I have remembered why I liked Stephen King in the first place.
I'd forgotten. Making myself read all of his books in published order makes some of them a bit of a chore. Like when I read The Gunslinger and I was just going through the motions. But it also means I get to discover things I hadn't thought I'd enjoy, like The Drawing of the Three.
In Misery, writer Paul Sheldon describes "the gottas". "I gotta finish this chapter," "I gotta know if she got out," etc. I got the gottas from The Drawing of the Three. And Misery, which I've read before.
In the introduction to The Drawing of the Three, Stephen King talks about his inspiration. He wanted to write an epic, like Lord of the Rings, but modern and American, and featuring cowboys. With The Drawing of the Three he's sold me on cowboys as knights. I can see how they'd have the same kind of grandeur and mythos if they'd had just a little more mystery and a bit more time to get settled in.
I'm quite excited to read the third Dark Tower story, so here's an update to show how far away I am.
Carrie - 1974 - June 15th 2013
'Salem's Lot - 1975 - June 30th 2013
The Shining - 1977 - July 28th 2013
Rage - 1977 - July 31st 2013
Night Shift - 1978 - August 28th 2013
The Stand - 1978 - March 20th 2014
The Long Walk - 1979 - March 23rd 2014
The Dead Zone - 1979 - June 2014
Firestarter - 1980 - August 16th 2014
- 06/13 to 17/8/14 - 9
Roadwork - 1981 - 23rd August 2014
Danse Macabre - 1981 - 7th September 2014
- BONUS: Small World (Tabitha King) - 10th September 2014
Cujo - 1981 - 20th September 2014
The Running Man - 1982- 22nd September 2014
The Dark Tower: The Gunslinger - 1982 - 30th September 2014
Creepshow - 1982 - 1st October 2014
Different Seasons - 1982 - 24th October 2014
- 17/8/14 to 25/10/14 - 8 (17)
Christine - 1983
Pet Sematary - 1983
Cycle of the Werewolf - 1983
The Talisman - 1984
Thinner - 1984
- 25/10/14/14 to 14/07/2015 - 5 (22)
Skeleton Crew - 1985
It - 1986
The Eyes of the Dragon - 1987
The Dark Tower II: The Drawing of the Three - 1987
Misery - 1987
- 14/7/15 to 18/10/2015 - 5 (27)
The Tommyknockers - 1987
Nightmares in the Sky - 1988
The Dark Half - 1989
Four Past Midnight - 1990
The Dark Tower III: The Waste Lands - 1991
Needful Things - 1991
Gerald's Game - 1992
Dolores Claiborne - 1992
Nightmares & Dreamscapes - 1993
Insomnia - 1994
Rose Madder - 1995
The Green Mile - 1996
Desperation - 1996
The Regulators - 1996
Six Stories - 1997
The Dark Tower IV: Wizard and Glass - 1997
Dark Tower: Little Sisters of Eluria (Legend) - 1998
Bag of Bones - 1998
Storm of the Century - 1998
The Girl Who Loved Tom Gordon - 1999
The New Lieutenant's Rap - 1999
Hearts in Atlantis - 1999
Blood and Smoke - 1999
"Riding the Bullet" - 2000
On Writing - 2000
Secret Windows - 2000
The Plant - 2000
Dreamcatcher - 2001
Black House (with Peter Straub) -2001
Everything's Eventual - 2002
From a Buick 8 - 2002
The Dark Tower V: Wolves of the Calla - 2003
The Dark Tower VI: Song of Susannah - 2004
The Dark Tower VII: The Dark Tower - 2004
Faithful - 2004
- BONUS: 20th Century Ghosts (Joe Hill) - Jan 2005
- BONUS: Josie & Jack (Kelly Braffet) - Feb 2005
- BONUS: We're All in This Together (Owen King) - 2005
The Colorado Kid - 2005
Cell - 2006
Lisey's Story - 2006
Blaze - 2007
Duma Key - 2008
Just After Sunset - 2008
Stephen King Goes to the Movies - 2009
Ur - 2009
Under the Dome - 2009
Blockade Billy - 2010
Full Dark, No Stars - 2010
Mile 81 - 2011
11/22/63 - 2011
American Vampire (with Scott Snyder) - 2011
"Throttle" (with Joe Hill) - 2012
The Dark Tower: The Wind Through the Keyhole - 2012
A Face in the Crowd (with Stewart O'Nan) - 2012
"In the Tall Grass" (with Joe Hill) - 2012
"GUNS" - 2013
Ghost Brothers of Darkland County - 2013
Joyland - 2013
The Dark Man: An Illustrated Poem - 2013
Doctor Sleep - 2013
Mr. Mercedes - 2014
Revival - November 2014
Finders Keepers - 2015
...four more novels and three more years. Now we're going from the year before I was born until the year after my sister was.
I started doing this in June of 2013. Since then, Stephen King has added seven titles in the time it's taken me to read twenty-seven. So another three to four years before I'm caught up?
There are several links to King's other work in Drawing of the Three. Denis and Thomas from The Eyes of the Dragon are mentioned, and the Overlook hotel from The Shining is mentioned in Misery.
The first time I met Roland the Gunslinger and The Dark Tower was about fifteen years ago, in the short story collection Legends. I bought it because it included the Discworld story The Sea and Little Fishes. As I touched on above, I was born in 1988, six years after Roland met the world when The Gunslinger was published.
James Smythe - who I am starting to feel oddly close to - is three years ahead of me. His article from 2013 points out the high barriers to entry for The Dark Tower series; because it ties together so many threads from other Stephen King novels, it works a lot better if you've read them. Maybe that's why it's started working for me now.
Here's James Smythe's Misery post; I have gone off him a bit now because I skipped ahead to read his thoughts on Rose Madder and he's managed to confuse two characters as being the exact same person. Like if you read Harry Potter and thought Quirrel was another name for Snape. It's kind of a glaring error that reflects badly on the rest of his writing.
No comments:
Post a Comment