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?

The Twilight Zone: The Hunt

It's been awhile since I did one of these TZTs. I hope to get a few more of them up over the course of 2019. 

A couple of folks have asked when I'm going to do something with the new Twilight Zone currently airing on CBS Access. I definitely look forward to seeing it, and when I do I'll be happy to set a place for it with the others. Whenever they announce a release date for Star Trek: Picard I'll take the All Access plunge. (Last time I did so - for the NFL playoffs - I thought great I'll finally watch Discovery - and ended up watching like 25 episodes of The Price Is Right instead. Go figure.)

For tonight, thought, let's have a look at an episode I've loved for many years:

Aired January 26th, 1962

"An old man and a hound dog named Rip off for an evening's pleasure in quest of raccoon. Usually, these evenings end with one tired old man, one battle-scarred hound dog and one or more extremely dead raccoons, but as you may suspect, that will not be the case tonight. These hunters won't be coming home from the hill. They're headed for the backwoods... of the Twilight Zone."

Hyder and Rachel Simpson are living out their twilight years in an unnamed mountain community where they've lived their whole lives. Over supper, Rachel asks Hyder not to go hunting that night as she has been seeing signs of ill portent all week: blood on the moon, weird birds, etc. He tells her not to worry; he'll be fine.

Whoops.

A raccoon that might've given Old Dan and Little Ann a run for their money leads Hyder and Rip out onto a log over a river with a fast undercurrent. First Rip then Hyder fall into the water and don't resurface.

Hyder and Rip wake up on the side of the river. Worried about what Rachel's going to say about all this, Hyder walks home. As he nears his house, he sees his neighbors digging a hole. They resolutely ignore him when he asks what they think they're doing digging a hole on his property, so he responds in the traditional manner:

He softens, though, once he learns they're digging a grave, and one of them is a little careless with the smaller of the two coffins.

"Have a little care!"
"It's just a dog."

"Not to some folks."

Hyder starts to realize he and Rip didn't survive the hunt once he gets inside and sees his wife in her funeral outfit and when the pastor and pallbearers don't answer his questions.

He follows the throng outside but is puzzled by a fence he does not remember running alongside the road. ("I don't memorize ever seeing this fence" he tells Rip. Rip inwardly rolls his eyes.) They walk along until they come to a gate. A man steps out from behind it and asks Hyder a bunch of questions, before confirming Hyder's suspicions that he has indeed reached the clearing at the end of the path.

"Then I take you would aim at being St. Peter?"
"I keep the gate; that's a fact."

Hyder's about to enter the gates of heaven when he's told he can't bring Rip. No Rip? What kind of heaven is this? This is folks heaven, the man replies; dog heaven's up the road a ways. Without hesitation, Hyder says no thank you. ("Any place that's too highfalutin for Rip is too fancy for me.") The man tries to persuade him otherwise, to no avail. Failing to entice him inside, he gives what sounds like good advice: don't be rash, neighbor, the stakes are eternity; why don't you just sit down and think it over for awhile?

Which he does.

As he waits, another man appears, and this one knows his and Rip's names before Hyder has to tell him. When he tells them he's there to bring them to heaven, Hyder repeats what he told that fella up the road: he has no intention of going anywhere that Rip's not welcome to walk in beside him. The man grows quite concerned - you didn't get messed up with nobody in there, did you? When Hyder says it would be one hell of a place to settle down for eternity with no dogs and no raccoon hunting, the man tells him he isn't far wrong; that place was hell.  

Good thing Rip was there or Hyder might have been tricked. "A man?

Well, he'll walk right into Hell with both eyes open... but even the devil can't fool a dog."

"Travelers to unknown regions would be well advised to take along the family dog. He could just save you from entering the wrong gate. At least, it happened that way once in a mountainous area... of the Twilight Zone."

And off they go to heaven. The End.

The Twilight Zone Vortex speaks for both sides of the fanbase on this one in its review: "Good intentions but the finished product is an incredibly flawed episode. The pacing is slow, the direction tiresome, and the premise derivative. (However) many fans have warm memories of this episode. One such admirer was fellow Twilight Zone writer George Clayton Johnson who regards it as one of his favorite episodes. "With this story, Earl brings a southern country sensibility to The Twilight Zone that is American to the core," Johnson said in an interview, "which assures us that being simple is not being stupid…the story has such a classic feeling that one is tempted to believe that Hamner may not have made the story up but instead borrowed it from some ancient book of folk tales…It has stuck in my mind like fishhooks."

Mine, too. I first saw this when I was 15 or so, with my own dog (good ol' Bandit, R.I.{P. buddy) by my side. Did we used to watch The Twilight Zone together? It'd make a good story, but I don't think we ever had a serious ritual of it. He used to just come in and lay down near me when I was watching anything. Anyway: the regional or afterlife musings of this story aside, it's mainly a story about loving dogs.

"And another thing- don't talk about him like that when he can hear you. Rip's got feelings. I don't want them hurt."

Rachel's response amuses me:
"I'll feed him, but I'll be switched if I'm going to start sweet-talking him."

So yeah just as something to express a simple truth (dogs are awesome and we probably never live up to their intense loyalty and affection for us) in an uncomplicated manner, I like it. Everything else is secondary to that.

Other things I like: Rachel and Hyder, the tenderness shown to one another, primarily through Hyder's dialogue with others (particularly at the end when he makes sure Rachel won't have any trouble with that fella up the road before he follows the angel into heaven) or just through some of the acting.  

Like the looks on his face, not when he discovers the truth of his condition, but when he sees firsthand how it's impacting Rachel and that he can't do anything to comfort her.

Hamner says that "Hyder and Rachel were actually early versions of Grandma and Grandpa Walton. Around the time that he wrote the episode he was also writing a series of short stories called “The Old Man and the Old Woman” and he decided to use the two main characters, who were fully-developed already, as the main characters of "The Hunt." He continued to write stories featuring the elderly couple and they eventually ended up in The Waltons." There's plenty more on Hamner's career at the link up there - have at it, it's all interesting. I've got some Waltons on tap for one of these days/years.  

Also, I like that the devil is all just-the-facts (name, number, how's-you-die) and this subtly creepy shot of the road into Hell beyond the gate. ("That pasture up there they call the Elysian field. Cross that and you reach the golden street that takes you directly to the Old Master's headquarters.") 

And now, some leftover screencaps.

 ~

Considering the nature of the episode, maybe naming the dog "RIP" was too much? Or is it just the right touch? I've been asking myself that for 30 years ago, someone out there (probably not reading this blog here but hey) even longer.

King's Short Fiction reread, pt. 3: Skeleton Crew (1985)

As I was rereading this I kept getting flashes of study halls of yesteryear. One (in the art room) is where I first read "Survivor Type;" another (in the home ec room) was where I first read "The Monkey." Fascinating stuff, right! I only bring it up because I had a totally random detail get pushed to the front of my brain while re-reading this: someone had defaced one of the desks in one of the study halls with the Twisted Sister logo and someone else had defaced that with "royally rot" underneath it. I can see this clear as day now in my mind despite not having thought of it in likely over 30 years. 

I'll stop there (although there's way more! Screw you, Mrs. Sullivan!) I'm just always surprised what associative memories pop up. 

Other memories that came to the surface: I remember being baffled by the Milkmen stories, bored by "The Monkey," and frightened and disoriented by "Survivor Type." (Oddly enough, it was all the seagull details that did the trick with that story back then; I had a similar reaction to the "Black Freighter" parts of Watchmen, I'm realizing just right now. Something about doomed shipwrecks and eating seagulls raw unnerves me.) 

SOME GENERAL THOUGHTS ON 

THE COLLECTION AS A WHOLE

Not bad indeed. Take out "The Mist" and it's still pretty good, but "The Mist" definitely anchors things. Mostly it's another one that could pass as a Haunt of Fear or other EC annual: pretty easy to see "Survivor Type," "Nora," "Here There Be Tygers," "The Jaunt," "Beachworld," "The Raft," The Reaper's Image" or "The Man Who Would Not Shake Hands" drawn by any artist under the EC umbrella, and the stories all have the twists and motifs associated with them or Creepy or something. ("Beachworld" could be The Outer Limits, perhaps.) 

I didn't like the "Do You Love?" motif. It felt shoehorned into the stories where it appeared and was / is just never as profound as King seemed to think it was when putting this together. But it did result in lodging "Do You Feel Loved?" by U2 in my head for a few weeks, which is never a bad thing. Pop is underrated.

SOME REMARKS ON SPECIFIC STORIES

"The Man Who Would Not Shake Hands" - I mean, is it possible this man had never touched himself - even accidentally - before the night of his death? Highly unlikely. Then again, so are curses from peasant villagers in colonial outposts. This whole Storyteller's Club thing with Stevens as the butler seemed like something King was going to spend more time on than he ended up doing.

"Word Processor of the Gods" - I still think this one ends too abruptly, but this time around I was able to enjoy its ending more than any other time.

"Cain Rose Up" - A former reader of this site once praised this one as "No backstory. No motivation. No triggering event. Some dude just starts opening fire from the window of his dormitory." These are the qualities I actually don't like about it. It feels like a younger writer's story, where "OMG he just starts shooting people" is a shock-twist. And it is - and it's certainly the point, but the title suggests he was going for something deeper and only hints at it. A writer with considerable powers flexing muscles he doesn't quite know how to use it. But look at these guns, bro - two tickets to the show. (No grisly pun intended given the subject matter.) 

"The Ballad of the Flexible Bullet" - so many cool things in here but good lord: the central conceit unworks it for me comprehensively. King too often has one character tell stories for unfathomable amounts of time. This is something writers do sometimes; after all, what is writing anything but one person (the author) telling a story for unfathomable amounts of time? But it just doesn't work when you picture people actually doing it. Wizard and Glass is the exception that proves this otherwise unassailable rule: if your story rests on one character telling a story, think of it like a game of tennis. There's a net, there are boundaries, and there's someone on the other side hitting the ball back to you. If any of these things aren't there, it's not tennis; it's a guy with a ball machine. Or worse, standing at the baseline, talking to himself, holding the ball, probably pausing to finish another martini or take some snuff, while the crowd and the opponent shuffle about uneasily. 

Put another way: it's easy to fade out/ "I remember it like it was yesterday..." in TV / film, but to do so in a book means the characters are just sitting there, listening, while another character writes prose in front of them. It's a delicate game of trust with the audience, and stuff like "Flexible Bullet" (or, later, "Dedication") abuses it. 

"The Jaunt" - I remember liking this one a bit more than I did this time around. The central idea is still okay and realized pretty well, but again, the conceit of one guy telling a story in this detail and in this manner seemed a little odd to me. I listen to a lot of Old Time Radio and the set-up is straight from that. "You see, Jimmy, old inventor guy had a thought, and here's the amazing story of electricity..." Still: it's a good one. 

Finally, the delights of King's poetry ("Paranoid: A Chant" and "For Owen") continue to elude me. Although I could relate to "For Owen" a lot more on this read than any other. 

MY TOP TEN

10. 

"The Milkman(s)"

"Tales of the Laundry Game" should've been its own anthology of some kind. I don't think King could write it now, but back then, when it was fresh? Absolutely. It could have been anchored by Roadwork, even. Or maybe King could've just commissioned laundry-oriented prose from his writer friends. It's a great title. 

Back in high school, I thought the level of drunkenness on display in the 2nd of these two stories seemed unrealistic. Maybe I still do, but it's less about realism and more about discomfort. It's brought to life uncomfortably well. There are guys like these in every forgotten town in America, and some not-so-forgotten. 

9. 

"The Reaper's Image"

Mark Pavia was supposed to make an anthology movie of some kind about this, but it's unfortunately looking like it fell by the wayside. 

Great atmosphere in this one, although I suppose it's somewhat slight of a story. I like it very much just the same.

8. 

"The Monkey"

I'm surprised this one made my list, but this time around I kept thinking what if this was the only thing the guy ever wrote? What if this was just one of the stories in Dangerous Visions or some other anthology? I think its reputation would be improved. I think people might say things like "Gee, that King guy sure seemed like he had a grasp on the genre and this sort of thing; I wonder what kind of book he could put together?" I wouldn't consider it one of my personal favorites, but I admire how he uses traditional genre elements here.

There's a bit of Duma Key in this tale. Or perhaps it's that I didn't realize how much of "The Monkey" was in Duma Key. Although what I may be responding to are simply repurposed genre elements shared by both stories. 

7. 

"The Reach"

Dorrit's on Goat Island, burnt down in 1958: is this referenced elsewhere? Has King ever returned to Goat Island?

Little bit of Ray Bradbury in this one. A couple of these, actually. That's never a bad thing to be reminded of more than once in a short story collection.

6. 

"Survivor Type"

I'm always surprised when I meet people who don't know this one, as for me it's one of the first 3 or 4 things I think of when King is brought up. The image of a guy eating his feet to stave off starvation in a doomsday scenario made a deep impression on me as a lad, I guess. (As did the whole nightmare with the gulls.) 

The voice of this one gets a little too King's-diary-voice-y, but the events described and the slow breakdown of the narrator is something to witness. This story is an achievement for sure. Definitely a Harvey Kurtzman special - I can see it illustrated by him quite easily in my mind's eye. I wish I could screencap it for you.

5. 

"Beachworld"

I still wish King would go all-out one day and write his own sort of Martian Chronicles book. Maybe it could be this planet right here. ("Return to Uncharted Six!" Or whatever its uncharted designation is.) There might not be anything of startling originality here, but does there need to be? It's a cool story, well-visualized, well-characterized, suspenseful, and eerie. 

There's also (if you care for such things) a rather sad undercurrent of King's realizing his immersion in drug dependency in the prose. If only as an involved metaphor for sinking into addiction and getting trapped - even if it's unintentional - it's a good one. 

4. 

"Gramma"

I never liked this one as a kid, nor the the Tales of the Darkside episode adaptation that I remember seeing on some Saturday afternoon back in high school. (A sidenote: whenever I remember seeing something in high school without remembering the exact occasion, it always turns into a Saturday afternoon. I don't do this purposefully, I guess it's where my brain just shoves and stuffs all its less-than-certain memories.)

This time around, though, I thought it was pretty much a master class in effective writing. Perhaps, like "The Monkey," not a personal favorite, despite its high placing here, but you have to admire how it's put together. On a short list of underrated-King-fiction for me. If I did a Ten King Stories They Should Teach in College and Why blog, this would be on there. That'd be a lot of work, though; I hope someone else writes it so I don't have to.

3. 

"The Mist"

The first time I heard of this one was I believe in the first edition of George Beahm's The Stephen King Companion. I must have read it around the same time - in fact, I can remember where/when I first read it: the summer of 1989, over 2 nights, right before bed. Another 80s memory bottled and added to the collection! Of dubious vintage, perhaps. 

Anyway: "The Mist." A well-deserved classic. Its reputation has gotten stronger over the years. I cannot ever recall hearing it was overrated or bad, just that it's perhaps a tad overhyped by 2019. A first time reader might wonder what all the hullabaloo was about. It's a great example of King's taking a traditional b-movie set-up and writing about it realistically.

The Mist 3-D is sort of a radio play on audiocassette that was done in the 80s. (Available on youtube here.) I remember reading about it in the Beahm book and asking my local Waldenbooks if they had it (they did not), but then it fell off my radar for three whole decades. I was happy to hear it at last about a month ago. Pretty fun - worth tracking down. Is it a better adaptation than the movie? Maybe, maybe not. Than the TV show? Abso-friggin-lutely. 

2. 

"Uncle Otto's Truck"

I love this one. Unfortunately that's the sum total of what I scribbled down on my notepad - no quotes or larger context than that. It deserves a better breakdown than what I'm giving it. That goes for all of these. King takes what could be an absurd premise (as he does in so many places, though the one that's coming to mind right now is "Chattery Teeth") and imbues it with such an abundance of color and momentum that it verges on iconic. 

Uncle Oren sure left an impression on young Steve, didn't he? Sounds like a real character. I imagine he laid the foundation for all Uncle-Oren/Uncle-Otto type characters in his catalog to come. 

1. 

"Mrs. Todd's Shortcut"

I'd written down a whole bunch of quotes from this one, but they all seem kind of flat out of context - or worse, like King was trying too hard. But they don't read that way in-context. This is a lovely and quirky little story, emblematic of its author for me. A good eye for detail, "local color," and lots of romance, even the split-head of a monster or two splayed across the grill of a luxury car. 

King identifies his wife as the real Mrs. Todd. I often think Tabitha and her extended family provide more than a few real world analogs for some of King's more memorable female characters. And probably some of the male ones too. Cheers to you, Spruce family.

~

See you next time for Nightmares and Dreamscapes on this exciting re-read down the ol' King's Highway (closed for repairs)