Returning to the Tower II.B: The Prisoner

So one of my friends happens to be reading The Dark Tower as well currently. When we inevitably got to the topic of his writing in this series (and especially in this book) I wound up saying, "King is weird, because he absolutely is pulp, until he's not, and then he is again." and I stand by that statement. The Drawing of the Three is one of those absolutely inscrutable pulp objects that is somehow also an exquisite thing. Eddie's tale is quite possibly the pulpiest part of the entire saga.

The one thing I think everyone remembers about Eddie is that he fights naked, and then some varying amount of the other things that happened to get him in that moment. Some people undoubtedly remember every detail of that fight, and each character and place that got Eddie and Roland there. In my case, I actually didn't have remotely sharp memories of anything after the sky carriage and the tooter fish popkins. The rest of it was more or less an array of memorable quest objectives prior to this read.

To give King his due, Balazar's whole crew is just a delightful array of movie gangsters. Each of them is a full character that we can put into the story. This thing is crying to be put on screen, and it sure is nice seeing moments like Roland seeing the sign and Balazar building his tower of cards.

About that card tower...this is the part where I will offer my one real critique of King's early writing, the thing that drags it down to mid in spite of stories that soar with amazingly rich characters and a spirit that can't be contained.

Seriously, these books are page turners. Those hundreds of pages fly by like you're riding on some kind of supersonic train.

But the rub is that King at this stage had learned perhaps too well to show and not tell.

His use of character dialogue is fantastic. In spite of the fact that he has all of these embedded stories told by the characters, the books are incredibly low on exposition.

But man, does he make up for it in the showing.

The doors are amazing. The doors are the heart of this thing. The doors have inspired a lot of other media and we're all spoiled by seeing that media build on those doors and make their own more elegant doors. The doors were also there before.

The doors are also this huge problem for the writing in this book.  Again, his take at this was groundbreaking even if he didn't make up "magic doorways." but they're also a trap for over writing.

As I stood looking at the reflections in those doorways on this journey to the Tower, I had to agree with my younger self. This is a really cool book, and the writing is also clunky as hell.

And on reading it a second time I was struck by the truth that I would have no problem giving my time again to reread this book. Rereading Eddie's story will be worth it every time. Eddie is a man who, well, he's the man for his time and place.

I turned 11 in 1987. I hadn't been to New York yet, but my family took a trip out there a couple of years later.

Eddie's New York is a New York I knew, and maybe it was just a little pulpy back then

Maybe it was still pulpy when I lived there in the early 2000's

Maybe it's still pulpy now...but, I doubt it.

I mean.

It's New York

There will always be pulp there.

King's treatment of late '80's New York is brutal, and weird, but also loving.

I'll get back to that in II.C.

II.D. TBD, but unlikely. My read of O/Detta and Mort is pretty unitary.

Also, I'm more than halfway already on The Waste Lands so..

In one sense you've already caught me with my pants down.