They pointed out that Roland's name wasn't even revealed for the first couple dozen pages. I didn't even notice.

That is one of the downsides of knowing these stories so well already. Sometimes the mystery of the reveal is lost and you don't even realize it.

#TheDarkTower #StephenKing

One of the hosts (who's an author in his own right) starts off by saying that he had only read "Needful Things" and "Carrie" before agreeing to do a Stephen King book podcast. And to have "The Gunslinger" as a third book to read, that must have been quite a shock.

I really like the dynamic of one person who has read all of King's books talking with somebody who is experiencing most of them for the first time.

#TheDarkTower #StephenKing

Day 620
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Listening now to the debut episode of The Kingslingers as they do a deep dive into Chapter 1 of The Dark Tower: The Gunslinger. It is a long episode, so I will just be listening to the first half this morning.

#TheDarkTower #StephenKing

https://podcastaddict.com/episode/93006202

Gizmodo: 10 Horror Moves to Stream on Netflix Tonight https://gizmodo.com/10-netflix-horror-movies-popes-exorcist-stephen-king-1850826207 #the2023sundancefilmfestival #entertainmentculture #2019fantasticfest #guillermodeltoro #laysladeoliveira #jessicachastain #thehouseofusher #inthetallgrass #jesseeisenberg #patrickwilson #tomhiddleston #edgarallanpoe #horrorfiction #miawasikowska #florencepugh #mikeflanagan #tsaihsuanyen #incestinfilm #runrabbitrun #babakanvari #stephenking #theexorcist #oscar

One things I noticed while reading the revised version of The Gunslinger (which I failed to mention before) was the the word "Resumption" on the title page.

For those who have traveled the full beam all the way through book 7 will get the power of that word.

But is it too much of a spoiler? Was it really necessary? For somebody re-reading, it's extraordinarily powerful. But it's power ONLY for those people.

#TheDarkTower #StephenKing

This episode was recorded just a few months before the movie version of The Dark Tower was released in theaters. It was imagined that the Tull massacre scene ought to have this song playing as Roland gunned downed all the residents.

Well I already have said that this would have made an amazing segment in the film, it's a hard no from me on the soundtrack suggestion.

#TheDarkTower #StephenKing

https://youtu.be/9geEGT4SgCg?si=2QX41pERmwRZy0dP

I remember being very critical of the recent CBS All Access remake of The Stand for the overbearing use of flashbacks and flashbacks within flashbacks.

Yet, as the hosts reminded me, King did that exact same thing in Chapter 1, with Roland talking to the hermit Brown recounting his trip to Tull, and in that recounting gave another flashback from one of the characters about how the Man in Black resurrected a town resident. It was so compelling, I didn't even notice.

#TheDarkTower #StephenKing

Regarding King's later revisions to The Gunslinger to align it better with the overall series, one of the hosts asked the other: Do you feel King "George Lucas-fied" a classic story, meddling with it to the point of making it worse?

I agree with the response: No. The changes were to the world-building (like a reference to billy-bumblers) to make it feel more like the universe he eventually built.

#TheDarkTower #StephenKing

Day 619
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Two Guys to the Dark Tower Came devoted a podcast episode to Chapter 1 of The Dark Tower: The Gunslinger. In fact, this was their very first episode ever, so it'll be fun to hear where it all began for them.

#TheDarkTower #StephenKing

http://twoguysdarktower.blubrry.com/2016/12/03/introductions/

Oh so I also finished Holly by #StephenKing. Warning! MASSIVE SPOILERS!

I was enjoying this very much until right near the end when the ableist language came out. How I wish people would stop using the word “psychotic” for cold, methodical serial killers. Psychosis is literally the opposite of those things, it’s irrational by its very nature (as I can tell you from personal experience). Maybe King meant psychopathic. That would come closer, but is still problematic. Why couldn’t he have just left it that the Harrisons were, as he said at other points, evil? Why say they were “like a crazy mother putting her baby in a microwave”? Again, that’s the opposite of rational. Any mother “crazy” enough to do that would be very, very mentally ill. And the Harrisons were not mentally ill. I find this so depressing, it’s clumsy and it’s lazy. A lot of the book is about unacceptable prejudice in terms of race and sexuality, but then rank ableism is somehow OK. Nope #AmReading #bookstodon #books

He blasted his way through the middle of them, running as the bodies fell, his hands picking the targets with ease and dreadful accuracy. Two men and a woman went down, and he ran through the hole they left.
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This whole scene was just MADE to be filmed and shown on the big screen. Why didn't we get it. Why?

#TheDarkTower #StephenKing

The whole huge mountain of flesh suddenly strained forward and upward, yet he was careful not to let her secret flesh touch him.

Then she seemed to wilt and grow smaller, and she wept with her hands in her lap.

“So,” he said, getting up. “The demon is served, eh?”

“Get out. You’ve killed the child of the Crimson King. But you will be repaid. I set my watch and warrant on it. Now get out. Get out.”
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I capture this as one of the strangest scenes I've ever read.

#TheDarkTower #StephenKing

“He stood on the balcony with Jezebel and watched as King Ahaz fell screaming to his death, and he and she grinned as the dogs gathered and lapped up his blood. Oh, my little brothers and sisters, watch thou for The Interloper.”
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Sylvia Pittston, the female preacher, could've been a twinner to Carrie White's mother, Margaret.

#TheDarkTower #StephenKing

Thunder racketed the sky with a sound like some god coughing.

“All right!” the man in black grinned. “All right, let’s get down to it!”
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It's almost as if this very first scene about the man in black were written with Matthew McConaughey in mind decades later.

#TheDarkTower #StephenKing

A fool’s chorus of half-stoned voices was rising in the final protracted lyric of “Hey Jude”—“Naa-naa-naa naa-na-na-na . . . hey, Jude . . .”—as he entered the town proper.
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A very haunting scene, but only if you're familiar with the Beatles song. By the late 80s when I first read this book, "Hey Jude" was already an old song but not so old that it wasn't still within the realm of pop culture.

Today's reader probably thinks those are lyrics invented for the story.

#TheDarkTower #StephenKing

“Do you believe in an afterlife?” the gunslinger asked him as Brown dropped three ears of hot corn onto his plate.

Brown nodded. “I think this is it.”
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I don't think King would hit such a depressing sentiment again, at least until the ending of Revival.

#TheDarkTower #StephenKing

https://www.bookola.de/3-newsflashes/newsflash/2526-stephen-kings-der-werwolf-von-tarker-mills-als-illustrierter-roman.html
Stephen Kings Kalenderroman »Das Jahr des Werwolfs« besticht nicht nur durch geradlinigen Horror, der Gänsehaut garantiert, sondern auch durch eine ausgefallene Erzählstruktur, die durch die aufwendigen Illustrationen des legendären Bernie Wrightson perfekt ergänzt wird.
#stephenking #berniewrightson #tarkermills
#werwolf #splitterverlag

The stars were as indifferent to this as they were to wars, crucifixions, resurrections.
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This (aside from the opening line) will stick with me as the most memorable from The Gunslinger.

#TheDarkTower #StephenKing

It had always been this way. The gunslinger had followed the man in black across the desert for two months now, across the endless, screamingly monotonous purgatorial wastes, and had yet to find spoor other than the hygienic sterile ideographs of the man in black’s campfires. He had not found a can, a bottle, or a waterbag... He hadn’t found any dung. He assumed the man in black buried it.
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Hadn't expected to read about the main antagonist's dung, but here we are.

#TheDarkTower #StephenKing

I am reading the 2003 revised and corrected edition, the one that aligns better with the overall series.

I've never actually read this version. I read the original mass release back in the late 80s. I read each of the books as they were released, but because they were so spread out, who could remember any inconsistencies?

But now that I'm traveling this series straight through, I'm gonna need my plots to line up all nice and orderly.

#TheDarkTower #StephenKing