by Jay Wilburn
The plan is to reread all of Stephen King’s works in the order that they were published. Richard Chizmar of Cemetery Dance had the vision. I’m doing it because I am a writer and I want to improve my fiction. And I love Stephen King’s stories. I think there is something to be learned through this process.
You can also go back to the beginning and read Before Carrie or any of my other posts up through this one and beyond by checking out this link to the Master List of all my #StephenKingRevisited posts.
Let’s see what’s behind door number 3 …
After rereading The Dark Tower book 2: The Drawing of the Three, I’m still pretty sure this is my favorite of the ones I’ve read from the series. To be fair, I’ve neglected this series over the years by not picking up all the later books, but this is a long journey and I will rectify that if given enough time along my current course. I realized some of the pieces of memory I thought I had about this story were actually from The Waste Lands which comes next in the series about six more books down the line. I might have to amend which book is my favorite once I return to that book.
The book is dedicated to Don Grant “who’s taken a chance on these novels one by one.”
King opens by putting his hero through a disturbing indignity that changes the man’s capabilities from the beginning of this part of the story. King needed him to be vulnerable and to have to depend on others here and going forward. He needed the gunslinger to be willing to do the unthinkable — let someone else touch his guns. The lobstrocities served that task and the underlying, peripheral threat of this harrowing journey along the beaches of the Western Sea nicely. I remembered these creatures, but forgot they were called lobstrocities. Love it. “I see serious problems ahead,” the gunslinger repeats through the book beginning with this opening nightmare.
“It’s like you’re looking for a room to die in” is a great line.
I like that the gunslinger respects Eddie because of how well he does fighting naked. I’ll need to work on that and add it to my resume.
“Fault always lies in the same place with him weak enough to lay blame.” This is an interesting line.
I forgot about the split personality storyline. King calls is schizophrenia. Or at least his characters mislabel it that.
“To pay Hell is one thing, but do you want to own it?” Powerful line.
“Might as well try to drink the ocean with a spoon as to argue with a lover” is another interesting one.
The gunslinger has multiple voices in his head. Memories from the past speak to him. He hears his thoughts in other people’s voices. I like this technique.
I forgot the person behind the third door completely and he was pretty significant to the story. I combined part of that storyline with the action behind the first door. I do remember the gunshop scene and the reference to the Terminator.
The characters in this story figure things out too quickly, too precisely, and too much alike in the end. King pulls it back a little as they are gathering information, but they land too solidly in the same thinking and the right conclusions too many times. It is too on the nose for all the main characters to get to the same place in their separate thinking every time.
There’s a reference to the movie version of The Shining with a character comparing the view through the transdimensional doors with the steady-cam POV shots from that film.
A stewardess strikes a match on an airplane and smokes. Most of the pilots have used coke. One of us, either King or I, are out of touch with how many people were actually using cocaine in this era. It’s probably me. Roland wants to know why anyone in our world would want drugs when we have so much sugar available everywhere. There are references to Halloween, The Purple Rose of Cairo, In The Heat of the Night, and other films that illustrate points and conclusions by the characters from different worlds and eras.
I’m looking forward to the rest of the Dark Tower series after this revisit.
My next post will be Before Misery which will be linked on the Master List of all my Stephen King Revisited posts.
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