Dark Tower - Stephen King

I'm going to try to read these in the fall.

I've been meaning to read these but am hampered by the fact that I can't stand King's writing style.

read up until 4, and then make up your own finish.

seriously.

DO NOT GO PAST 4 DO YOU HEAR ME?

i want to have read these almost as much as i want not to read them, or possibly the other way round

that's not quite true, actually - i read the first four at a certain age. the gunslinger was actually the first book of king's i read, because i picked it up like HUH, HE WROTE A FANTASY BOOK TOO? MAYBE I WILL READ THIS "STEPHEN KING" AFTER ALL, SEEING AS HE WRITES FANTASY BOOKS

the five currently popular modes of genre fiction, in order of respectability:

crime
horror
science fiction
fantasy
frederick forsyth

So, I've just finished banging through all of these in the space of two months (had read The Gunslinger years ago but didn't follow up). I mostly buy the CW above - they're great but lose momentum on the last three books, cranked out in one "I'm gonna finish this darn thing!" spurt that somehow feels less urgent than everything that came before. There are a lot of emergent bad tics in the writing - things are bulkier and more sluggish, and there is some HORRIBLE, lazy foreshadowing - almost every page has a "Roland would come to regret trusting..." or "But by the time he thought to say that, death would come between them..." etc. At the same time, stuff that was foreshadowed way back in book one never even comes to pass. So the sense of accomplishment at reaching the end of this giant saga is a little bit undermined. AND YET - books two and three are really, really really great entertainment, and they build up a lot of cred for him to spend, not to mention attachment to the characters. By the end you're reading kinda just because you want to know how it comes out for these people, but the fact that you've gotten to that point I think says something for the strengths of the series.

#4 I don't think is too bad but it's definitely where the rot sets in. A lot of repeating scenes that could have been edited (like, eight identical fights between the female lead and her aunt - why??). It would have made a lot more sense for that book and #5 to be each half as long and combined together, as their narratives twin each other and both involve a lot of waiting around for stuff to happen, during which time the characters might plausibly sit down and tell each other some tales. But they were written something like a decade apart, so what can you do? The high points of 4-7 are great, great reading - it's just that the flab starts building up in between. Hell of a journey in any case.

read up until 4, and then make up your own finish.

seriously.

DO NOT GO PAST 4 DO YOU HEAR ME?

― darraghmac, Tuesday, 20 May 2008 12:00 (1 year ago) Bookmark

but yeah still there are books i've read that are a lot worse that 5-7, but budgie does nail it in post 1.

The thing is there are JUST enough sweet moments to kind of carry me through the last three - I mean the titanium razor frisbees of death are pretty great, and any time someone kills a robot it kind of clicks with me. Could have really done without the "sneetches" though - at that point he's just getting too damn cutesy for his own good.

#4 I think is at least 60-70% good - LOVE the showdown in the bar between our heroes and the Big Coffin Hunters, and the fallout afterwards. There's a wiry tension there that just really evaporates in the later volumes.

4 is a western, basically, and i dug that.

1 is scorched earth medieval fantasy, 2 is alternate worlds/modern day juxtaposition fantasy, 5-7 are 'i just been hit by a car, am thinking about mortality and want to finish these' fantasy. dunno what 3 is- more of an effort at straight fantasy, i guess. must read again soon.

have you read 'tears of the dragon'? short novel that's another fantasy effort, lots of dark tower tie-in (like a lot of his work). worth a try.

Nope, haven't read anything besides Dark Tower series actually! Will keep an eye out for that one.

2 and 3 are both great medleys I think - the Being John Malkovich gimmick in 2 lets him do a straight Mafioso shootout scene AND a whole fish-out-of-water thing with the gunslinger. The Odetta/Detta stuff is less successful IMO but whatever. #3 is more of a medley, a bunch of individually complete episodes that develop the characters and move things forward a bit - the bear, the key/Doorkeeper saga, River Crossing, Lud, Blaine - - just a lot of solid stuff there. #7 I guess is trying to get back on that same formula but it doesn't really hit the changes right.

For whatever reason I've only read The Drawing of the Three (vol 2) and Wolves of the Calla (vol 5), and I liked vol 5 a lot more, on its own.

I got so fucking tired of the mutant lobsters!!

4 is a western, basically, and i dug that.

1 is scorched earth medieval fantasy, 2 is alternate worlds/modern day juxtaposition fantasy, 5-7 are 'i just been hit by a car, am thinking about mortality and want to finish these' fantasy. dunno what 3 is- more of an effort at straight fantasy, i guess. must read again soon.

have you read 'tears of the dragon'? short novel that's another fantasy effort, lots of dark tower tie-in (like a lot of his work). worth a try.

― Louis Cll (darraghmac), Saturday, 28 November 2009 02:28 (11 hours ago) Bookmark

yeah, i was talking about these the other night (with someone who'd read the three i hadn't) and that was what struck me as really weird about them, in retrospect — the er literary goals of the first four volumes have pretty much nothing in common, which is a weird weird way to write a series

i have been really tempted to buy his new one. every time i go back to somewhere i've seen it half price they've put it back up, though, so i've kind of resisted. by being cheap.

Yeah, they're kinda weak as antagonists, especially given how much damage they end up doing! I was really pissed at that, kind of a cheap shot to take and sorta undermines Roland's supposed super-awareness - how would he have ever put himself in such a position? It just felt contrived, even though I think the general idea of making him less all-powerful, so that he NEEDS companions, was a reasonable one.

re: the genre jumping - I actually REALLY liked that about the series, sort of a crowd-pleasing/Kill Bill approach of, just give me badass stuff from whatever debased genre you like. The doors in #2 are maybe a bit transparent as a device for doing that, but it doesn't hurt the book I think. The entire "Pusher" sequence is just pure gold, and would never have been possible if he'd just stayed right ahead with the post-apocalyptic Western of the first book.

The latter three books have a jump between worlds every few chapters, but it sort of gets devalued and no longer really connotes a shift in genres - it's just an extended chase/fetch quest where, huh, guess we've gotta go to New York to take care of that, but it doesn't change the tone or style or anything, they might as well stay in Mid-World for all it matters.

haha wait: mutant lobsters?

mcguffin like a fox

Yikes:

There's never been anything like what Ron Howard and Akiva Goldsman are proposing for their adaptation of Stephen King's Dark Tower: a television show that crosses over with three movies, using the same cast for both. Can this even work?

According to Deadline, Howard and Goldsman are set to announce a deal with Universal that will tell the Dark Tower story across the company's television and movie platforms. The plan is to start telling the story in a huge, epic movie — then continue it in a season of the television series, using all the same cast. Then after that, put out the second movie, continuing the story from the "bridge" TV series. After the second film, they'll air a second season of the TV series, this time focusing on the main character, gunslinger Roland Deschain, as a young man. (This'll be based on the Marvel Comics series, which King was heavily involved in plotting.) Then the third film will complete the story of the older Deschain, finishing out the saga. They're hoping that sharing sets, cast and crew for the movie trilogy and TV series will save money.

cant work wont work, imo

Jesus Christ, what a mess of an idea. If it succeeds it could be a sprawling masterpiece; the scenario that seems more likely is that it peters out somewhere along the way, possibly as early as "after the first movie." It's the Bakshi LOTR all over again.

If it was even halfway good, though, I would totally watch the entire thing.

oh yeah

viggo mortensen answer the phone

Don't know anything about the books/comics/etc... but the official release date for the first film is May 17, 2013.

This whole thing seems even more insane than Marvel's Avengers idea.

http://www.avclub.com/article/idris-elba-and-matthew-mcconaughey-confirmed-star--233053

It’s the news Stephen King nerds have been waiting a long time to see set in stone, and now, those names we’ve been hearing for months as the potential lead actors have been confirmed: Entertainment Weekly reports Idris Elba is set to play the gunslinger Roland Deschain in The Dark Tower adaptation, and Matthew McConaughey will play his nemesis, the man in black.

Elba is awesome casting imo. I have serious reservations about the idea of this being a film of any kind but at least that bit bodes well.

mcconaughey is perfect too i think. sort of the ideal "randall flagg".

lol is this really happening, this will not work at all

can see Elba rocking a ridiculous accent for this. Ian mcconnaughy playing Flagg in the stand? Kewl expandered universe </delightful>

As horrible as the execution would be, I am kinda surprised that, with all the talk of insta-franchises these days, no one seems to have proposed a Stephen King Cinematic Universe with intertwining adaptations of all of his linked books.

Should be a miniseries

Frankly could even get away with an ongoing series a la Game of Thrones - tons of material, tons of openings for side stories and flashbacks (some of which have already been written as comics and stuff) which would, basically, pad out the seasons between major story checkpoints.

https://o.twimg.com/2/proxy.jpg?t=HBg3aHR0cDovL3d3dy5qb2Jsby5jb20vbmV3c2ltYWdlczEvdG93ZXItZmFjZWJvb2stNy0xLmpwZxSeChSsBRwUhAYUlAMAABYAEgA&s=8I25FWEro32Me84sz8dBR-ylr5LXM3JXjSyB2z4w7BY

the walken dude

yeah i get prophecy vibes from matty up there

https://s-media-cache-ak0.pinimg.com/564x/86/96/79/8696793e8c99413e6dd9fe25920e0f11.jpg

Always saw flagg as a more toothy brawny wilder type

Gary thing, but with hair dyed

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