Greetings, and welcome to the Church of the Cosmic Turtle. You know what I’m talking about: Maturin the turtle, Guardian of the beam, who stands sentinel at his portal, opposite the giant robot bear, Shardik. Now, if all of that made perfect sense to you then congratulations, you’re in the right place. If you readContinue reading “I Cry Your Pardon”
9/19-9/25The Gunslinger:Chapters 1.i-2.ii Say Thankya Big Big At the end of my last post, I felt the need to apologize to Roland, to Sai King, and to my potential audience. Now, before I get to work on this new post, I don’t feel the need to cry anyone’s pardon, but I do feel the needContinue reading “Stephen King’s Tower of Needful Things”
Every other time I’ve read these books, when it came to Roland and Jake’s father-son dynamic, I always related to the son character. But since becoming a father, suddenly I find myself viewing their relationship from the perspective of a dad.
The end of the first book allowed me to see the true depth of this ornithological metaphor. Roland isn’t the only character in the series represented by a bird, and I’m not just talking about the Taheen.
The lobstrosity cripples Roland when it eats his fingers, but the bite is even more severe than that, and I’m not just referring to the infection that came with it. Over the course of these first hundred pages, the gunslinger has not only been physically maimed, he’s been psychologically wounded as well.
And what makes the difference? What makes a story work or not, be remembered or not? What needs to happen for the audience to embrace a piece of fiction and carve out space to store it in their heart for the rest of their lives? What makes them coming back for more the way that we all come back to the Tower?
Since when do we trust anything the Man in Black says? Why does Roland trust him? Why does he trust the oracle? He knows to “never trust a junkie” but he doesn’t know not to trust a sex-crazed, demon? This trip to the tower (and this is the book I’ve read the most times), I finally see that the oracle’s prediction is what Eddie would call ‘bullshit’. Three is not the magic number of this book, and it isn’t nineteen either; the magic number of book two is, well, two.
When I read this week’s pages and reflected on what I wanted to write about, my thoughts were immediately sucked into the election’s beam, like a compass needle distracted by a magnet. I felt as though everything happening to Roland, Eddie, and O/Detta was commenting on what’s happening in this country.
In these chapters we see two different types of strategists: planners and improvisers. Do Bees and Don’t Bees. However, as the climax of the book plays out, we see that it’s the Do Bees who find their careful plans shattered, and it’s the Don’t Bee who survives the fluctuating fortunes of Ka.
t least, that’s what they would have each other believe. But as the inner conflict brewing within each character is revealed, it becomes clear that they are using this newfound happiness to mask a secret shame.
Reading this book now, I still find myself relating to Jake, but for very different reasons. He is going through the same thing as Roland, but where the schism in Roland’s mind has only split his memories in two, Jake’s divided Ka is playing out in his present. He walks around holding two concurrent timelines in his mind: the reality that was supposed to happen and the reality that he’s actually living in. Can you think of a more perfect metaphor for the predicament in which we all find ourselves this year?
In these chapters, two of Roland’s protégés are put in a position where they only have one shot at success with no room for error. “This time I’ll have to get all of it”, Eddie thinks to himself back on p. 115, “I think that this time ninety percent won’t do.”
Jake is a sweet and sensitive soul, completely uncorrupted, but if he fails to cross back over to Mid-World and join his new family he will be stuck in a world of cold neglect, and he will waste away just like the condemned Mansion of Dutch Hill, a once-beautiful thing left to ruin.
My goal here was to come up with a play-testable prototype that I could then bring to someone who actually knew what they were doing, and ask for their help perfecting it. Here’s what I ended up with.
Jake is far from the only evidence that King is dubious of authority. The entire city of Lud has completely cast aside any semblance of law and order; Mercy disobeys her orders to stay away from the palaver in River Crossing, to the benefit of the Ka-Tet; even Blaine is a rebel, turning on his creators, driven mad by the prison of his own programming…
So what are we to make of the lesson Ka taught Eddie this week? Are we to understand that he should have followed Roland’s warning? That Eddie never should have gotten his hopes up at all?
This isn’t a #ThanosIsRight argument; I’m not saying that Blaine’s actions aren’t villainous, because they obviously are. But can we truly hold him responsible for them?
But the most notable similarity I’ve observed between what Blaine does to Lud and what Trump is doing on his way out of office, is everyone’s obsession with being polite.
On this reading, however, as Roland has just begun telling his story and Susan has proved honest, I find myself asking a question that I honestly can’t believe I’ve never considered: is Roland a reliable narrator? What if the whole story of Susan and Mejis is made up?
This book was published two weeks after King’s fiftieth birthday, and I have to wonder if maybe he was so interested in writing about age in this book because he was having an existential crisis about his own…
It seems like Ka that this week, our nineteenth week of reading, the chapters have provided two iconic scenes, each one illustrating the different ways a story’s magic can manifest: publicly or privately…
this week we have watched Susan do just that. She sees the cyclone of ka coming a mile away and can either evacuate the area, or take shelter in the cellar and batten down the hatches. But she can’t make a decision, standing there dumbstruck as the cyclone bears down on her…
Now, as the two young lovers come of age (pun definitely intended) and enter the second half of the book, no longer children but adults, we see a role reversal begin to take place…
Of all of Roland’s many talents, perhaps the skill I’m most impressed by is his ability to recognize his own mistakes, admit them, and then go and make the same mistake all over again. This week’s chapters are a perfect example of him doing this, and this time it ends up costing him the love of his life…
Susan has the worst death of any character in the book, burnt at the stake by her own Auntie stuffy-guy style. But despite her horribly painful death, I now think she might actually have the happiest ending of anyone…
In this week’s chapters, we finally witness Roland’s very first kill and it turns out that Roland has always been an emotionless sociopath… He’s never been bothered by killing…
The Wind Through The Keyhole is not just a story about Roland being absolved for what he did to his mother; it’s about Stephen King absolving himself for what he did to his characters…
In King’s very first novel, Carrie White was raised by a single mother. Now, forty-seven years later, he’s still writing about fatherless kids in Later…
Every time we’re driven inside by a storm and are enjoying the advantages of forced relaxation, there are always people who aren’t able to take shelter…
The Dark Tower series, especially this week’s pages, show us that no story ever ends without another one beginning, and nothing new can start without the end of what came before it…
The last time I read this book was before I became a father, bought and sold a house, and moved to another country; I’m a completely different person now. Just as the Stephen King who wrote Wolves of the Calla was a completely different person than the King who wrote Wizard & Glass…
It’s not just a silly saying to entertain a child, it’s also a fairly wise reminder—albeit a juvenile one—that we can only control our own actions and any attempt to control the actions of others is folly…
I don’t just mean that in terms of race or gender—although those things are part of it—but also in terms of experience, skill and ethics. Roland’s ka-tet is a great example, with each member bringing a completely unique perspective and breadth of knowledge to any given problem…
Instead of doing what’s already been done, I’ve decided to highlight a few songs that aren’t officially Dark Tower-related, but which have undeniable (if only incidental) Dark Tower vibes…
King’s liberal use of ambiguity is one of my favorite things about this series, especially when it comes to the lingering magic in Roland’s world. But for some reason, this particular piece of gunna always stuck out to me as half-baked and shoe-horned in…
Roland is knowledgeable enough and diplomatic enough that he can hold palaver with Henchick or Callahan without appearing ignorant or insulting them, but the gunslinger has no respect for religion…
So what is the difference between these two men? These two “Cals”? Why does the ka-tet embrace one and have contempt for the other when they have so much in common?
Every time I’ve read this series, viewing things through the narrow lens of a straight white male, I’ve always assumed that Jake is also a straight white male. This time around, back when I was still reading The Gunslinger, I considered for the first time that Jake—while definitely being white and male—might not be straight. I wanted to wait until I got to Wolves of the Calla before exploring the idea further, so I could reexamine his relationship with Benny Slightman the Younger a little more closely. Are they just friends, or is there more going on there? Since I began this installment in the series I’ve been waiting for the right week to devote to the subject of Jake’s sexuality. Now, as ka would have it, reading the chapter in which Jake literally hides in a closet just happens to coincide with Pride month, so here we go…
As we begin Song of Susannah, Susannah/Mia has gone missing and Eddie is so hell-bent on finding her that he wants to follow her up a treacherous mountain path in the middle of the night…
There are countless reasons that promises are broken. Sometimes it’s purposeful, sometimes it’s out of anyone’s control. Either way, the fact is that promises are not magic spells. They are easy to break…
I had never thought about Calvin Tower and Mia, Daughter of None, in connection with one another before; they’re separated by split storylines that never directly intersect. But reading these two stanzas back-to-back forced me to think about why King juxtaposes the bibliophilic hoarder with the sex demon-turned-mortal…
The only thing Stephen King loves more than killing off his characters is telling you he’s about to kill off his characters. From Pet Sematary to It, he is the master of making his readers fall in love with a character, only to turn around and announce their imminent deaths…
King masterfully uses this blurry space to make his story feel real and affect his audience, but I think he also uses it as an opportunity to reflect on, and even rewrite, who he used to be…
Sure, it’s only the Epcot version of Mid-World, not nearly as rich and immersive as the “real” thing, but you know what? Sometimes you’re in the mood to actually travel around the world, and sometimes you’re in the mood to get hammered and ride “Its A Small World.”
But is that end loose in the first place because King chose to cut it loose? What if he dismisses Flagg as a threat so casually because he was simply bored with his own villain?
I believe that King knew his readers would be feeling this way—he was almost certainly feeling it himself, knowing what he had to write next—and decided to address it directly, to give it a name in the high speech and share it with his characters as they share khef, so we wouldn’t have to feel it alone…
Furth does a great job summarizing the backstory of the Crimson King and his role in the text, but what does that role represent in the subtext? In this story about storytelling, where does the Lord of Spiders fit into the metaphor?
And yet there is one crucial thing they have in common: they are both artists. They are working in completely different media—Patrick Danville is a prodigy with a pencil, while Dandelo performs stand-up comedy under the alias of Joe Collins—but they are both artists, each representing very different kinds of creative personalities.
Well folks, here we are, a year to the day since I started this blog. Our heroes have traveled thousands of wheels, been through much, and finally the gunslinger has…
Well folks, here we are, a year to the day since I started this blog. Our heroes have traveled thousands of wheels, been through much, and finally the gunslinger has…
