7.04.2019

Dark Tower reread pt. 10: The Dark Tower

"The ka of the rational world wants him dead; that of the Prim wants him alive, and singing his song. (For) the first time since the Prim receded, all worlds and all existence turns toward the Dark Tower which stands at the far end of Can'-ka No Rey, the Red Field of None." 


"Rey" is Spanish for King, so Red Field of No King? He wishes. 

Well, well, here we are, approaching the clearing at the end of the re-read path. I've been dithering with this review for what feels like months. I gave myself an end-of-June deadline, but real life intervened and here we are. Only a few days behind schedule. 

I read this last volume with a sense of detachment. In an attempt not to harp on things already harped upon too much, let's start with:


I'VE ALREADY TALKED ENOUGH ABOUT...

- MIA. The situation does not improve here, except that she gets eaten by her spider-chap, which I suppose is mildly gratifying. 

- THE DUBIOUS GUNSLINGERNESS OF ROLAND'S KA-TET. Especially Jake "Docker's Clutch" Chambers. Things get even worse here with all the over-the-top narration and agonizing eve-of-battle remarks where they all get to pretend how battle-weary they are and hardened for the fight, etc. Ugh. 


- THE WHOLE CALVINS/ TET vs. SOMBRA THING. I meant to save my thoughts on that until this post, but I guess I mentioned it all last time: I'm ever so slightly incredulous about how the side with the positronic machine-guns (even if they don't work, but they also have time travel orbs, so uhh, they could've used one of those to go back to when NCP was making fresh-off-the-assembly-line sneetches, etc.) and vampires can't seem to get the drop on a bunch of septuagenarian book nerds. I mean, as an English major, it's a lovely idea - and it's not like believability is exactly a concern at this point in the series - but sheesh. 

Speaking of the banality of evil:

- BUMBLING VILLAINS. The whole robot-fire-team wiping out the security staff at Devar-Toi is supposed to be this ironic or comedic scene. And yet, it's also supposed to be this bad-ass scene where we say goodbye to Eddie and Susannah and Jake go into berserker rage, etc. The tone is so incredibly mismatched. But mainly I just want to go on record as saying the monsterdom of King's Dark Tower-verse is not so good. Whether it's the taheen (who literally eat boogers) or the low men (who are never as good as they are in "Low Men in Yellow Coats") this all strikes me as GRRM-level "look at me subvert expectation! Anything goes!" territory. 

BREAKERS. Again, what the hell are the Breakers supposed to be doing? And how long have they been at this? None of this makes any sense. 


- KING'S EPISTOLARY OBSESSION. Why does he always add so many letters and diary entries to his books and make absolutely no effort to differentiate the tone/ voice of the letter/diary writer? From The Plant to The Stand to David's note to Irene, here, or the Author himself's diary entries at the end of bk 6, everyone sounds exactly the same. I will never understand King's editor's job. 

- POINTLESS PORTENT. Like not revealing what the Turtle fountain says for 10 pages ("Given by the Tet Corporation" changed on 6/19/99 from "in memory of Gilead" to "in memory of Edward Cantor Dean and John Jake Chambers, can-a-cam-blah blah, gan-delah.) Why does an author of King's stature and ability rely on such cheap tricks? 

- TOO DAMN LONG. This would have worked way better as two books, the first one ending round pg. 670 or so when real-world King (or King's fake-real-world King) has his conversation with Marlowe (the corgi, may he R.I.P.) And if you omitted all the narrative whimsy, maybe that'd have knocked off another 50 pages. Speaking of:


When they cast Miley Cyrus as Jake, at least there'll be some precedent. Also, wtf with Oy in this picture.

THE VOICE

What is going on with King's narration in this story? It's so odd and at odds with the voice in the other books. Granted he has invaded his own story, referencing "Have you ever been Carrie at the prom?" (A Darmok/ Children-of-Tama allusion no one has ever made) as well as "a certain paper boat, it passes out of this tale forever", but it's not even consistent in its ringmaster-ness.  He goes from "See this, do I beg ya" in spots to long asides and old-time-radio narration with swelling strings ("Having been given so, so much, we reason, how could we expect not to be brought as low as Lucifer for the staggering presumption of our love?" FFS.

It adds nothing and actually disrupts an already struggling pace. In fact, it sounds very much like a man who realizes on some level that he has blown it and is throwing whatever he can into the proceedings to achieve some kind of epic tonality that should be there and is not. 

(The very, very end? Epic tonality in spades. And you'll notice the cutesy shit falls to one side during it. No "See Roland climb the steps if it please ya! Commala-hey, Commala-hi!")


PSIONIC ACTION TEAM SQUAD ADVENTURES!

I decided to give this its own section even though I have certainly harped on this enough, but good lord, the shortcuts of telepathy and todash King allows himself in this one are ridiculous. It starts early where Roland projects himself across time and space to yell at Jake through Callahan's mouth. (What?) It continues when Jake mind-swaps with Oy to get out of a mind trap (double what?) and reaches new heights of absurdity in the whole assault on Algul Siento/ Devar-Toi when we're reintroduced to Sheemie, who (naturally - as he is slow-witted) now has teleportation powers. (One wonders if deep down King actually believes that the mentally handicapped all have some kind of wild psionic talent. I'm betting he does.) This last one is all the more irritating because Wizard and Glass would have gone differently had Sheemie actually had teleportation powers and not just gifted them here in book 7. 

I did enjoy Roland's sudden realization. ("Magic doors! That's what teleportation means!") 




TED TALK

Ted B. and Dinky are somewhat welcome sights. But Ted's backstory is kind of too much. Like Callahan, he just goes a-wanderin'... but, from the 1920s through the 1950s? Really? That's kind of a long time to be walking aimelssly about, "doing odd jobs." There's too much missing. I realize he had to fit this into Hearts in Atlantis timeframe - except, he didn't, not really; time moves differently all over the place in these books so there's real need to make Ted a WW1 vet, and to be honest, "1922" aside, King doesn't have a handle on this era very well. Ted seems like a baby boomer, like King. All of King's characters seems like baby boomers. 

Anyway all this 'THEY'RE KILLING THE LITTLE MAN!' stuff never comes up in "Low Men in Yellow Coats" and, like Sheemie's M-O-O-N-that-spells-magic-doors it would have had it been part of Ted's backstory and not something that King decided to just throw in here. And the fact that this is all relayed by a stack of reel-to-reel tapes Ted recorded for the ka-tet to listen to in the cave adds to the disbelief.



LET'S TALK INDIVIDUAL FATES

- Roland. Obviously, the big one. I liked his resolution, and the little touch of having the Horn with him this time around. Could things go differently?

- Eddie, Jake, and Susannah (and Oy, sort of) end up in a whole new reality. Does Callahan? Do Jake's parents? For that matter, where does Mia go one she's consumed - back to the Prim? To the way station? Back to Fedic?

- What the hell happens to Patrick? I kind of wish there'd been a Duma Key tie-in, given Edgar's similar abilities, but I'm equally glad there isn't one. 



- Walter. Okay, this is more of a next section issue. Let's go to:

BABY MORDRED

I mentioned a couple of things about this last time, namely that this whole idea - and its late-innings intro - don't work too well for me. But I found myself liking these sections a lot this reread. Spider-baby is cool, even if his intermittent awareness of all things around him (and way beyond him) is ridiculous. He knows motivations and history, because telepathy, but is just a baby when convenient. Okay. Anyway, I liked his being the hand (or spider-appendage) to end Walter's life; this is a 180 from my first read when I thought it was the worst decision ever. I still think it's too late a development in the series to truly be good (and I think King realized this and brought Walter back for TWTTK) but I just mean the actual scene where he kills him is good and kind of a great scene for the Man in Black, outwitted at last. 

I was amused that King felt the need to make even Baby Mordred vaguely racist; as with telepathy, he just can't help himself. ("What the others heard in major, Mordred heard in minor.")

METAFICTIVE

"Many of my fictions refer back to Roland's world and Roland's story. It seemed logical that I was part of the gunslinger's ka." 

I don't know if "logical" is the right word for that, but sometimes things strike King in a way that seems utterly backwards from reality. Like the "impossibility" of thinking about Trump while watching Chernobyl, (re: his tweet a few weeks back) I don't know if it truly is impossible. It seems a very revealing word choice. King is the kid from The Regulators possessed by Tak. The end of the series (bks 5 through 7) is King's attack on the inner sanctum of his own mind. Roland's lesson is the one he either learns day to day, Memento-style, or the one he wishes he'd learn.

"Brautigan had gotten off onto some rambling, discursive sidetrack."

All the Bryan Smith stuff is stupid. In real life, too, I guess, but good lord. I mean, the guy kills Jake, and then Roland side-of-the-road King have a stop-and-chat. 

"Resolution demands a sacrifice,' King says, and although no one hears but the birds and he has no idea what this means, he is not disturbed. He's always muttering to himself, it's as though there is a Cave of Voices in his head, full of brilliant - but not necessarily intelligent - mimics."

Roland's anger at King is weird. Handled okay I guess, but it's like all the anger at poor Calvin Tower. There are easier ways to analyze oneself than this. King once mentioned (in that old Playboy interview) how he refused to see a shrink because he psychoanalyzed himself through his writing. The Dark Tower books bear testimony to this, but they're also very taxing in this regard: some things should be worked out in the privacy of one's own mind and not masquerading as epic fantasy. 


GOOD ROBOT

Is there a bad robot after Andy? I've asked before, and I don't think there is. Here we get two. The first, Nigel, is great. I love when he breaks in with his "Pardon me, sirs..." after Mordred consumes Mia; that's lol-territory. Or any of his "I HAVE BEEN BLINDED BY GUNFIRE!"s.

Stuttering Bill, the robot who plows the snow on Tower Lane, is great as well. Call me an idiot but I completely missed the It connection here. Stuttering Bill! Good freaking lord. 

INSOMNIA

One connection I both missed and didn't miss is the Insomnia one. i.e. I couldn't really not miss it, since it's pointed out literally and Susannah is reading Roland the book on the trail (although we don't really see or hear this or learn what Roland thinks of it) and yet the actual point of the Insomnia / Book 7 overlap is, like the Colorado Kid or the origin of the monolith on the moon, a complete mystery to me. It seems like this is a loose end. 

And ditto for Patrick Danville and the whole role he plays in dispatching the CK. I'll admit: all of this just kind of went over my head. Either King thought "hey screw it, this is a fun idea" - in which case, I think it's all incredibly self-indulgent and sloppy - or there's some brilliant fourth-dimensional chess going on, such as the kind people find in Trump's - or King's, for that matter - tweets. (Just to be clear: I am not one of these people. I despise and find infinitely more dangerous the media-academe narrative about Trump more than I despise Trump/ King's tweets, but there's no shortage of despising for all of it. Everyone involved should be less dumb/obsessive.) 

Whatever it is, it's over my head, and I guess I'll just have to live with that. 


SOME FINAL RANDOMS

- "Bango Skank, the great lost character." 

Much of the things Fumalo, Feemalo, and Fimalo (grrrr) say contradict or complicate things already established. But hey, it's probably all ka, bro. 

- "All the Crimson King cares about is to beat Roland to the Tower." Uhh.. what? Why? He lives right next to the fracking thing; Roland had to walk towards it for 20+ years. And when the CK decides to go there he leaves his castle and travels in a portable storm (which is kind of cool) and heads down Tower Lane. So, it's not like the distance/ time was manipulated or anything. 

- I liked Dandelo a little more this time around, but it's still damn odd all of this happens. I mean... if King is leaving notes in medicine cabinets and all, I mean wtf. Why any mystery? This is all such muddled thinking to me. He leaves an actual note in Dandelo's medicine cabinet? Why not a .45? Or a bunch of erasers for Patrick? Also, how did he get there? The whole thing - as does his leaving cryptic clues for Jake - raises questions that don't need to be introduced, especially at this late hour of the saga.

FINAL THOUGHTS, SCORES AND RANKINGS

Well! We made it. I can't see myself reading these again. Things start off so promising with the Dark Tower series and then end so unsatisfyingly. I admire King for taking a road all his own (so to speak) but can't say in all honesty I enjoyed myself after awhile. 

Here's how they currently shake out for me:


8. The Dark Tower
7. Song of Susannah
6. Wolves of the Calla
5. The Waste Lands
4. The Drawing of the Three
3. The Gunslinger
2. Wizard and Glass
1. The Wind Through the Keyhole

I'll throw "The Little Sisters of Eluria" and "Low Men in Yellow Coats" in as tied for number one, as well. 


~
Thanks for reading; what did you think?

17 comments:

  1. (1) "the taheen (who literally eat boogers)" -- A definite lowpoint in the King canon, that. Effectively rendered, I guess; but not something you want to be effectively rendered. He does love him a gross-out from time to time. Fair enough, but when it has to come via booger-eating, I reckon that's a bridge too far.

    (2) "the low men (who are never as good as they are in "Low Men in Yellow Coats")" -- You say true on that. I like them in "Ur," but feel they are a letdown in the DT series proper.

    (3) Holy smokes ... Miley Cyrus as Jake. I don't know what to say about that, except that this is the point where I feel I must divulge that I find her to be strangely alluring. I'm not proud of this.

    You know what I do NOT find alluring? Most of Michael Whelan's art for this novel. A few pieces, I love; the ones I don't love, I mostly hate (including this one of Jake Cyrus). Kind of the same as with Wrightson's work on book five.

    (4) "It adds nothing and actually disrupts an already struggling pace. In fact, it sounds very much like a man who realizes on some level that he has blown it and is throwing whatever he can into the proceedings to achieve some kind of epic tonality that should be there and is not." -- I'm going on a memory of reading this many years ago, but my memory is that I'm more tolerant of this stuff than you are. This may simply be because I want to be, though. Objectively, it doesn't work; I cannot deny it.

    My feeling is less that he's trying to puff things up unnaturally, though, than that he himself was really in some kind of feeling-it zone while writing. Doesn't make it better; I just think he was following his muse, and that's where it told him to go, and that's how it told him to go there. That muse also told him to write "Lisey's Story," so that muse is by no means infallible.

    (5) "Spider-baby is cool, even if his intermittent awareness of all things around him (and way beyond him) is ridiculous." -- This is one of the aspects of the novel that both does and doesn't work for me. Especially the death of Flagg via Mordred. It's kind of ridiculous and awful, but at the same time, it's quite horrific, and it stuck with me. Plus, there's something about the fact of Mordred following the ka-tet like a crazy (and murderously forlorn) shadow that I find to be weirdly haunting. So Mordred doesn't really work, except that he kind of does. Weird book, man.

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    1. (3) Ha, well, you're honest with yourself at least. I agree with you about Michael Whelan's art. King got great artists for each of the books, but I'll be damned if much of it lands with me.

      (4) Agreed on the fallibility of King's muse. He's sometimes a little too trusting of that guy. As we've discussed many times, King's method obviously works for him as far as productivity/ career-approac goes, but I sometimes wish he'd plot these damn things out and make some edits rather than "finding" it all as he goes along. (Or, for that matter, literalizing his muse as some kind of Toby who floats before him and dictates words from beyond. A lovely metaphor/ conceit, but he takes it perhaps too far. "The story HAS to be this because that's how Toby told me" or something.)

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  2. (6) At the risk of going down the wrong path, I'll confess that I, too, found myself thinking about Trump while watching "Chernobyl." More in an indirect fashion than anything; the series is preoccupied with drawling a line under the idea that that disaster happened as much as anything else because people simply couldn't prevent themselves from lying about one thing or another. Trivial lies that turn into decidedly untrivial ones. Now, whether that's actually how Chernobyl happened or not, I don't know. But I figure that it's a decent point to make that deceit is a snowball rolling down a hill; I don't see much of a problem there. So I didn't mind myself literally thinking, "Hey, that guy is like Donald Trump!" or anything like that, but I did find the miniseries to have a certain amount of applicability.

    So I can't really fault King for coming to that conclusion. I don't know that there was much to be gained by making a point of it on Twitter, though. Increasingly, I see little reason to make ANY point on Twitter.

    (7) "King is the kid from The Regulators possessed by Tak. The end of the series (bks 5 through 7) is King's attack on the inner sanctum of his own mind. Roland's lesson is the one he either learns day to day, Memento-style, or the one he wishes he'd learn." -- A terrific set of insights here, McMolo!

    (8) "some things should be worked out in the privacy of one's own mind and not masquerading as epic fantasy." -- Or, at the very least, disguise it a bit. But I'll give it to him: if nothing else, this approach sets these books apart from others within the same genre(s).

    (9) The Patrick Danville / "Insomnia" tie-in is another aspect that both does and doesn't work for me. It doesn't in that it's almost literally a deus ex machina; not even the most egregious in the novel, but still. And yet, the part of me who'd devoured "Insomnia" as soon as it came out back in 1994 found it thrilling for the subplot of Patrick's importance to the Tower to finally be paid off a decade later. A weird and not entirely effective way to pay it off, granted; but this is better than nothing, which is the way in which the Tower connections in "Black House" are paid off.

    But if one doesn't have that connection to "Insomnia," I really don't think Patrick works at all. Probably hurts, in the grand scheme of things.

    (10) The Crimson King sucks in this book. I get what King was going for. Didn't work. That said, since it's Roland's own fate that powers the end of the novel, it KIND OF works -- kind of, mind you -- that all the C.K. really gets in the end is a dismissal via hand-wave. A fart in his general direction, and he's gone. Doesn't work, not at all; but it's kind of alright with me that it doesn't work at all? Weird fucking book, man; weird fucking book.

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    1. (6) "Trivial lies that turn into decidedly untrivial ones" Yeah... well, I haven't seen it, but that sounds like you're describing the media/Democrat narrative about Trump and not Trump. As someone 1000% beholden/ enabling of such a thing, I can see why King would think of Trump. But in this case it's a projection/ case of "physician, heal thyself."

      I made the mistake of trying to correct Max Alan Collins's perceptions re: media narrative/ Biden's-complicity-in-his-undoing-by-SJW-fascists and of course got both barrels. My parents and brother even teamed up on me when visiting home. It's really fun how a bunch of sore losers who Trump made a fool of are ruining both the country and family reunions and calling it "anti-fascism/ racism." King is directly contributing to that, and it's fucking sad.

      'Nuff said. You guys can have at it. But I'm through apologizing for calling it out for what it is: obsession and projection and flat out delusion.

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    2. I knew it was a mistake to even mention it. Jesus Christ.

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    3. (7) Thankee, sai. I think my current score/ feedback from the world is literary-insights: passable-to-pretty good. Sociopolitical ones: get thee to a nunnery/ insane asylum. Ah well.

      (9) Oh yeah, I remember you mentioning the unresolved BLACK HOUSE bits. I loved INSOMNIA, as well - I'm afraid to reread that one, actually, lest I discover it's not as awesome as remembered. But Patrick Danville is such a weird idea/ extraneous character to (seemingly) both series. I just don't get it. Like I said, maybe it's all just over my head. I accept this as a possibility.

      (10) The Crimson King (King's "starkblast") definitely gets away from him. I also love that no one has a goddamn sniper rifle. Jeepers Crow.

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    4. When I say "you guys can have at it," I didn't mean you (BB) and King, or anything, just "you guys in the comments can rip it all up if you like, I'm out." FWIW. None of that was personally directed at you, just the country/ narratives-at-large.

      Anyway. Happy 4th?

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  3. So, here we are, at the end of a series that was probably a definite obsession with King for a very long time. I that's important, however I prefer to work my way back to this point in a roundabout way. I said a bit of a while back that I'd come to a pretty neat conclusion about this series as a whole, and that i'd wait until this whole sequence of reviews was over to share my thoughts. Here they are.

    When I think of "TDT", I find myself confronted with a series composed of equal parts valiant effort, and an unfortunate inability to match it's authors ambitions.

    I think the reason for this stems from two interrelated aspects. The first is that there doesn't seem to have been enough genuine inspiration for King to work with on this series. Maybe trying to plan all this stuff out would have made a difference, however I think the more likely scenario to happen if he tried that is he'd soon find his imagination was a complete blank as it all broke down into a minor and bemusing hodge-podge of slapped together imagery, and little else.

    To be continued.

    ChrisC

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    1. The second reason for labeling the Tower series as ultimately a failure is a bit more subtle, yet with any luck it's easy to understand once anyone gets the hang of it. It revolves around the question of King's strengths or strong points as a writer.

      Even before the Tower idea occurred to him, King was well on his way to finding the voice that has made him famous. His first published story, even before the idea of Roland et al, was called "I was a Teenage Grave Robber". While it might be sophmoric, it still stands as a past harbinger of King's present.

      All this shows is that the voice King was developing, even before the year he tried write about Mid-World, was that of a regional New England Gothic writer. That alone is a serviceable definition of his literary strengths.

      King is always at his best when he sticks to a particular brand or genre of horror that is set in a recognizable North American setting. His style works best if he takes a regular setting, and then introduces elements of the fantastic and horrific into the proceedings. That is the basic setup he remains good at to this day.

      To be continued.

      ChrisC

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    2. The thing to realize, however, is that this standard method of telling a horror story seems to be almost the "only" strength King has as a writer. I've found that whenever he tries to step outside his genre comfort zone, King's final efforts tend to be mixed.

      These experiments can work if he's doing a mainstream story with no overt horror elements like "The Body" or "Hearts in Atlantis". These are stories set well within King's comfort zone, and, as such, play into his narrative strengths. The same cannot be entirely said for anything like straight up fantasy.

      It is true that "Wind through the Keyhole" is a very good book. It's also something of a one-off or fluke in terms of King's fantasy output. To be fair, it may not be the only one. However, most of King's efforts at straight-up fantasy (such as "Eyes of the Dragon") often come off with a lackluster vibe that serves as a tell-tale sign that writing in this mode is probably just not his strong point.

      I think that's the biggest mistake King made, in believing he had the proper sort of imagination to carry off a task like this. Maybe an author like Gene Wolfe could have pulled "The Dark Tower" off, yet if that were the case, it would still prove that King's imagination just doesn't work in the way that Wolfe's does. He strengths lie in the approach of the American Gothic genre. As a result, a work like "It" has a great deal more of a Tolkienesque vibe than anything in the Tower series.

      In the latter, the basic setup is there, yet it always reads like King is viewing things for a certain distanced perspective that is absent even in a short work like "The Mist". A straight up fright fest like that brings all his strengths to the foreground. Mid-World, I'm afraid, just tends to stifle it.

      I'll definitely have to re-work all this into a much more cohesive form somewhere down the road. Meanwhile, this will serve as a basic summary of why I think hte Dark Tower...I don't know, should it have stayed a trunk novel, or what?

      ChrisC

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    3. Almost forgot, I said I'd come back to the word obsession. The reason why is because i think what drove King was more obsession than inspiration.

      He once described writing "The Stand" as his own private Vietnam, or some damn thing like that. All of which is a way of saying that he maybe couldn't get into the story all that much, yet he was damned (and maybe stubborn as an ox) if he was going to let this handicap get the better of him. I think the same kind of thought process was going on for all of his career until recently when the story was still incomplete.

      "The Stand" is another work where it seems like King is writing from a distanced point of view that hinders the narrative, and the same thing carried over into the "Tower" series. If obsession was the main engine driving things, then perhaps someone should have told to stop before it was too late.

      However, no one did, and voila, here we are (for better or worse). I wonder, if given a chance, would King decide to chuck the whole "DT" thing and let his career stand on other merits?

      ChrisC

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    4. You could be onto something there. I'll have to think on it a bit. I definitely feel that ultimately the series is a failure and yours is as good an explanation as any. I think here his method (discover it as you go along, follow the muse wherever he takes you) failed him more than his ability. If he resigned himself to editing his thoughts a little and/or plotting it out some (and not having to retcon/ invent things for already established things like vampires, Sheemie, Brautigan's backstory - now with no motifs and mantras! - etc.) maybe it'd have been better. Or at least hung together better without so many loose ends or frustrating dead ends, blown out bridges, etc.

      You could be right, though, about both his comfort zone and where his strengths reside. I think that makes sense.

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    5. That's a good point. I think King has definite obsessions. (And how!) And I don't think he always drives his own mental bus when it comes to them; he's perfectly willing to strap himself in and be a passenger and let that bus rocket across the landscape and cross lanes and crash into things.

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    6. I disagree in the sense that the first four novels in the series are quite good. The series ends poorly, but king in a fantasy setting was not a total failure. He didn't finish the series well, but that's considered a general weakness of his period. So to me it's less king couldn't do fantasy as much as he couldn't write a proper ending.

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    7. Also a good point.

      Another ur-kindle thing I'd love to research: how do bks 5-7 look in a world where he didn't have the accident? I think (and he alludes to it in his intro to the revised editions) that really impacted how those were plotted. Could be wrong, of course.

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