The Dark Tower Reread pt. 8: Wolves of the Calla

"There's really nothing here that bothers me." 

- Dog Star Omnibus, 11/15/2012

So I said six and a half years ago. This time around? I found plenty to bother me. Let me tell you all about it.

First, though: it's kind of a drag to write negative reviews. Some things trigger a passionate negative response. Those things are easier, because it's fun to be mad at those kind of things. Then there are things like Wolves of the Calla, or Stephen King in general. These things give me no joy whatsoever to be negative about (and we're just going to have to live with dangling preposition). And not necessarily because I feel so attached to King or the Dark Tower to not be critical; I have and never had no trouble sharing my opinion on things I like or dislike out there in the pop culture candyland. Mainly the joylessness comes from the extra work involved, because I feel like I really have to footnote myself. It's not enough to say "it's crap" for things you actually care about, and I do care about King's work. And what's the point of just saying "I don't like it"? Well, who cares? Why write the blog? Why did I get myself into this? 

Let me start with what worked for me and move out from there. 

THINGS I LIKED

"First the smiles, then the lies. Last comes gunfire."

As an episode of the larger series, it's mostly a pretty enjoyable one. The central idea I mean (defending a town from rapacious robots) and all the usual mix of sci-fi with fantasy and traditional gunslinger fare. Not much happens compared to something like The Waste Lands. It has more or less the same structure as Wizard and Glass, except the slow burn western adventure takes place in the present and not in flashback. Both end with meta-mash-up-gone-amok. 

Is it a little strange to basically just repeat the structure of bk 4? Maybe. I can't really get worked up about it.

Pere Callahan enjoys the distinction of being something I simultaneously like and dislike about Wolves. I like the way he's written and for the most part enjoy his backstory. I'll save the dislikes for the appropriate section. He's a fun addition to the ka-tet, and even though the whole Lamerk Foundry spiders-web of interdimensional tunnels and bridges never really makes sense, it's a cool idea to have this guy wandering about, killing vampires, slowly drawing their power against him, then ending up with the free range folken of the Calla. 

He's a drunk in recovery (the best kind: exile in another dimension. He and Eddie Dean have that in common) and that allows for some AA "Wisdom of the Book" stuff like "It's hard to hear a small voice clearly when you're shit-ass drunk all the time." Or "You could miss the elephant in the room if it was a magic elephant with the power to cloud men's minds." That last one reminded me of two other Kingthings: (1) The Regulators, with the magic elephant in the room being the television, and (2) the bk7 fate of the Man in Black to come. 

I liked Andy. I liked Jake's journey to the Dogan. 

Finally this is probably the only Jericho Hill stuff we're ever going to see, but I kind of wonder what the heck happened with Alain. Maybe the answer is in the Browning poem, I haven't checked. (If you wanted to do a book-length last stand of Gilead/ The Alamo sort of deal, Sai King, I say go for it. Put Holly Gibney in it if that's what it takes.)

KING META FICTIVE

"Someone or some force had carried them over or through the thinny and back to the Path of the Beam." 

There's plenty I could put in this section, but I figure with the way bks 6 and 7 go, I have plenty of time to get to it all then. So just a couple of things:

- It really does seem like King is very aware of some of his reoccurring tics doesn't it? Giant-folks, telepathy, self-referencing, the "magically simple", conversational solipsism, storm/ thunderclap, etc. Did he have a copy of my Bingo Scorecard when he wrote the last 3 books? 

- Calvin Tower. So much hostility with this guy! I guess we'll get into this more next time, too, but sheesh. King really lets loose on this poor bookseller and - in his own equally important way - caretaker of ka. It's an interesting development considering the self-reflective qualities of the series. (Flashforward to King himself telling Roland in a hypnotized panic in bk 6 "I DON'T WANT TO BE GAN!") As The Dark Half and Misery explore some of King's complicated feelings with fandom, this character perhaps suggests an antipathy with the industry of fandom. 

THINGS I DON'T MUCH LIKE 

BUT DON'T WANT TO HARP ON

These things will be happening with increasing frequency and urgency for the rest of the series, and I don't want to spend any time on them in the remaining posts. So let me just get it all out of the way now.

- Mia. Probably at the top of the list. The pregnancy never makes sense and just gets more and more complicated and crazy the more he tries to nail it down. The plot development also nullifies all of that Detta being the reigning blue balls champ of wherever the hell it is, too, which like everything involving Detta was all just very painful to read. But read it I did, so hey! Thanks for that. Who cares but sheesh. If you circle Mia on my list of problems worksheet, there's a lot of subsequent material that is default bullet-pointed beneath it. So, that's a drag for me, especially in bk 6. Here, though: I mean... doesn't Susannah's hair get wet when Mia's diving into the mud? I know it's magical and all, but that's the whole thing: the whole Mia/ pregnancy / Mordred thing relies on way too many Rube Goldberg angles.

- Nineteen/ the doubling/ coincidences. It just isn't interesting enough to keep coming back to. 

- Commala. Holy crap! I had enough of this by halfway through Wolves, and, as if he was waiting to hear if it annoyed me, he added it another million times, amping it up in bk6 to come. All of the "If the dinh-da be kai-mai, than aye, delah" stuff just got to be too much. Granted it's a genre trope but holy moley does it go skidding off the rails and then it's just an errant boxcar in the countryside, destroying crops, downing power lines, smashing baby carriages and pedestrians, totally out of control. 

- Jake as gunslinger. I mean, I was already wary of Eddie and Susannah, and now Jake's always got a steady gunslingin' eye and one finger on the docker's clutch, which was King's trigger-word-association this time around. Anytime Jake is "on the case," his hand drops to the good ol' docker's clutch. Also, Jake as "carrier of the touch." It just never gelled for me so everytime either is referenced I'm less and less vested. I've kind of already written Jake out of this story in my head.

- It's difficult to understand why Sombra or any of the bad guys would take this cautious step by step approach to the rose. Like possession of Black Thirteen, why give our heroes such time, opportunity, and assistance? I know they're kept in check by the Tet Corporation, who collect kick-ass paintings and stage cool corporate retreats and have a bunch of interns poring over King books for Dark Tower references, so you know, they're formidable opponents for a bloodthirsty, magical, gazillionaire outfit. Staffed with low men and vampires and magical interdimensional devices. Seems like they had a lot more firepower than they even bring to bear on the situation. 


- Combining aspects of both of the above: this habit of just giving characters super powers to cross dimensions and project telepathically when the need demands - but simultaneously keeping up the conceit that it's exceptional, etc. or a plot device complication - is kind of irritating. Black Thirteen is one of many such conveniences. Shouldn't it exact worse toll for its usage? Although (in bk6) I guess the implication is that its toll is ultimately 9/11, right? That's that, I guess. 

- The ammo problem still bugs me. 

- Roland's finger-twirling gesture and the subsequent text-explanation every time it appears... plus, it almost never really makes sense. There's not the sort of conversational meandering and time waste etc. going on to provoke it in most spots. Also, it seems a vanity for Roland to do this, and Roland's not a vain man.  

Okay. There we are, then. I'll try not to bring up any of the above in subsequent reviews.

THINGS I DAMN WELL AM GOING TO HARP ON

All right, back to Pere Callahan. Converting Salem's Lot (and vampires) into an adjunct of the Dark Tower verse doesn't really work for me. I'm fine with it here in bks 5 through 7 because what choice do I have? But I simply forget all of this back/future-story when I read or think about Salem's Lot. Thankfully he's never put a new edition of Salem's with Dark Tower stuff digitally inserted. 

Callahan's whole rambling drunk Todash highway vampire killer story is interesting, but it's all so weirdly overcomplicated. I liked the slow encircling of the Low Men but most of the rest (the Hitler Brothers, Lupe Delgado, maybe a few too many stops and starts) didn't really add anything. And then Walter nabs him and gives him Black Thirteen? It just seems weird to me that Walter can anticipate so many different things and play chessmaster like this but somehow never suss out how things actually go. Or, if not weird, uninteresting. 

The Sisters of Oriza. Fine. Contrived - Men can't throw them? Does this seem at all realistic? A factory on the outskirts of Amish Central makes titanium-alloy-grade memorial plates that also just so happens to be the one thing that can decapitate the bad guys? A multi-generational sisterhood (plus Jake) of Oriza-throwing markswomen? An old codger who knows the secret but says nothing except to Eddie Dean? - but fine. 

"TATERS AND GRAVY!"? Nope. Somewhere in the annals of literary history an entry will exist on this book, and I hope whomever writes the entry just quotes that and nothing else.

The portent is a little out of control in this book. On pg. 367 Eddie hears the secret of all gray horses from Gran-Pere (another in a long line of homages to King's Uncle Oren, who even makes a brief appearance while The Author's under hypnosis in bk 6. that is held back from the reader (but not to Roland) util pg. 666. To me that's just kind of useless portent. He does that more than a few times, actually - it seems like a form of cheating to me. There's no real interest or tension built up from holding it back, just the kind that comes from having it deliberately withheld. Ditto for with the object in the lining of the bag. (More on that next time.)

Then, as Wizard and Glass did, the meta-madness goes into hyperdrive in the last 30 pages, with the Harry Potter sneech models and the Doctor Dooms wielding lightsabers on motorized horses. I've been talking about the 2 narrative frames for Dark Tower stuff: one is storytelling that is supposed to hang together somehow, and the other is this meta-fictive self-analysis King is doing of himself as a storyteller, as a son, as a father, as a man of his time. I'd say this is where the first frame is obliterated for good. This is for me the proverbial jump-the-shark moment. It's even the first of several jump-the-shark moments to come, which is unfathomable to me.

Clearly, then, some other narrative frame is needed. The second is still very much intact; in fact, these sorts of universe-folding-in-to-the-man-behind-the-curtain moments even make it better. So, for the next few posts I'll try my best not to pick at anything from a "does this make sense?" angle except "does this serve the only Beam left shining, i.e. the meta-fictive one. This creates a whole new set of problems for me. Man! I thought a re-read would be less work.

THE WORST THING KING MAY EVER HAVE WRITTEN

Roland gets a Rosalita in bk 5, which is fine enough, but in one section, as they go off to hook up, King writes:

"He came with her willingly and went where she took him. She kept a secret spring surrounded by sweet moss, and there he was refreshed." 

Ewww. I mean, what the christ, This flowery stuff is so tonally off with passages elsewhere, in addition to being wtf-y. 

~

The Outsider (Stephen King)

I recently spent 22-and-a-half hours in a rental car on a work trip to St. Louis and surrounding counties  - just about the same amount of time as The Outsider audiobook, read by Will Patton, which was my companion for all this time in the car. I hit play just as I was pulling from the curb at 5 am Tuesday morning, and the end credits were rolling just as I got back to Chicago, 2 pm Thursday afternoon. That worked out pretty well.

I wasn't expecting much going into this. I'd heard mixed reviews, and I knew Holly Gibney - one of my least favorite characters from two of my least favorite King books - was a prominent character. I'd heard it was "political," as well, and King's politics these days annoy me muchly. 

And yet, I quite enjoyed it. 

THE EFFECT OF AUDIOBOOKS 

ON THE READING EXPERIENCE

I figured I'd like the first half, where the murder dilemma is established: unshakable forensic evidence ties Terry Maitland, upstanding citizen of Flint City, Oklahoma, to the grisly rape and mutilation of a child; equally unshakable evidence has him at Capital City, many miles away, at the time of the murder. Before the arraignment, Maitland is killed. Detective Ralph Anderson (no relation to Mike Anderson's son from Storm of the Century) and Howie Gold (Maitland's attorney) form a tenuous alliance to work out the discrepancies of the case.

From there the book takes a determined turn into the supernatural and where Holly Gibney is brought in. That's where I expected it to lose me. And it almost did. For the most part, Will Patton's narration is excellent. He brings the characters to life and keeps the momentum flowing about as well as any audiobook reader ever could. Then he. Adopts this. Halting. Rising and Falling Like. Garrison Keillor mixed. With the Thermians from. Galaxy Quest. And not just. For Her Dialogue. But all her POV too. 

It's such an amazingly ill-considered approach that I yelled at the car speakers half a dozen times. Then I shrugged it off. And now that it's all done, maybe I was wrong. Irritating as I found it, didn't I end up liking Holly a lot more here than anywhere in the Hodges trilogy? And I did end up liking her, something I thought impossible. Her "poopy and IMDB schtick" as I've seen it described is indeed played out and never was that interesting to begin with. 

All of which is to say: listening to a book and reading it are quite different experiences and rely on factors other than the voice of the author. The best complement one another; perhaps this is one of them. I wonder how I'd find the Hodges trilogy, also read by Will Patton? Could I overcome the considerable problems I had with it? Given world enough and time, I'd love to find out.

HERE'S MY TAKE ON HOLLY 

SHOWING UP IN THE OUTSIDER

It involves a little second-guessing/ speculating on the author, which is always slippery ground, but hear me out. King's always likened his storytelling to excavating rather than plotting; he digs the story out of the earth and its final shape is as much a surprise to him as it is to anyone else. Sometimes this bugs me, but what can I do about it? That's what the man's telling us, so I take him at his word. Obviously he's struck on a method/ metaphor that works for; look at his body of work by Gan. 

So, I picture him writing the first part of the book - the Colorado Kid / unsolvable crime kind of set-up - like the first part of a dig. Like Bobbie Anderson, he's roped off his area and made his incursions and now he's really into it. Suddenly, he finds Holly Gibney. I imagine a hit to his confidence here, as if he thought he was digging out a new tomb but had inadvertently dug into another one he already excavated. But no, he checks his dig again and sees this is new, and there's Holly. So he digs a little further and a new shape starts to emerge. Suddenly the story needs a bridge to the supernatural; his characters from the first part have to get to the end that's suddenly coming into view. King might've thought, okay, do I invent a ghostbuster of some kind, some paranormal investigator that joins the other characters? Or do I have my characters make that leap all on their own? 

From this angle - and I sincerely hope you don't mind my indulging it - Holly Gibney is an economical choice. A logical enough bridge existed (Howie's investigator Alec worked with Hodges on that one stolen plane case), why not use her? I agree with this take:

"Given how the Bill Hodges trilogy took a turn for the paranormal in the con­cluding volume, it’s fitting that Holly is the person to turn this crime novel on its head. She does so in the most extraordinary fashion, describing El Cuco – the creature that murdered Frank – by referencing a Las Luchadoras film, Mexican Wrestling Women Meet the Monster. * The scene is pure cheese (King has always reveled in “low culture”) and a masterclass in storytelling and beat perfect plotting."

* Is this a real movie? Or some analog of The Wrestling Women vs. the Aztec Mummy with Lorena Velazquez? 

It's possible King hadn't intended the story to become supernatural at all. If so, then maybe the above represents the point where he just gives up on the dig and goes on autopilot. If this is the case, then (a) I very much appreciated the lack of sudden onset of telepathy, and (b) it's an autopilot that didn't alienate me. 

She'll be played by Cynthia Erivo in the adaptation. 

WHAT I MEAN BY AUTOPILOT

(1) The Outsider. Both the physical hunger and supernatural abilities are basically Pennywise's. Once the supernatural becomes a reality in the story, it's the same supernatural we've seen in It and Salem's Lot and other places, too. (2) The litanies of Hoskins's deterioration ("The Outsider has a Renfield!" says Holly.) are all very familiar. I mentioned Pennywise; here is Henry Bowers and so many other King antagonists, developing a mantra projection on the protagonist's perceived usurping of the life he was supposed to have, etc. And (3) General story beats: the heroes walking into a trap, goading the killer into making a premature move, the worms from Slither, and then the barbecue at the end where loose ends are tied up. 

But is this really so bad? What can I say - this is autopilot King does enjoyably. King will forever be linked with AC/DC in my head, so I liken it to AC/DC putting out another version of "Heatseeker" or something. You've heard it before, but who cares? In fact, I wish AC/DC did more of that instead of so much of the other crap they've put out. And you can't really say that for King; his "other crap" in this scenario is quite varied. 

Sooo. If the supernatural turn doesn't work for other Constant Readers, that's cool, I can totally understand why. The set-up is airtight, and then something we've seen before slowly takes the novel over. But we've seen the airtight set-up before, too (The Dark Half, The Colorado Kid) and the end of this one is way more satisfying than one of those, mainly because it has one. 

(I mean, "this book actually has an ending!" isn't really a selling point. But sheesh, Colorado Kid. Any chance I get.)

SOME LAST THOUGHTS

- I was curious what the French edition would be called, since L'etranger is pretty well taken. I guess they just call it The Outsider.

- Along the lines of resemblance to It and Salem's Lot, etc., good thing no one in this book ever read any of those or saw the movies. There might have been more immediate go-tos than Mexican Wrestling Women Meet the Monster. FWIW I'm glad they didn't appear, though. I don't need every damn King book to reference another, even if sometimes, versimilitude-wise, the characters in-book sure as hell would.

- Are Harlan Coben and Stephen King friends? I'm always curious about that kind of thing when real-world writers show up in other writers works. 

- Detective Sablo gets the weird "Eees no problem, hombre" dialogue King can't seem to stop himself from. It's so bizarre. But: I liked the character. So what do I know?

_ Similarly, I liked Claude Bolton and his Mom.

~

It's Always Sunny in Philaldelphia: Leftover Screencaps

A coda for this little series of Always Sunny posts - here's the best of the screencaps I didn't use. No attempt was made to identify which episode which screencap is from, but if you're an Always Sunny fan, you probably recognize most of them. If not, I hope they're still somewhat enjoyable out of context.

Take it away, Ben!

"May he rest in peace."

"Hey, everybody, relax. He's lying. He doesn't have any poison."
"No, I don't have any on me. But I do keep some in my fridge at home in the relish jar."
"There's poison in that jar? I thought I was allergic to pickles. What's in the jar with the skull and crossbones?"

"Oh, that's mayonnaise. That's a decoy."

"And the mayo?"

"That's shampoo."
"You're telling me I've been putting shampoo on my sandwiches?"

"If you're using the mayonnaise, yeah, probably."

"There's not enough salt in the world for her."

"Charlie, what are you tryin' to tell me? 'If here by now then bad place be;
trouble time for you when heat comes...' Jesus, this kid's an idiot."

"We're lawyers!"

And finally, some The Gang Reacts to Stuff Memes:

If the shirt looks familiar, it's what Stiles is wearing in one scene in Teen Wolf.

Stiles (Jerry Levine) directs a few episodes of Always Sunny.

~

Hope you enjoyed this run of Always Sunny posts. See you down at Paddy's.