| Author | Message | ||
     Des (Des) Username: Des Registered: 09-2010 Posted From: 86.165.39.90 |
“The thing was so big it looked prehistoric, so heavy he knew he would have to lift it two-handed. The recoil, he thought, is apt to drive me through the nearest wall. That’s if it fires at all. Yet there was some part of him that wanted to hold it, that responded to its perfectly expressed purpose, that sensed its dim and bloody history and wanted to be part of it.” Like me at the crazeee age of 63 starting to read this fu**ing bookgiant called dark tower for the first time. | ||
| Stevie Walsh (Stephenw) Username: Stephenw Registered: 03-2009 Posted From: 92.41.31.37 |
I've only read the short story that was in 'Everything's Eventual' (and set in 'The Dark Tower' universe) and have to say it did nothing for me at all - striking visuals, as always with King, but absolutely devoid of any deeper substance. I felt similarly untouched by my only other taste of King fantasy, 'The Talisman' (with Peter Straub). I far prefer the adult dark fantasy of Clive Barker and have decided on 'The Great And Secret Show' & 'Everville' as my next lengthy read. [Only 'Stavrogin's Confession' left to read of 'The Devils'.] Good luck with it, Des. I look forward to following your assessment of King's epic. Didn't he say it was the work he is most proud of?! | ||
| Tony (Tony) Username: Tony Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 86.153.144.35 |
King is cinematic in this sense. You have to determine depth from the pictures he paints. It work when you realise this. I liked the first couple of DT books but then because there was at the time no uniformity to the covers I gave up. Also - I felt they could have been shorter. Stevie - I think these are King's equivalents of those Greene stories I'm reading, the ones we've been talking about. In a way. | ||
| Stevie Walsh (Stephenw) Username: Stephenw Registered: 03-2009 Posted From: 92.41.186.85 |
Tony, I see King's fantasy writing as a free-wheeling effort to entertain by the conscious creation of surreal imagery presented as tangible reality, for his characters (and readers) to have "fun" interacting with. Greene's fantasy writing, like all great literature, is an attempt to explore the unconscious emotional, psychological and spiritual drives of his characters through multi-layered symbolic imagery. They are alike as chalk and cheese imo. | ||
| John Forth (John) Username: John Registered: 05-2008 Posted From: 82.24.1.217 |
As I've said in another thread, THE DARK TOWER is King's imagination dump - the place where all of his influences, interests, notions and character threads spill out in ways that are entertaining and infuriating in equal measures, often with a few pages of one another. It's rarely deep and meaningful, but that isn't necessarily a bad thing. | ||
| Des (Des) Username: Des Registered: 09-2010 Posted From: 86.165.39.90 |
I'm finding it deceptively 'deep and meaningful' so far. But I agree that it is a seed-bed of something very rich growing out of control... | ||
| Craig (Craig) Username: Craig Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 99.126.164.88 |
Des, I'm curious - have you read EVERYTHING (or, lots) great out there, in let's just concentrate on fantasy now say, already? that you feel the need to pick this up right now? | ||
| Tony (Tony) Username: Tony Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 86.153.144.35 |
Stevie - what I was meaning was that it was King going off in a direction that was hard to pigeonhole. Their works in this area are very different, but for both of them it seems to me that these diversions come from the same impetus. Greene's attempts (and successes, I mean) come from his being a different person from a different background. But the Under the Garden? Might that not be the realm King's characters also visit? But stylistically different, yes, but connected I think they also are (excuse Yoda speak...  ). | ||
| Des (Des) Username: Des Registered: 09-2010 Posted From: 86.165.39.90 |
Craig, the denizens of the Stephen King official Forum persuaded me to read the series i.e. after they read my 'Full Dark, No Stars' real-time review and heard from me that I had read most of SK (dating from the time of CARRIE) but not THE DARK TOWER. | ||
| Stevie Walsh (Stephenw) Username: Stephenw Registered: 03-2009 Posted From: 194.32.31.1 |
Tony, I thought 'Under The Garden' was a beautiful novella, dense and mysterious, richly symbolic, terribly sad and not a little nightmarish, but I still have only a tenuous grasp of what I think Greene was getting at. Like the works of Robert Aickman or Franz Kafka it is that sense of a perfectly structured literary puzzle one needs to read and re-read, over and over again, to fathom its meaning that I am most drawn to in fantasy writing. I have nothing against a straight fantasy adventure yarn (of which Howard, Leiber & Wagner were the greatest exponents imo) but shy away from ploughing through something as gargantuan, and purportedly meaningless, as 'The Dark Tower' just for the fun of it... | ||
| Craig (Craig) Username: Craig Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 99.126.164.88 |
I guess the original DARK TOWER, yes, it does date from around that time - was never widely published, for many many years, am I right? Wow, that never happens anymore. I actually wrote/got published a novella at that time, that was quite like the DARK TOWER, but obviously not influenced by it - because it hadn't existed yet! Again, though, it's garbage, so I'll pretend I never mentioned it....  | ||
| Des (Des) Username: Des Registered: 09-2010 Posted From: 86.165.39.90 |
But you could have gone through Roland's Whovian 'door' though... | ||
| Craig (Craig) Username: Craig Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 99.126.164.88 |
Are you accusing me of being a Whovian-door-througher?!? | ||
| Des (Des) Username: Des Registered: 09-2010 Posted From: 81.155.19.134 |
The Waste Lands V. Bridge and City. 1 -4 This is the sort of story where, sooner or later, the characters will come upon a “downed airplane” and then spend a large part of the narrative guessing riddles. We’ve come to that point. Someone later made a whole missing generation of TV serials on that premise. (6 Mar 11 – another 2 hours later) | ||
| Des (Des) Username: Des Registered: 09-2010 Posted From: 81.155.19.134 |
As I get towards the end of the third volume (The Waste Lands) I realise that this section at least is a significant and original treatment of Zombies in horror literature. | ||
| Des (Des) Username: Des Registered: 09-2010 Posted From: 86.169.43.224 |
I am just about to start todays' contribution to my real-time review of King's DARK TOWER books – and I’ve had a revelation, a sudden Road to Damascus:- The Dark Tower is an important premonition of the Large Hadron Collider: (cf the Blaine Mono, the Lud under-city shaped like LHC in ancient retrospect, the Beam, The Berne Zoo Bear, the Cern Zoo Lion’s Den, the Retrocausality, the doors, Charlie’s Choo Choo - it’s all here. AMAZING! And today of all days, as I realise this, I also learn we are all going to die next Wednesday possibly as a result of the LHC (and, if so, I am never going to finish the Dark Tower books). | ||
| Rosswarren (Rosswarren) Username: Rosswarren Registered: 11-2009 Posted From: 81.132.146.48 |
He's just anounced another book in the series for next year that fits between Wizard and Glass and Wolves of the Calla | ||
| Des (Des) Username: Des Registered: 09-2010 Posted From: 86.169.43.224 |
WIND THROUGH THE KEYHOLE Indeed, yesterday, using this title, SK announced an inquel for 'The DarkTower' series, if not an inkwell! http://www.stephenking.com/promo/wind_through_the_keyhole/announcement/ He does not seem to think we are going to die next Wednesday. | ||
| Des (Des) Username: Des Registered: 09-2010 Posted From: 86.169.43.224 |
PS: As far as I can tell, the word 'inquel' has never been used before regarding something written to go into the middle of a series of novels etc, as opposed to a prequel or sequel. | ||
| Tony (Tony) Username: Tony Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 86.143.134.223 |
There feels something familiar about the collider. It feels like we've always known about it. Wasn't there a film or book about something like that? A huge event that was at once in the past and the future? Even the stress it caused was part of it. Maybe it's just the stress we're feeling. In my exploring all this stuff about the Entity film I found the mother (in real life) was attacked by ghosts that resembled her family members. It suddenly came into my mind that she might have been being haunted by her own film. And when researching remote viewing I came across the statement (made by this chap who had worked for the US government) - one i'm more and more agreeing with - that we are all occupying a single moment. I propose this; what if the big bang has yet to happen? | ||
| Tony (Tony) Username: Tony Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 86.143.134.223 |
Des - I've realised while writing a few things recently that sometimes the ending of a story happens halfway through. I love new concepts and words. | ||
| Des (Des) Username: Des Registered: 09-2010 Posted From: 86.169.43.224 |
Two very intriguing posts, Tony. Thanks. I have now started 'Wizard & Glass': I. Beneath The Demon Moon (I) “Show your pass, pard! Elevated radiation levels possible, dad rattit and gods cuss it!” Our (what the Japanese call) Bullet Train – with our riddles riddling aboard - zips in and of existence above “the poisoned and irradiated ruin” of Candleton, zips beneath the ‘Demon Moon’ and one thinks perhaps of the latest world events, the possible cause reputedly being that same moon or the LHC or simply old-fashioned tectonic plates, plus today’s Nuclear Reactor explosion seen on TV…. (12 Mar 11) II. The Falls of the Hounds “Jagged tines of lightning leaped out of them and toward the mono.” The mono refuels its batteries at the mighty Falls with the vast stone hounds – all in “stereo” surging as the Falls ”stormed around the mono“, while mono is anagram of moon…. Blaine’s suicide mission, our gamble for Topeka or Goose, dependant on a riddle’s stumping. Our ka-tet, including each reader that is me, holds a collective breath. “What builds up castles, tears down mountains, makes some blind, helps others to see? SAND.” (12 Mar 11 – an hour later) | ||
| Des (Des) Username: Des Registered: 09-2010 Posted From: 86.165.39.12 |
“So do we pass the ghosts that haunt us later in our lives; they sit undramatically by the roadside like poor beggars, and we see them only from the corners of our eyes, if we see them at all. The idea that they have been waiting there for us rarely if ever crosses our minds. Yet they do wait, and when we have passed, they gather up their bundles of memory and fall in behind, treading in our footsteps and catching up, little by little.” - from 'Wizard and Glass' by Stephen King | ||
| Des (Des) Username: Des Registered: 09-2010 Posted From: 86.165.39.12 |
My latest chapter review of the gigantic 'Wizard and Glass' VII. Taking the Ball If I could draw a crude basic eye here, I would, so as to serve as heading for this chapter’s review, a chapter concerning an ambush of our three sterling youths, and other characters fulfilling gradually their own ominous destinies, including Rhea’s: who uses the glass pink ball to watch a woman she torments through it by making that woman do her housework by getting on her hands and knees and licking into all the house’s corners with her tongue! And the author uses the book, this book, to picture tantamount the same thing: thus acting worse than Rhea: because he created Rhea. He effectively created the readers, too, by writing so damned well we cannot fail to read his work, we readers, who entice him, by our presence, to see things in his own version of a ’pink ball’ for us to see them later, readers who are effectively worse than the author by conspiring to make the events real by completing the circle of creativity, a circle that needs dependable readers or witnesses or pupils or, even, reciprocal teachers to make everything real by symbiosis, a circle representing - or soon becoming - a pink-veined eyeball. No wonder the Rheader desperately clings to the ball when others come to reclaim it. Who is the Wizard, him or us? (26 Mar 11 – three hours later) | ||
| Des (Des) Username: Des Registered: 09-2010 Posted From: 86.165.39.12 |
In my real-time review of Wolves of the Calla (Dark Tower V) - so far - I have sort of experimented in relating Mia (the todash form of SOD (Susannah,Odetta, Detta)) to Mia Farrow - eg the actress in Rosemary's Baby - and today in the 'nightmare' scene we have a pig roast etc related to the 'chap' with which she is pregnant (a demon?). And 'farrowing' literally means 'giving birth to piglets'. I presume someone has drawn attention to this before??? | ||
| Des (Des) Username: Des Registered: 09-2010 Posted From: 86.165.39.12 |
Apparently, mine is the first discovery of the Mia's Farrowing connection. Although I suspect Stephen King knows about it! I'm told he made several references to Rosemary's Baby in Danse Macabre (something I did read may years ago, ie when it first came out!). Has anyone else read Mia's 'pig roast' nightmare? It's one of the strongest pieces of nightmarish fiction I've ever read. That's no mean feat. | ||
| Tony (Tony) Username: Tony Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 86.152.191.64 |
You've made me want to read these, Des. Fortunately they're very easy to come by! He loves Rosemary's Baby and thinks Ira Levin a perfect writer. I just started reading Just After Sunset last night - I'd forgotten how much i love his voice. He can jar from time to time with lapses of judgement or poor description but when he's really working you forget you're reading. I really miss the King/Herbert reign of horror... | ||
| Tony (Tony) Username: Tony Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 86.152.191.64 |
I think they see the collider in Frankenstein Unbound, at the end, in the mountains. | ||
| Des (Des) Username: Des Registered: 09-2010 Posted From: 86.158.59.122 |
You've made me want to read these, Des. ============= Anyone who enjoyed the LOST TV series will enjoy the DARK TOWER books, I reckon. In fact I see the latter as a precursor of the former, both in real-time and retrocausally. | ||
| Tony (Tony) Username: Tony Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 81.156.233.223 |
You see Des, I stopped watching Lost because of the adverts. One time the flashbacks were almost twenty minutes long and had their own commercial break. Maybe time to evaluate on dvd. | ||
| Tony (Tony) Username: Tony Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 81.156.233.223 |
Des - this chap is directing the Dark Tower film. Apologies for posting this on the other thread - this is just in case you missed it. I think this has the right flavour. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EjhRC1MarI4 | ||
| Des (Des) Username: Des Registered: 09-2010 Posted From: 86.158.59.122 |
That is perfect for THE WOLVES OF THE CALLA segment of THE DARK TOWER. Thanks, Tony. des | ||
| Des (Des) Username: Des Registered: 09-2010 Posted From: 86.158.236.228 |
Excerpt from my RTR of Song of Susannah: The Writer – 11th Stanza 8 – 13 “I think telling stories is like pushing something. Pushing against uncreation itself, maybe. And one day while you were doing that, you felt something pushing back.” I’ve just posted that quote on Facebook for my ‘friends’ to read, a quote in the name of Stephen King (‘Song of Susannah’). And, indeed, today, I think the internet and, later, my discovery in 2008 of my ability to conduct public real-time reviews about fiction books that I happen to be reading (i.e. seeking leitmotifs and forming them into gestalts) all came together ka-wise to ensure that, one day, I would read ‘The Dark Tower’ books and experience them in this way, because, without real-time reviewing them, my slippery mind, my flyaway-paper attentiveness or recondite Sump of Moy, would never have experienced these books to the highly valuable degree that I have experienced them (so far). Thanks, too, again to those from the Stephen King Forum who are encouraging me. And, in many ways, it’s now the fact of Stephen King’s own appearance in the books – where he meets in palaver his own characters Roland (SK himself?) and Eddie (Cuthbert?) - that has ensured this, my once-in-a-lifetime reading-experience, has really now taken full ‘todash’ in his mind, if not his in mine. I am the spear-carrier, not him. The ka-det. “I buck against ka’s goad, and will until the day I go into the clearing at the end of the path. [...] …ka flows out of my navel like ribbon…” (12 Apr 11 – another 2 hours later) TO BE CONTINUED | ||
| Des (Des) Username: Des Registered: 09-2010 Posted From: 86.158.236.228 |
I've now reached The Dark Tower VII in my Real-Time Review: http://nullimmortalis.wordpress.com/2011/04/14/the-dark-tower-the-dark-tower/ I'm not sure if I've encountered it here for the first time (ie in the first chapter of this volume) but there is now a force called simply 'the White'? The BBC are currently showing an excellent dark Victorian drama serial entitled; The Crimson Petal and the White. That sounds relevant to the DT in more ways than one! Crimson King - The Rose - and now the White. | ||
| Des (Des) Username: Des Registered: 09-2010 Posted From: 86.158.236.228 |
The Dark Tower (Novel VII) Part Two VIII. Notes from the Gingerbread House "It's a place outside of time, outside of reality. I know you understand a little bit about the function of the Dark Tower; you understand its unifying purpose. Well, think of Gingerbread House as a balcony on the Tower: when we come here, we're outside the Tower but still attached to the Tower." I have, for me, some very important information to impart on a personal level and I trust you agree. This chapter ends with the significance of the Writer - of Stephen King or 'Stephen King' - and of saving him from his becoming roadkill before the Beams are Broken, i.e. to cut a long story short into words that probably don't convey the true sense of what you would gain by reading the long story itself. In any event, tied up with that (as it has been throughout all these books) is the persistence of no. 19 in various places, and in words and names. And I've just realised that my own full name DESMOND FRANCIS LEWIS on my birth certificate is made up of 19 letters! I can't explain what a striking revelation it has been in realising this today. Also, incidentally, my definitive collection of stories is THE LAST BALCONY, perhaps replete with relevant synchronicities and still semi-aborted fruition. And, so, I must don my 'thinking cap'...... | ||
| Des (Des) Username: Des Registered: 09-2010 Posted From: 86.158.236.228 |
I've just completed my RTR of the whole series. Phew! Quite a rite of passage. "EEEEEEEEEEEEEE! YOU! DON'T DARE MOCK ME! YOU DON'T DARE! EEEEEEEEEEEEE!" | ||
| Des (Des) Username: Des Registered: 09-2010 Posted From: 86.165.36.129 |
According to the Paschal Cycle it is Easter Weekend and Roland of Gilead's fianal approach to his Dark Tower that I read yesterday on St George's Day - and the Crimson King on his last balcony there was described as a dragon in human form! | ||
| Des (Des) Username: Des Registered: 09-2010 Posted From: 86.165.36.129 |
In one of my rare forays into watching cinema films, I spotted that 'Citizen Kane' is currently on BBCiplayer, so I watched it. Here is my comparison with 'The Dark Tower': http://nullimmortalis.wordpress.com/2011/05/02/citizen-kane/ | ||
| Joel (Joel) Username: Joel Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 2.24.10.197 |
"And I've just realised that my own full name DESMOND FRANCIS LEWIS on my birth certificate is made up of 19 letters!" Of course, you can't expect us to believe that unless you publish your birth certificate. | ||
| Des (Des) Username: Des Registered: 09-2010 Posted From: 86.158.237.58 |
Thanks, Joel. I think people can verify the letter count without the certificate. :| Just to say, that while reviewing the whole Dark Tower series (which was a sort of bizarre random choice on my part as well as a massive task), it turned out to be incredibly serendipitous for me, as those reading my review it will attest. Also, I discovered, during this period, that a film and TV series - probably akin to the LOST series that was in turn influenced *by* The Dark Tower according to much evidence I amassed - are soon to be produced. Here is the news tracker on that score: http://www.stephenking.com/promo/dark_tower_film_and_tv/news_tracker/ | ||
| Joel (Joel) Username: Joel Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 217.37.199.45 |
Sorry Des, I'm just being bitter about the 'birther' movement, and implying that counting past ten without documentary evidence is also beyond them. |