Kevin's Watch

Cail wrote:

Lucimay wrote:

Cail wrote:Couldn't have said it better. WaG is arguably the best thing King's written.

TDotT and The Wastelands are definitely the best in the series. WaG was just necessary and not even close to King's best writing.

Says you. I found TDotT tedious.

sez YOU! alright alright. i capitulate. to each his own.

Cail wrote:Exactly. Roland becomes a real person in WaG, and the story is just crushingly beautiful.

crushingly beautiful to you was cloyingly maudlin to me.

again, to each his own.

Luci, you have a heart of stone.

nuh uh.


ok...i really didn't care for Susan. didn't care for the way King wrote her. flat. one dimensional. i did really really love Sheemie tho. does that get me heart points??

Cail wrote: Says you. I found TDotT tedious.

I'm glad I'm not the only one who felt that way.

For me, TGS was worse, but TDotT felt like it was all introduction to me.

I just got past River Crossing, on the way to Lud. The complication seems to finally be kicking in.

I have to reread The Stand next, and then I'll begin WaG. I look forward to some beauty...

And what exactly was wrong with The Gunslinger?

--A

TGS just read very tediously for me. I loved Jake, but probably would not have continued with the series without y'all posting about it so much. The culmination of Jake at the end of the book depressed me very much.

However, the passage through The Mansion I just finished had me on the edge of my seat...

I thought Jakes death was great...really fleshed out Roland's Character for me.

--A

I think was Menolly is getting at regarding TG is that Roland is joyless and hard. It has the austere feeling of a Peckinpah movie, and besides he lets his symbolic son die to catch up to Flagg. Not an easy read. Vilence and death without much character development.

Having said that...I loved it. I was hooked from the get-go. I had been reading King since 1985, but only pickep the Gunslinger in 1999 or so. I wondered WTF took me so long?!

TGS was the first King book I ever read.

And I liked Roland hard. Cold even.

--A

I'm not a fan of cold and hard protagonists. That's why I don't read or watch Westerns or Martial Arts themed books and movies.

I did not get the feeling of deja vu I expected reading TG. I'm thinking I read a few paragraphs from the serialized version in my Daddy's Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction and didn't get into it then so never read more.

Fair enough. Ah well, Roland gets more and more human as you go along.

--A

Avatar wrote:
And I liked Roland hard. Cold even.

--A

Avatar wrote: Ah well, Roland gets more and more human as you go along.

--A

that could be why i liked the first three books the best!

but truthfully, i didn't find him cold. i thought he was more complex than just saying he was "cold". pragmatic certainly. weary. determined.
i didn't find him missing any essential parts. and jake's death did not, in the least, put me off him. frankly, i knew jake would be back. i've been reading king since Carrie was published. i knew that Roland did what he had to do. that everything was happening for a reason.
Roland was aware of the consequences of his choices. i trusted him more than jake or any of the other characters ever did.

Dunno, I think their mistrust was well placed. Complex, I'll certainly agree with. But in the first 3 books, Roland would have shot down any of them who threatened his quest without a second thought.

(Well, he would have had second thoughts. But he would still have shot them.)

--A

Avatar wrote:Dunno, I think their mistrust was well placed. Complex, I'll certainly agree with. But in the first 3 books, Roland would have shot down any of them who threatened his quest without a second thought.

(Well, he would have had second thoughts. But he would still have shot them.)

--A

Not sure i can go that far. In TDotT, he mentions that he could have shot Eddie at any time btween the 1st shuffle and the drawing of Odetta/Detta, but chose not to... while it was not outright love (at first) that would have prevented his shooting of any of them, his absolute belief in ka would have, IMO.

ka, khef, ka-tet...

I'm reading, but I'm still very confused. The River Crossing denizens are referred to as ka-tet at one point. Did that mean all thirty of them, or just the ones who remained for the palaver, which initially was four?

Avatar wrote:Dunno, I think their mistrust was well placed. Complex, I'll certainly agree with. But in the first 3 books, Roland would have shot down any of them who threatened his quest without a second thought.

(Well, he would have had second thoughts. But he would still have shot them.)

--A

i didn't say i thought their mistrust wasn't understandable, i said I trusted him more than any of them did. I, the reader. he is, after all, the protagonist. of course he would have shot them had he deemed it necessary. and had it served the story, King would have had him shoot them all. and it wouldn't necessarily have sat well with Roland to do that either. the Roland of The Gunslinger wasn't the Roland of The Wastelands either. by the time Jake was back and Oy was with them, Roland was more "in the world" with the rest of them than he was when he was in Tull or with Jake the first time. we don't know how long he'd been chasing the man in black when The Gunslinger began, but it's implied that it could have been decades or even centuries. and he'd been alone for much of that journey. think how that makes a person. reality was a concept he hadn't pondered in a while. the world had moved on. he was not used to dealing with actual "real time" relationships. even his time in Tull was more dreamlike and the people in Tull were zombie-ish, not anybody you'd want to have more than a passing howdy do with.
in many ways, Jake, Eddie, and Susannah were much more REAL and dealt with each other in a way Roland hadn't dealt with other human beings in a long long time.
this is why everything that happened in Gunslinger with Jake made sense to me. and why i didn't consider Roland so much cold, emotionless, or heartlessly callous. i considered him more like...shellshocked. road-worn. grievously hurt and wary of all human relations.
which is what makes him seem cold to Eddie and the rest.

oh my god. i can't believe i just blathered on like that.

Hey, that was a great post, and a good point. He was worn out after the years and the battles. I think he tells Eddie at some point that he had been travelling for 12 years as far as he could tell, but that he had crossed far more distance than shold have been contained between the Fall of Gilead and the Western Sea.

--A

well good! i'm glad you were able to get what i was saying!!

I'm good at figuring out what people mean.

--A

Avatar wrote:I'm good at figuring out what people mean.

--A

yes i guess you really are, now that i think about it, Tankmeister!!

just one of your many talents!!