Returning to the Tower III.B: The Drums

The thing about The Wastelands is that it really does have a driving beat.

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Returning to the Tower III.A: Torn Pages

So I wound up accidentally tearing out two of the last five pages of The Wastelands.

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Returning to the Tower II.C: The Song Was Always There

Ahh Susannah. From the moment she comes on the page, we know something transgressive is happening. Just consider for a moment that here in 2026 Stephen King is considered woke. Good gods. King was awake the moment he started writing. It used to be okay to praise a writer for being race conscious, and as far as I'm concerned it still is.

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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.

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Returning to the Tower I: The Gunslinger

I first read The Dark Tower when it was released in 2004. A friend of mine started me on my first trip to the Tower a year prior, and by the time book VII dropped in 2004, I was ready to buy it in hard copy the week it was released. 21 years later, my congealed guilt from hanging out over in r/TheDarkTower and r/darktower (where many Tower junkies/constant readers have made numerous trips) was activated after I finished watching season 1 of Welcome to Derry.

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