hoarse voice. “You want to watch em ever so close. I got two pounds of pressure on a three-pound trigger right this second.” “Fine, shoot me,” Roland said. He lifted his head and looked down at Jonas. “Shoot, exile. Shoot, worm. Shoot, you failure. You’ll still live in exile and die as you lived.”

Think four is the best of them. Wasteland western medieval is a very good intersection of mood for king.

It’s so good, right?!?! Just this perfect little self-contained world within the world, it wouldn’t need much to stand alone as a novel outside the mythos imo.

The backstory of roland and gilead we'll never get is the true cost of king rushing to finish after his accident

Ive not read it in

I was gonna type years but fuck its decades isnt it

anyway from how i remember it, and i was heavy into king but especially the cords drawing around the king multiverse, before that panic set in with him, and ive posted a few times about "american college fantasy" which is a vv different beast to english/european fantasy and mainly this distinction exists in my head, but i digress- this book is of all ive read the best version of american college fantasy

Its wonderful

I think the backstory is covered in the graphic novels?

Well

So much for *that*

His best storytelling work remains the one/two of the talisman/black house tho

i should reread W&G - i think i've only read it the one time when i first binged Dark Tower in 2009. the Big Coffin Hunter confrontation stuff still just about raises my neck hairs so he did something right. besides that i remember... a landscape of creepy old oil rigs? and a bunch of stuff with a gratuitously gross witch?

Yes on both counts. The standoff between the Big Coffin Hunters and the ka-tet is such a great scene!

i think I said it on the "crimes of george lucas" thread, but this book seems very likely (in its broad strokes) to have been an inspiration for The Phantom Menace, but with all the wrong lessons being taken.

(timeline doesn't REALLY truly work sadly)

King was weaving cloth from every possible movie, song or existing story source thread he could find himself at this stage tbf

sure. just thinking specifically of the premise --- "previously i wrote about this cool postapocalyptic world and the last survivor of a once great clan of protector knights, now let's double back to when he was a young man and the old world still held, but was rotting rapidly, and he and his buddies go on a fateful mission..."

it also just seemed extremely likely to me that george lucas would be first in line to grab the new dark tower book the day it dropped

i am a lifelong King fan but did not read the Dark Tower series until maybe 10 years ago. Fucking great. I dont even think the final 3 books are so awful? they hooked me well and good - buuut thats not to say that there isnt some stuff in 5-7 thats not egregious, mental & just straight dumb af

it gets said a lot but my god, that opening line of book 1 is one of my alltime favorite openers:

“The man in black fled across the desert, and the gunslinger followed.”

So yeah I guess I’m reading all these again?

I have them all in paperback in my parents house so was looking at Kindle versions and I think I spotted some revisions - am sure I saw some mentions of “nineteen” that stuck out. Also, Roland after losing his fingers on his right hand in The Drawing of the Three grimly thinks that “at least I jerk off with my left hand”. Which seemed really out of place and I need to check my edition to see if it was there before because it instantly jumped out as wrong.

Anyway so I reread The Gunslinger - but I flipped through most of Tull because idc. I was in it for Jake and the coming of age, and both were as good as I remembered. Roland and Cuthbert at the execution and Roland fighting Cort are still as great as they were the first time I read them.

Now on The Drawing of the Three and Eddie has been drawn and the second door has just shown up. I really like Eddie, and the introduction to him on the plane and the back and forth between the worlds is still so great, you know? Roland losing his shit over drinking Pepsi (wait till you try Coke) is still funny, Roland looking at Eddie and thinking of how he reminds him of Cuthbert and that Cort would praise Eddie too is very... well it’s cyclical isn’t it? This one is pretty great all the way through, and Odetta/Detta/Susannah is next.

Popkins iirc

The taxi-driver seventies spareness of eddies segments in the drawing of the three is a really, really strong mood- id almost say (because its been years) up there with king's strongest novel writing

Rude to ask I know hut youve read the talisman/black house right?

It’s not rude to ask because i haven’t and I know, I know

you gotta!!

yes talisman no black house imo

I can live with the dissent but if the middle dark tower books are your stuff id be confident that both would tick boxes

But especially, especially the talisman

I promise to read them next!

In the mood for some epic King lately. If you had to choose between Talisman and Dark Tower, which would you read?

Time constraints, talisman

Looking to fill time, DT

Invested in not being very annoyed by the last three books, talisman

It's fascinating to me that movies I've seen in the past week pass vaporously through my memory but my recall of these books (and The Talisman) (and Eyes of the Dragon, which was my intro to Fantasy King) is still v strong decades after the fact.

Eyes of The Dragon is great. So unlike his other stuff. I have that on the list to read after I finish this reread.

I've avoided Dark Tower because of what I've heard about the last few books, so I'm moderately reassured by Veg's moderated praise/acceptance of them

TBH, I never made it all the way through, but I would stump pretty hard for the first four and afaict you're arguably denied a satisfying end whether you finish the series or not so why not just enjoy as much of the journey as you can.

I started a chronological King read/reread a few years back and got as far as The Running Man. I should pick that back up and just plow through all of the Dark Towers

Popkins iirc

tooter fish popkins!

The final books of Dark Tower make some truly bad decisions, among the worst of King's career, but (at least for me) the fundamental project is so worthwhile that it earns your buy-in, you're committed to it and overall don't regret following it through to the end, and yes I own multiple REM albums released in the 21st century

lol, decent analogy because I loved REM and hung in one album too long before decisively peacing out. Thankfully my very strong completist tendencies are occasionally (very occasionally) offset by an unwillingness to engage in needless masochism.

Fables is definitely their Dead Zone, Lifes Rich Pageant the Shining, I think Pet Sematary is Monster (picks one idea, maybe not a great idea, but you kind of admire the commitment to it, and the opportunity to focus the whole work on this one idea is only there because you're coming off a lot of commercial success already.) REM never released a double album so I think there just is no The Stand

New Adventures is their double album in spirit (and always was, on vinyl, tho i'm sure that's also true of Around the Sun)

Hmm, it doesn't feel like their The Stand though

Is Kate Pierson their Peter Straub is the question

Is a mod available to ban ye all is actually the question

(which it character is kenneth tho?)

OMG, the discussion over the last several posts engaged the pattern recognition of my brain and, apropos of little else, it just occurred tk me that The Eyes of the Dragon is Rita Hayworth and the Shawshank Redemption in fantasy drag. I don't know how I failed to see it before.

The switching of the rapunzel trick for several hundred yards of shite is somewhat of a distracter youd often find

Speaking of The Talisman... https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/heat-vision/steven-spielberg-duffer-bros-team-to-tackle-stephen-kings-talisman-exclusive

That could def work

You know, people like to frown on the later books, but Wolves Of The Calla is pretty damn good

i have an awful feeling that gyac never read the talisman since ffs

You know, people like to frown on the later books, but Wolves Of The Calla is pretty damn good

― The Triumphant Return of Bernard & Stubbs (Raymond Cummings), Sunday, December 3, 2023 11:41 AM (eleven hours ago) bookmarkflaglink

Sorry, it's still his Around the Sun

recently started re-reading the talisman after some 30+ years and found myself unable to get past the magical negro (named 'speedy parker' no less! who says shit like 'you weep if it put you easy'!) who sent jack on his way

the whole detta/odetta thing in the dark tower is little more than an excuse to have a character spew the most reductive racist shit possible (but it's okay; she's crazy amirite!)

i don't even know! he doesn't deserve it, but somehow i suspect stephen king means well? but nevertheless his characterization is absolutely and relentlessly racist as fuc