Journey step started: Apr 21, 2024
Journey step ended: ???
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The Book — The Graphic Novel — Charlie the Choo-Choo
The Book
Day 842: Apr 21, 2024
It’s a GLORIOUS day when I get to start the next book in my Stephen King journey.
Today, I begin the third book in The Dark Tower series: The Waste Lands.
This is my third time through but it’s easily been 20 years since I last read it. I have only vague memories: A train, some riddles, and a giant robot bear. But that’s about it.
So on with it, then! I expect, given the number of podcast episodes tied to this book, I’ll be here for a few months.
King’s Introduction to The Waste Lands (inserted in a later edition, I think) is all about the power of being the age of 19 – a time when you think you’re invincible and could do no wrong.
And that applies to me, remembering how I became engaged my first (of three) wives at that powerful age of innocence and ignorance.
Then, in an almost completely empty movie theater (the Bijou, in Bangor, Maine, if it matters), I saw a film directed by Sergio Leone. It was called The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly, and before the film was even half over, I realized that what I wanted to write was a novel that contained Tolkien’s sense of quest and magic but set against Leone’s almost absurdly majestic Western backdrop.
While I read the text, I’m listening to the audiobook of The Waste Lands as read by the legendary Frank Muller back in 1991.
But suppose it was Jack Mort, not Walter, who pushed Jake into the path of the oncoming Cadillac? Is such a thing possible? Roland can’t say, not for sure, but if that is the case, where is Jake now? Dead? Alive? Caught somewhere in time? And if Jake Chambers is still alive and well in his own world of Manhattan in the mid-1970s, how is it that Roland still remembers him?
Ah yes, I remember now that the painful return of Jake is covered in this book.
The Waste Lands takes up the story of these three pilgrims on the face of Mid-World some months after the confrontation by the final door on the beach. They have moved some fair way inland.
Finally, we’re past the summary stage of The Drawing of the Three and heading into something new.
I’M SO FREAKIN’ EXCITED!
“ ‘I do not kill with my gun; she who kills with her gun has forgotten the face of her father.
“ ‘I kill with my heart.’ ”
“Then KILL them, for your father’s sake!” Roland shouted. “KILL THEM ALL!”
This was only a training exercise, but wow – Roland has a way of getting a rise out Susannah!
“‘A gunslinger without teeth is no gunslinger.”
“Damn it, I’m not a gunslinger!”
He ignored that; he could afford to. If she was no gunslinger, then he was a billy-bumbler.
Ah – the first mention of a “billy-bumbler”!
At one moment she was in her wheelchair, an item which had been purchased in New York City’s finest medical supply house in the fall of 1962. At the next she was balanced precariously on Roland’s shoulders like a cheerleader, her muscular thighs gripping the sides of his neck, his palms over his head and pressing into the small of her back.
Eventually, as his real nature became clear to them, their efforts to kill him ceased. He was, of course, a demon incarnate—or the shadow of a god. They called him Mir, which to these people meant “the world beneath the world.” He stood seventy feet high, and after eighteen or more centuries of undisputed rule in the West Woods, he was dying.
Eventually, as his real nature became clear to them, their efforts to kill him ceased. He was, of course, a demon incarnate—or the shadow of a god. They called him Mir, which to these people meant “the world beneath the world.” He stood seventy feet high, and after eighteen or more centuries of undisputed rule in the West Woods, he was dying.
The bear, whose real name was not Mir but something else entirely, made his way through the forest like a moving building, a shaggy tower with reddish-brown eyes. Those eyes glowed with fever and madness.
I only know Mir as the Russian space station and has its etymological roots in “world” or “peace”.
..and it had not happened because she was unlucky or because the State of New York had decided not to jerk the jerk’s license after his third DUI ….
And after countless hours of hearing Frank Muller read these novels, I clearly heard an error on his part for the first time.
Without doubt, I know he said, “after his third OUI”.
There’s no mistaking “D” for “O” here. Do we call that a “speako”?
The same was true with reading . . . baseball . . . Ring-a-Levio . . . math . . . even jump-rope, which was a girl’s game.
Ring-a-Levio? Never heard of it.
Another tree fell with a ratcheting, coughing crash. Looking down a ragged aisle between the tall firs, Eddie saw a cloud of sawdust rise in the still air. The creature responsible for that cloud suddenly bellowed— a raging, gut-freezing sound.
It was one huge motherfucker, whatever it was.
Expert crafting what it’s like to encounter a gigantic monster! Not that I know from experience. Me? I’d probably stand frozen releasing from every orifice simultaneously.
The bear roared and lashed at the tree, cutting deep wounds in its ancient bark, wounds which bled clear, resinous sap. Eddie kept on yanking himself up. The branches were thinning now, and when he risked a glance down he stared directly into the bear’s muddy eyes. Below its cocked head, the clearing had become a target with the scattered smudge of campfire as its bullseye.
I’m really enjoying the artwork in this book.
“It’s one of the Twelve!” he shouted. “One of the Guardians! Must be! But I thought they were—”
I’m so happy to be back in the mythology and world-building of Midworld.
And that’s it for today. I’m 8% of the way through The Waste Lands.
Day 843: Apr 22, 2024
One bearly starts The Waste Lands before the crazy action hits (pun intentional).
Now, to see if a 70-ft bear shits in the woods is The Cast of Ka.
Day 844: Apr 23, 2024
Dark Tower Palaver has a couple of hours’ worth of opinions on just the first few sub-chapters of The Waste Lands.
Day 845: Apr 24, 2024
Finishing the second half of Dark Tower Palaver‘s opening salvo about The Waste Lands.
Day 846: Apr 25, 2024
I’m back to reading the text of The Waste Lands.
Where I last left off, it was Eddie sitting in a tree getting schnotted upon by the 70-ft bear named/not-named Mir.
And then Roland & Susannah coming riding to the rescue.
A spasm convulsed it, bowed its back. Its front claws rose and gored madly at its own face. Worm-infested blood flew and splattered. Then it fell over, making the ground tremble with its fall, and lay still. After all its strange centuries, the bear the Old People had called Mir—the world beneath the world—was dead.
Already, I’m liking The Waste Lands more than The Drawing of the Three. The dive right into the fantastical and mysterious is what I needed.
Are the Slow Mutants who worshipped those broken remnants the final descendents of the people who once lived in this forest and finally fled your wrath? I don’t know, will never know . . . but it feels right. Yes.
First, I encountered a spelling error in the book. It’s supposed to be “descendants” (with an ‘a’ at the end). Second, it’s an interesting theory about the origin of the slow mutants under the mountain.
“He called it a Guardian, I think,” Susannah said.
“Yes.” Roland’s voice was slow with amazement. “I thought they were all gone, must all be gone . . . if they ever existed outside of the old wives’ tales in the first place.”
“Whatever it was, it was one crazy mother,” Eddie said.
Roland smiled a little. “If you’d lived two or three thousand years, you’d be one crazy mother, too.”
SHARDIK!
That must be an acronym for something…
And, embedded in the delicate crisscross of tendons which shaped the socket, he saw a webwork of what looked like strings. Beyond them, at the back of the socket, was a red spark, blinking on and off. It illuminated a tiny square board marked with silvery squiggles of what could only be solder.
“It isn’t a bear, it’s a fucking Sony Walkman,” he muttered.
Susannah looked around at him. “What?”
😂😂 😂
Roland stood up….
He took two trembling steps and then collapsed to his knees, palms pressed to the sides of his sagging head.
I’m getting a little tired of Roland having some sort of ailment. In the first book, he was dehydrated almost to the point of death. The entirety of the second book was spent dying of infection. Now he has a crippling mental issue with the Jake/multiverse dilemma.
“When everything was new, the Great Old Ones—they weren’t gods, but people who had almost the knowledge of gods—created Twelve Guardians to stand watch at the twelve portals which lead in and out of the world.”
OK, now we’re talking! Great Old Ones. Guardians. Portals…
I will be enjoying this world for quite a while!
“Here is the world as I was told it existed when I was a child. The Xs are the portals standing in a ring at its eternal edge. If one drew six lines, connecting these portals in pairs—so— … Do you see where the lines cross in the center? … At this nexus lies the Great Portal, the so-called Thirteenth Gate which rules not just this world but all worlds.”
He tapped the center of the circle.
“Here is the Dark Tower for which I’ve searched my whole life.”
“At each of the twelve lesser portals the Great Old Ones set a Guardian. In my childhood I could have named them all in the rimes my nursemaid—and Hax the cook—taught to me . . . but my childhood was long ago. There was the Bear, of course, and the Fish . . . the Lion . . . the Bat. And the Turtle—he was an important one . . .”
The words in this book carry such weight and importance that was lacking in The Drawing of the Three. I’ll stop criticizing that book now!
“See the TURTLE of enormous girth!
On his shell he holds the earth.
His thought is slow but always kind;
He holds us all within his mind.
On his back all vows are made;
He sees the truth but mayn’t aid.
He loves the land and loves the sea,
And even loves a child like me.”
This gorgeous image from: https://thetowerjunkie.tumblr.com/post/78621415450/petitengel-see-the-turtle-of-enormous-girth-on
That’s it for reading today. What an amazing section to read – definitely left me wanting more! But, for the next couple of days, I’ll listen to a podcast episode covering this section and relive its enjoyment.
I am 11% of the way through the book.
Day 847: Apr 26, 2024
Dark Tower Palaver dives into the lore of Shardik and the Guardians in their second book club episode about The Waste Lands.
Day 848: Apr 27, 2024
Listening to the second half of Dark Tower Palaver‘s second book club episode about The Waste Lands.
In this episode, they explained to me that “Shardik” is a name of a novel by Richard Adams.
But they neglected to mention that it was a fantasy novel about… A giant bear!
Day 849: Apr 28, 2024
Back to reading a bit more of The Waste Lands. When I last left it, Roland was dropping major Mid-world lore bombs to his travelling companions, talking about huge animal guardians and 12 portals with The Dark Tower at its nexus.
And Roland is going mad from the Jake is dead/who’s Jake? reality split in his brain.
In this subsection, Roland is essentially retelling the entirety of the story of The Gunslinger with hesitations around the Jake parts. It just underscored how amazing of a tale that actually was.
Go slow past the Drawers, gunslinger. While you travel with the boy, the man in black travels with your soul in his pocket.
…
He looked at them both.
“The Drawers are places of desolation,” he said. “The Drawers are the waste lands.”
Roland held it up, looked at it long and thoughtfully, and let it drop back. “Later, after Jake . . . after he died . . . I caught up with the men I had been chasing.”
The “men” or the “man”? Was this a typo or was this intentional?
He threw the jawbone into the fire.
FOR A MOMENT IT only lay there, a white relic bent in a ghostly half-grin. Then it suddenly blazed red, washing the clearing with dazzling scarlet light.
This was Walter’s jawbone, they one he picked up at the end of The Gunslinger and has been carrying around with him for some reason ever since.
His eye saw, and his heart was opened. It was as if all love and life had suddenly risen from Roland’s dead artifact; it was there in the fire, burning out in triumph and some wonderful, inchoate defiance, declaring that despair was a mirage and death a dream.
The rose! he thought incoherently. First the key, then the rose! Behold! Behold the opening of the way to the Tower!
The jaw morphed into several shapes inside the fire. Heavy DT symbology laid out here!
I end my reading here for the day. I am 13% of the way through The Waste Lands.
Day 850: Apr 29, 2024
I spend some time with The Cast of Ka as they take the next step into the world of The Waste Lands.
Day 851: Apr 30, 2024
Picking up The Waste Lands right after the gang have some hallucinatory visions from burning Walter’s jawbone in a campfire.
They saw a key and a rose – and Eddie was able to capture the shape of the key before the vision disappeared.
With that he wrapped himself in an old blanket and a new deerskin, rolled away from the fire, and would say no more.
Eddie and Susannah lay down together. When they were sure the gunslinger must be asleep, they made love. Roland heard them going about it as he lay wakeful and heard their quiet after-love talk. Most of it was about him.
That’s quite… weird.
EDDIE ALSO DREAMED—DREAMED he was back in New York, walking along Second Avenue with a book in his hand.
…
He stopped for a moment, flipped the book open, and read the first line. The man in black fled across the desert, Wolfe had written, and the gunslinger followed.
That stopped me dead in my tracks. How could he dream the words that ONLY appeared in a book written by a fiction author (King) who constructed this story?
That’s a helluva foreshadow!
The Tower was a dark gray exclamation point planted in the earth and rising above the field of blood-red roses. The sky arched above it was blue, but filled with puffy white clouds like sailing ships. They flowed above and around the top of the Dark Tower in an endless stream.
The artwork included in this edition is absolutely stunning.
I would LOVE a 6-foot print mounted on my library wall.
And that’s it for today’s reading of The Waste Lands. Shardik has finally given up the ghost and the gang is backtracking along his destructive path in the forest in the hopes of finding one of the twelve portals.
I am now 15% of the way through the book.
Day 852: May 1, 2024
To help me digest what I’ve read in The Waste Lands so far is Dark Tower Palaver.
Day 853: May 2, 2024
To help me digest what I’ve read in The Waste Lands so far is Dark Tower Palaver.
Day 854: May 3, 2024
I’m back to The Waste Lands which, after a little bit of action with a big cyber-bear, has been mostly about visions, dreams, and lore.
“Roland, Eagle Scout of Oz,” Eddie said, and giggled as he unslung the waterskin.
“What is this Oz?”
“A make-believe place in a movie,” Susannah said.
“Oz was a lot more than that. My brother Henry used to read me the stories once in a while. I’ll tell you one some night, Roland.”
I have a tickle of a memory that Oz actually plays a role here in this series. Guess I’ll wait & see.
“…Ka-tet. Simply that. For the first time since the last of the friends with whom I set forth on this quest died, I have found myself once again at the center of ka-tet.”
I do believe this is the very first mention of the word “ka-tet”. And while it wasn’t found in The Drawing of the Three, it was inserted into the revised edition of The Gunslinger when Roland said, “My father had by then taken control of his ka-tet, you must ken—the Tet of the Gun…”
Eddie stood up and shrugged into his pack. “You can take comfort from one thing, at least,” he told Roland. “You—or this ka-tet business— were able to save the kid after all.”
Roland had been knotting the harness-strings at his chest. Now he looked up, and the blazing clarity of his eyes made Eddie flinch backward. “Have I?” he asked harshly. “Have I really? I’m going insane an inch at a time, trying to live with two versions of the same reality. I had hoped at first that one or the other would begin to fade away, but that’s not happening. In fact, the exact opposite is happening: those two realities are growing louder and louder in my head, clamoring at each other like opposing factions which must soon go to war. So tell me this, Eddie: How do you suppose Jake feels? How do you suppose it feels to know you are dead in one world and alive in another?”
Very powerful passage!
In the hands of the right actor playing Roland…
“Come on, Eddie. The place we want is on the other side of those trees. We’ll have a look. We might do a little work, as well.”
“What makes you think—”
“Open your ears.”
Eddie listened and realized he heard machinery. He further realized that he had been hearing it for some time now.
This seems like a great cliffhanger to stop at today. I am now 17% of the way through The Waste Lands.
Day 855: May 4, 2024
The Cast of Ka is at the same point in The Waste Lands as I am.
I’m rarely critical of the King podcasts I listen to but this particular episode is a bit over the top in how dumb the hosts are being.
1. The dream sequence in which Eddie opens a book by Thomas Wolfe and reads “The man in black fled across the desert…” – they thought this was a REAL book that King was quoting
2. One thought “ka-tet” is an orchestra term for a group of musicians (a comical line that Eddie actually said in the book) but the host thought was true.
Day 856: May 5, 2024
I’m back at The Waste Lands today. Quite a few subchapters were spent with Roland talking either about the lore of Mid-World or his mental struggles with the two realities of Jake splitting him apart.
But now, it looks like we’re gearing up for action again!
“ ‘I do not shoot with my hand; he who shoots with his hand has forgotten the face of his father.’ ”
That was a joke, he [Eddie] thought; he wouldn’t know his old man if he passed him on the street. But he could feel the words doing their work, clearing his mind and settling his nerves.
I always did wonder how the Gunslinger’s Creed worked on those who didn’t have a father whose face they shouldn’t forget.
Roland’s mildly interested expression suddenly changed. His eyes shifted to a point over Eddie’s left shoulder. “DOWN!” he shouted.
Eddie didn’t ask questions. His rage and confusion were wiped from his mind immediately. He dropped, and as he did, he saw the gunslinger’s left hand blur down to his side. My God, he thought, still falling, he CAN’T be that fast, no one can be that fast, I’m not bad but Susannah makes me look slow and he makes Susannah look like a turtle trying to walk uphill on a piece of glass—
Something passed just over his head, something that squealed at him in mechanical rage and pulled out a tuft of his hair. Then the gunslinger was shooting from the hip, three fast shots like thundercracks, and the squealing stopped. A creature which looked to Eddie like a large mechanical bat thudded to earth between the place where Eddie now lay and the one where Susannah knelt beside Roland.
Another great passage. King is a master of capturing action on the page!
Eddie looked around at the wreckage and slowly began to beat the bone-dust out of his pants and shirt. “What if I told you I don’t want to be a gunslinger, Roland old buddy?”
“I’d say that what you want doesn’t much matter.”
Roland always has the perfect shut-down line at the ready.
Roland shook his head. “There’s a lot about my world I don’t know—surely you both have realized that. And there are things I used to know which have changed.”
“Because the world has moved on?”
“Yes.” Roland glanced at him. “Here, that is not a figure of speech. The world really is moving on, and it goes ever faster. At the same time, things are wearing out . . . falling apart…”
I too had taken that phrase figuratively and not literally.
Roland shook his head. “It’s not that kind of edge. It’s the place where one of the Beams starts. Or so I was taught.”
“Beams?” Susannah asked. “What Beams?”
“The Great Old Ones didn’t make the world, but they did re-make it. Some tale-tellers say the Beams saved it; others say they are the seeds of the world’s destruction. The Great Old Ones created the Beams. They are lines of some sort . . . lines which bind . . . and hold . . .”
“Are you talking about magnetism?” Susannah asked cautiously.
His whole face lit up, transforming its harsh planes and furrows into something new and amazing, and for a moment Eddie knew how Roland would look if he actually did reach his Tower.
“Yes! Not just magnetism, but that is a part of it . . . and gravity . . . and the proper alignment of space, size, and dimension. The Beams are the forces which bind these things together.”
Wow – I remember reading this passage over 30 years ago while I was in the middle of college working on my Physics major.
Truly, it’s like revisiting an old friend.
“Everything in the world is either coming to rest or falling to pieces,” he said flatly. “At the same time, the forces which interlock and give the world its coherence—in time and size as well as in space—are weakening. We knew that even as children, but we had no idea what the time of the end would be like. How could we? Yet now I am living in those times, and I don’t believe they affect my world alone. They affect yours, Eddie and Susannah; they may affect a billion others. The Beams are breaking down. I don’t know if that’s a cause or only another symptom, but I know it’s true. Come! Draw close! Listen!”
“We knew that even as children”
I imagine that would be quite depressing for a child to have to grasp!
That’s it for my reading of The Waste Lands today. There was a great mix of action and more lore-building here and I will never get tired of it.
I am now 20% of the way through the book and nearing the end of Chapter 1.
Day 857: May 6, 2024
Listening to Dark Tower Palaver‘s fourth episode in their read-along of The Waste Lands.
Day 858: May 7, 2024
Finishing off Dark Tower Palaver‘s fourth episode in their read-along of The Waste Lands.
Day 859: May 8, 2024
I’m back to the book to complete “Chapter 1: Bear and Bone” from The Waste Lands.
The ka-tet is about to enter into a portal having got past dangerous little woodland cyber-critters.
IN HIS DREAM THAT night, Eddie again went walking down Second Avenue toward Tom and Gerry’s Artistic Deli on the corner of Second and Forty-sixth.
I don’t know what Eddie eats for dinner, but he seems to be the one having the wildest dreams.
“A compass!” Eddie said. “You really are an Eagle Scout!”
Roland shook his head. “Not a compass. I know what they are, of course, but these days I keep my directions by the sun and stars, and even now they serve me quite well.”
“Even now?” Susannah asked, a trifle uneasily.
He nodded. “The directions of the world are also in drift.”
Which got me thinking… Isn’t our own planet overdue for a magnetic pole flip?
For a moment Eddie saw nothing but the woods. He tried to make his eyes relax . . . and suddenly it was there, …inside the knob of wood, and he knew why Roland had told them not to look at any one thing. The effect of the Beam was everywhere along its course, but it was subtle. The needles of the pines and spruces pointed that way. The greenberry bushes grew slightly slanted, and the slant lay in the direction of the Beam.
Reminds me of Magic Eye portraits.
“You see? Even the clouds must obey.”
“The ash is a noble tree, and full of power,” Roland remarked
And that’s it for today’s reading of The Waste Lands.
I thought they were at the door of a portal, but I guess I was mistaken. They’ve done a little more wandering, some more camping. Roland gave up his gun & knife to Eddie as his own mind starts to fracture dangerously.
I am 23% of the way through this massive book and can’t wait for the next Chapter. But now, there’s several hours worth of podcasts to go through that cover up to this point.
Day 860: May 9, 2024
Having finished “Chapter 1: Bear and Bone” from The Waste Lands, I embark on a number of podcasts that cover the book up to this point, starting with The Cast of Ka.
Day 861: May 10, 2024
Dark Tower Palaver also finishes “Chapter 1: Bear and Bone” from The Waste Lands.
Day 862: May 11, 2024
Listening to the second half of Dark Tower Palaver‘s episode on “Chapter 1: Bear and Bone” from The Waste Lands.
Day 863: May 12, 2024
Two Guys to the Dark Tower Came has a blessedly short episode about “Chapter 1: Bear and Bone” from The Waste Lands.
Day 864: May 13, 2024
Kingslingers went on at length about “Chapter 1: Bear and Bone” from The Waste Lands. I’m listening to the first half today.
Day 865: May 14, 2024
Finishing off this Kingslingers episode about “Chapter 1: Bear and Bone” from The Waste Lands. Then tomorrow, I’m back to the book!
Day 866: May 15, 2024
It’s back to The Waste Lands as I pick up on Chapter 2: Key and Rose.
Chapter 1 was a great mix of action and lore. But I think the lore part is pretty much spent – so I’m guessing we’re about to head into a long stretch of action!
– 😂 Sometimes this technology is really bad at this!
FOR THREE WEEKS JOHN “Jake” Chambers fought bravely against the madness rising inside him.
From the very first words of this chapter, I’m thrilled to be back visiting Jake! I do recall that he gets reunited with Roland, but I have zero recollection as to how. So this feels very fresh to me still.
“—the way station,” Jake muttered, then touched his forehead with a hand that wanted to tremble. The voices were coming back. The yelling, conflicting voices which were driving him mad.
You’re dead, Jake. You were run over by a car and you’re dead.
Typical King: He’s keeps the reader close to Jake’s madness well past the point of comfort. He doesn’t just tell you what’s going on in the boy’s mind, he’d gonna drop you there and let you stew in it yourself.
“Are you ready for your French final?” Mr. Bissette asked. “Voulez-vous faire l’examen cet après-midi?”
I’m listening to the audiobook while I read the text. And the skill with which the narrator, Frank Muller, read the French part – well, that just shows what a professional he was at his craft.
At first he had believed himself to be in hell . . . and when the man in the black hooded robe came along, he had been sure of it.
Then, of course, the other man had come along. A man Jake had almost come to love.
But he let me fall. He killed me.
What a heartbreaking line!
“So we hail the halls of Piper,
Hold its banner high;
Hail to thee, our alma mater,
Piper, do or die!”
The audiobook narrator had a pretty convincing melody as he sang these lines.
I wonder if he had to approve the tune with Stephen King ahead of time or if he had free reign to improvise.
In fact, I wonder if he had to review all of the character voices he intended to use with the author as well.
Their assignment had been to write a Final Essay at home. This was to be a typed document between fifteen hundred and four thousand words long. The subject Ms. Avery had assigned was My Understanding of Truth. The Final Essay would count as twenty-five per cent of their final grade for the semester.
Holy crap! This is a helluva assignment for a 6th grader. I bet most college students would struggle with this.
Jake remembered Orientation Day last September, when Mr. Harley had told them that Piper had The Highest Teacher To Student Ratio Of Any Fine Private Middle School In The East. He had popped his fist repeatedly on the lectern at the front of the Common Room to emphasize this point.
A little goof-up by King. I think a “low” teacher-to-student ratio is what is more desired and impressive for a school.
…as the voices in his head grew louder and louder, Jake had become more and more fascinated with doors. He must have opened the one between his bedroom and the upstairs hallway five hundred times in just the last week, and the one between his bedroom and the bathroom a thousand. Each time he did it, he felt a tight ball of hope and anticipation in his chest
I think most readers expected Jake to be on the other side of a door in The Drawing of the Three.
Jake opened his folder to take a final look at what he had written on the topic My Understanding of Truth. He was genuinely interested in this, because he could no more remember writing his Final Essay, than he could remember studying for his French final.
What Jake wrote will have to wait until tomorrow as I finish reading for the day. I’m 24% of the way through The Waste Lands
Day 867: May 16, 2024
Continuing to read The Waste Lands with Chapter 2: Key and Rose.
I was happy to return to Jake’s story, but then saw from the very first words how sad and tortured he was with HIS split memory of dying/not dying. I’m ready for him to reunite with Roland already, but knowing King, he’s going to drag this out for hundreds of pages!
When is a door not a door? When it’s a jar, and that is the truth.
Blaine is the truth.
Blaine is the truth.
What has four wheels and flies? A garbage truck, and that is the truth.
Blaine is the truth.
You have to watch Blaine all the time, Blaine is a pain, and that is the truth.
How has this not been turned into a song yet?
Jake reached the door leading to the hall, and as he grasped the knob, that feeling of hope and surety rose in him again: This is it—really it. I’ll open the door and the desert sun will shine in. I’ll feel that dry wind on my face. I’ll step through and never see this classroom again.
He opened the door and it was only the hallway on the other side, but he was right about one thing just the same: he never saw Ms. Avery’s classroom again.
That is signature King!
He idled along, bookbag in one hand, lunch sack in the other, looking in the windows. Seven hundred and twenty seconds from the end of his life as he had always known it, he paused to look in the window of Brendio’s
What an intriguing phrase: “Seven hundred and twenty seconds from the end of his life”
I’m captivated by this alternate retelling of Jake’s final (not final) moments.
Behind him, Jake knew, the man in the black robe was beginning to move faster, closing the gap, now reaching out with his long hands. Yet he could not look around, as you couldn’t look around in dreams when something awful was gaining on you.
When you know exactly what happens (won’t happen) in the story, yet King still builds it with gripping tension… Who else can do THAT?
That was when it happened; that was when he split down the middle and became two boys. One lay dying in the street. The other stood here on the corner, watching in dumb, stricken amazement as DONT WALK turned to WALK again and people began to cross around him just as if nothing had happened . . . as, indeed, nothing had.
I’m alive! half of his mind rejoiced, screaming with relief.
Dead! the other half screamed back. Dead in the street!
Wow.
I’m stopping reading here at the end of subsection 5 to catch up on a fed podcast episodes covering this material. I can’t wait to hear what they have to say!
I’m now 26% of the way through The Waste Lands.
Day 868: May 17, 2024
The Cast of Ka begins their discussion of Chapter 2 of The Waste Lands.
Day 869: May 18, 2024
Dark Tower Palaver has some opinions about Chapter 2 of The Waste Lands.
And that is the truth.
Day 870: May 19, 2024
Finished off this episode of Dark Tower Palaver talking about Chapter 2 of The Waste Lands.
Day 871: May 20, 2024
Back to reading Chapter 2 of The Waste Lands, picking up at subsection 6.
Jake is going insane from his split reality where he died/didn’t die from being pushed into traffic in NYC. It’s been a very depressing return to this character who we haven’t seen since the first book!
It was like being able to remember forward in time.
Immediately after the non-accident, Jake began having “memories” of being at the Way Station in MidWorld.
Like I had predicted before – where most authors make their point an move on, Stephen King will dwell and linger far past the point of discomfort. I think I’m nearing that point now.
“Moses in the bullrushes!” she gasped, fluttering a hand rapidly against the front of her housedress. “You scared the bejabbers out of me…”
Can’t say I’ve ever heard that expletive used before! 😂
“It’s the White!” he exclaimed aloud. “The coming of the White!”
One can feel the significance of this phrase so I did a bit of googling on this and came across this interesting page in the Stephen King Wiki:
Phrases containing nineteen letters:
- “The Coming of the White”
- “Hyperborean Wanderer”
- “A ROSE IS A ROSE IS A ROSE”
Instead, he came to the bookstore.
THE MANHATTAN RESTAURANT OF THE MIND, the sign painted in the window read.
…
Jake went in, aware that he had, for the first time in three weeks, opened a door without hoping madly to find another world on the other side. A bell jingled overhead. The mild, spicy smell of old books hit him, and the smell was somehow like coming home.
Of course, the glorious mood and the feeling of wonderfulness would lead its way to a bookstore!
I’m going to stop reading for today and linger in this wonderful place for a while.
After many pages of Jake’s misery, it’s a relief to be somewhere he feels comfort and wonder.
I am now 28% of the way through The Waste Lands.
Day 872: May 21, 2024
Continuing to read Chapter 2 of The Waste Lands, picking up at subsection 13.
Jake has found some much needed respite at a mysterious bookstore in NYC.
Jake had been attracted by a story-book obviously meant for very young children. On the bright green cover was an anthropomorphic locomotive puffing its way up a hill. Its cowcatcher (which was bright pink) wore a happy grin and its headlight was a cheerful eye which seemed to invite Jake Chambers to come inside and read all about it. Charlie the Choo-Choo, the title proclaimed , Story and Pictures by Beryl Evans.
This seems mildly… important!
Jake turned around and saw a fat guy in an open-throated white shirt standing at the end of the counter. His hands were stuffed in the pockets of his old gabardine slacks.
“gabardine” – who has ever heard of this word? In my 52 years, I’ve never heard it before.
“Okay, let’s see what you got,” the fat man said. “By the way, I’m Tower. Calvin Tower.” He stuck out his hand.
OMG
The fat guy looked at him with some interest. “Calvin Tower. Which word is profanity in your language, O Hyperborean Wanderer?”
A callback to a post I made yesterday.
“—but I can’t bear to dock you that much on a day like this. Seven bucks and it’s yours. Plus tax, of course. The riddle book you can have for free. Consider it my gift to a boy wise enough to saddle up and light out for the territories on the last real day of spring.”
The Territories!
“Riddles are perhaps the oldest of all the games people still play today,” it began. “The gods and goddesses of Greek myth teased each other with riddles, and they were employed as teaching tools in ancient Rome. The Bible contains several good riddles. One of the most famous of these was told by Samson on the day he was married to Delilah:
‘Out of the eater came forth meat,
and out of the strong came forth sweetness!’
But as he left, a certainty stole over him: he would never enter The Manhattan Restaurant of the Mind again.
This blogger attempted to find the physical location of this bookstore in Manhattan. He photo-documented his journey!
Suddenly Jake realized where he was going. This knowledge rose in his mind like sweet, refreshing water from an underground spring. It’s a delicatessen, he thought. That’s what it looks like, anyway. It’s really something else—a doorway to another world. The world. His world. The right world.
This dreamlike race through Manhattan after leaving the bookstore… It was so perfectly captured, I’m smiling through every word!
“No,” he almost whimpered. “No!” But his near-frantic negation did not change what he saw, which was nothing at all. There was nothing to see but a short board fence and a littered, weedy lot beyond it.
The building which had stood there had been demolished.
This is a good cliffhanger to leave on as I wrap up Chapter 2, Section 15 of The Waste Lands.
I am now 30% of the way through.
Day 873: May 22, 2024
The Cast of Ka continues the journey with Jake and his visit to The Manhattan Restaurant of the Mind in The Waste Lands.
I enjoyed the discussion about the Hyperboreans.
Day 874: May 23, 2024
I’m reading just one little section of The Waste Lands today to align myself with the material coming up in the next podcast episode I have scheduled.
Jake had just had an interesting conversation with a few witty wise men in a mysterious bookstore and walked out with a few books that are bound to be of importance.
Instead of a deli that Jake was compelled to seek out, he came across a demolished lot with the following sign:
A little way farther along, another graffito had been spray-painted on the fence—this one in what had once undoubtedly been a bright red but which had now faded to the dusky pink of late-summer roses. Jake whispered the words aloud, his eyes wide and fascinated:
“See the TURTLE of enormous girth!
On his shell he holds the earth
If you want to run and play,
Come along the BEAM today.”
I NEVER see interesting graffiti like this!
He was hearing a sound—had been hearing it ever since he entered the lot, in fact. It was a wonderful high humming, inexpressibly lonely and inexpressibly lovely. It might have been the sound of a high wind on a deserted plain, except it was alive. It was, he thought, the sound of a thousand voices singing some great open chord. He looked down and realized there were faces in the tangled weeds and low bushes and heaps of bricks. Faces.
Frank Muller reading this! 😍
The humming grew. Now it was not a thousand voices but a million, an open funnel of voices rising from the deepest well of the universe. He caught names in that group voice, but could not have said what they were. One might have been Marten. One might have been Cuthbert. Another might have been Roland—Roland of Gilead.
There were names; there was a babble of conversation that might have been ten thousand entwined stories; but above all was that gorgeous, swelling hum, a vibration that wanted to fill his head with bright white light. It was, Jake realized with a joy so overwhelming that it threatened to burst him to pieces, the voice of Yes; the voice of White; the voice of Always. It was a great chorus of affirmation, and it sang in the empty lot. It sang for him.
My God, is there a more perfect passage anywhere that King had written up to this point?
Then, lying in a cluster of scrubby burdock plants, Jake saw the key . . . and beyond that, the rose.
The artwork in this edition is superb – much better than the abstract art of The Drawing of the Three. Just look at those ghostly faces in the background!
I could stare at this all day.
For just one short subsection, it packed quite a wallop. I’m stopping here for today, 31% of the way through The Waste Lands.
I now turn to Dark Tower Palaver to see if they were as wowed by Jake’s story as I was.
Day 875: May 24, 2024
Finishing off this episode from Dark Tower Palaver‘s read-along of The Waste Lands.
Day 876: May 25, 2024
I’m back to reading The Waste Lands Chapter 2 where I’ve been enraptured by Jake’s dreamlike story as he gets closer to finding his way through to Midworld from a demolished Manhattan deli.
These last few sections have been some of King’s finest writing that I’ve encountered to date!
As he closed his hand around the key, the voices rose in a harmonic shout of triumph. Jake’s own cry was lost in the voice of that choir.
…
Then his eyes fixed upon the rose again, and he realized that it was the real key— the key to everything. He crawled toward it, his face a flaming corona of light, his eyes blazing wells of blue fire.
My eyes keep wanting to skip over the words, to race ahead. But this needs to be SAVORED!
It was something like a worm.
He could feel it beating like a sick and dirty heart, warring with the serene beauty of the rose, screaming harsh profanities against the choir of voices which had so soothed and lifted him.
He leaned closer to the rose and saw that its core was not just one sun but many . . . perhaps all suns contained within a ferocious yet fragile shell.
But it’s wrong. It’s all in danger.
My God.
New Yorkers are used to the sight of people doing peculiar things.
King got THAT right!
Last time I was in NYC, I had walked out of a cafe with my wife where I just had breakfast. And suddenly, there were 50-60 naked people whizzing by on bicycles chanting some type of slogans in protest of Big Oil.
Most people on the sidewalk didn’t pay them any mind.
THE DOORMAN MUST HAVE buzzed up as soon as Jake entered the lobby, because his father was standing outside the elevator when it opened on the fifth floor.
Well, Jake didn’t find his way through to Midworld yet, but he’s close and forever changed.
I don’t know what’s about to happen next, but King is at his best when he writes a verbal confrontation – especially when one of the participants has a sudden burst of strength and confidence.
Sudden strength seemed to flow into Jake. He seized the hand clamped on his arm just below the shoulder and shoved it violently away. His father’s mouth dropped open.
“I don’t work for you,” Jake said. “I’m your son, remember? If you forgot, check the picture on your desk.”
Yep – there it is. Predictable, yet still enjoyable when it happens! Makes you want to stand up and cheer!
Jake’s English teacher sent him a letter of praise about his mad, rambling essay:
Is it possible that both “Roland” and “the gunslinger” are the same authority figure—your father, perhaps?
…
I find this extremely provocative. Or is this name a double symbol, drawn both from your father and from Robert Browning’s poem “Childe Roland to the Dark Tower Came”?
A little mix of self-aware reality in this fantasy is a harbinger of things to come.
The letters from his French and English teachers were unexpected but a very welcome end to the trauma of coming home to parents who were essentially uncaring strangers to him.
I am now 34% of the way through The Waste Lands.
Day 877: May 26, 2024
Continuing to read The Waste Lands Chapter 2. Jake stood up to his father with his newfound spine and renewed purpose in life – the ROSE!
“Dad?”
His father looked back at him warily.
“What’s your middle name?”
…
“I don’t have one,” he said. “Just an initial, like Harry S Truman. Except mine’s an R. What brought that on?”
You always learn something when reading a King book!
Bob Brooks was an engineer for the Mid-World Railway Company, on the St. Louis to Topeka run. Engineer Bob was the best trainman The Mid-World Railway Company ever had, and Charlie was the best train!
In this subsection, Jakes settles down and reads the book he picked up earlier in the day, “Charlie the Choo-Choo”.
He was given a job cleaning the engines in the St. Louis yards, and Engineer Bob became Wiper Bob. Sometimes the other engineers who drove the fine new diesels would laugh at him. “Look at that old fool!” they said. “He cannot understand that the world has moved on!”
Can’t understand why this children’s book didn’t become a best-seller in Jake’s world. It’s so cheery! 🙄
…it occurred to him that there were a lot of stories for kids with stuff like this in them, stuff that threw acid all over your emotions. Hansel and Gretel being turned out into the forest, Bambi’s mother getting scragged by a hunter, the death of Old Yeller. It was easy to hurt little kids, easy to make them cry, and this seemed to bring out a strangely sadistic streak in many story-tellers
Nailed it.
“We’ll give it a try,” said Mr. Martin. “I would be sorry to miss Susannah’s first recital!”
I missed the name “Susannah” at first, but yet another reference in “Charlie the Choo-Choo” to that other world to which Jake is on the verge of returning.
That ends Chapter II “Key and Rose” of The Waste Lands.
I am so enjoying this book – so much more than The Drawing of the Three. I can’t wait to return to it. But for the next few days, there’s quite a few podcasters who want to weight in on this Jake-focused chapter.
I am now 36% of the way through the book.
Day 878: May 27, 2024
The Cast of Ka wraps up Chapter 2 of The Waste Lands.
They had a lengthy and completely unexpected discussion about this line:
Coming soon? Maybe . . . but Jake had his doubts. The letters on the sign were faded and it was sagging a little. At least one graffiti artist, BANGO SKANK by name, had left his mark across the artist’s drawing of the Turtle Bay Luxury Condominiums in bright blue spray-paint.
The name “BANGO SKANK” appears throughout the series as a throwaway character who is never revealed.
Day 879: May 28, 2024
It’s another couple of hours with Dark Tower Palaver as they wrap up Chapter 2 of The Waste Lands.
Day 880: May 29, 2024
Finished off Dark Tower Palaver‘s episode about Chapter 2 of The Waste Lands.
Day 881: May 30, 2024
Today, it’s Two Guys to the Dark Tower Came and their coverage of Chapter 2 of The Waste Lands.
Day 882: May 31, 2024
The Kingslingers spend a couple of hours with Jake and his tale from Chapter 2 of The Waste Lands.
Day 883: Jun 1, 2024
I’ll be spending the day driving with the Kingslingers as my travel companion while they finish their discussion about Chapter 2 of The Waste Lands.
Day 884: Jun 2, 2024
I am on VACATION and I can think of nothing I want to do more than to continue reading The Waste Lands picking up at Chapter III: Door and Demon.
This little bit of art at the beginning of the chapter is disturbing. Those little evil elves are freaking me out.
“I think I’m getting ready to die.” Roland looked at Eddie. The bright shine left his eyes, and now looking into them was like staring into a pair of deep, dark wells that seemed to have no bottom.
Well that’s quite a cheery way to start the morning, Roland!
ARE you me? Jake asked, taking a step closer to the boy at the basket, but even before he turned around, Jake knew that wasn’t the case. The boy was bigger than Jake, and at least thirteen. His hair was darker, and when he looked at Jake, he saw that the stranger’s eyes were hazel. His own were blue.
Jake is having a dream… But who IS this boy? A character from another book? I really hope it’s revealed shortly.
As for me, I don’t matter much, the boy said. He hooked the basketball over his shoulder. It rose, then dropped smoothly through the hoop. I’m supposed to guide you, that’s all. I’ll take you where you need to go, and I’ll show you what you need to see, but you have to be careful because I won’t know you. And strangers make Henry nervous. He can get mean when he’s nervous, and he’s bigger than you.
Ah, it’s a younger Eddie. Should’ve guessed that right away.
No problem, the boy said. His voice had taken on a queer, chiming echo. Just take the subway to Co-Op City. You’ll find me.
No, I won’t! Jake cried. Co-Op City’s huge! There must be a hundred thousand people living there!
“It is the largest single residential development in the United States with a population of approximately 50,000 residents and its own zip code.”
I’m stopping here for today, but anticipation for Jake’s return to MidWorld is growing to palpable levels!
I am now 38% of the way through The Waste Lands.
Day 885: Jun 3, 2024
We’re now bouncing between the two worlds as a version of Eddie (who apparently exists out of time and space) gives Jake dream instructions on how to return to Midworld.
I continue with Chapter 3 of The Waste Lands.
If I stand, if I can be true, I’ll see the rose, he thought as he pushed the button for the elevator. I know it . . . and I’ll see him, too.
This thought filled him with an eagerness so great it was almost ecstasy.
Three minutes later he stepped out from beneath the awning which shaded the entrance to the building where he had lived all his life. He paused for a moment, then turned left. This decision did not feel random, and it wasn’t. He was moving southeast, along the path of the Beam, resuming his own interrupted quest for the Dark Tower.
May your path lead you true, Jake!
Up ahead, a large creature that looked like a badger crossed with a raccoon ambled out of the woods. It looked at them with its large, gold-rimmed eyes, twitched its sharp, whiskery snout… then strolled the rest of the way across the road and disappeared again. Before it did, Eddie noted its tail—long and closely coiled, it looked like a fur-covered bedspring.
“What was that, Roland?”
“A billy-bumbler.”
I didn’t remember them to be “large creatures”.
Eddie handed it over, then hunkered next to Susannah as the gunslinger cut away the vines. As they fell, he could see eroded letters carved into the stone, and he knew what they said before Roland had uncovered even half of the inscription:
TRAVELLER, BEYOND LIES MID-WORLD.
I had thought “Mid-World” was the whole world, that reality in which they were travelling. Turns out its a physical geographic region, a kingdom from time past.
“What is Mid-World?” Eddie asked.
“One of the large kingdoms which dominated the earth in the times before these. A kingdom of hope and knowledge and light—the sort of things we were trying to hold on to in my land before the darkness overtook us, as well. Some day if there’s time, I’ll tell you all the old stories . . . the ones I know, at least. They form a large tapestry, one which is beautiful but very sad.”
Please, God, help me not to fuck this up, he thought, but he was terribly afraid that he had already begun to do just that. At last he gave up, returned the key (which he had barely changed at all) to the gunslinger, and curled up beneath one of the hides. Five minutes later, the dream about the boy and the old Markey Avenue playground had begun to unspool again.
I’m stopping here, 40% of the way through The Waste Lands. How will Eddie react when he meets Jake?
Day 886: Jun 4, 2024
Dark Tower Palaver begins their read of Chapter 3 of The Waste Lands.
Day 887: Jun 5, 2024
Finishing off Dark Tower Palaver‘s first episode about Chapter 3 of The Waste Lands. I really have grown to like their long commentaries!
Day 888: Jun 6, 2024
Back to the book today as I continue with Chapter 3 of The Waste Lands. In both worlds there’s a key that’s going to have to be used somewhere. Let’s find that door already!
A group of school-kids were lining up for a tour. Public school, Jake was almost sure—they were dressed as casually as he was. No blazers from Paul Stuart, no ties, no jumpers, no simple little skirts that cost a hundred and twenty-five bucks at places like Miss So Pretty or Tweenity. This crowd was Kmart all the way.
Hard to believe there are only 6 Kmarts left today!
He stopped at a hot-dog stand on the corner of Broadway and Forty-second, trading in a little of his meager cash supply for a sweet sausage and a Nehi.
I have never heard of “Nehi” in my life!
That was the direction, she realized, in which all the creeks and streams they had encountered had been flowing. They were tributaries of the vast river that emerged from that jutting arm of forest and flowed, placid and dreaming under the summer sun, toward the eastern edge of the world. It was wide, that river—perhaps two miles from bank to bank.
And she could see the city.
Can’t help but think how this would come to life on the big screen!
“Do you see that?” Roland pointed. “It’s a speaking ring. The shapes you see are tall standing stones.”
…
“Oh shit,” Eddie said. His voice was dry and scared. “I think that’s the place where the kid is going to try and come through.”
Of course, it would HAVE to be the same type of stone ring in which Jake had gotten trapped by the Oracle back in The Gunslinger.
The gunslinger locked his own hands over Eddie’s and pulled them away from his shirt. “Get control of yourself.”
“Roland, don’t you understand—”
“I understand that whining and puling won’t solve your problem. I understand that you have forgotten the face of your father.”
“Quit that bullshit! I don’t care dick about my father!” Eddie shouted hysterically, and Roland hit him across the face. His hand made a sound like a breaking branch.
Eddie deserved it.
Roland cut his eyes toward her. “I’m forcing him to decide.” He looked back at Eddie, and his deeply lined face was stern. “You have come from the shadow of the heroin and the shadow of your brother, my friend. Come from the shadow of yourself, if you dare. Come now. Come out or shoot me and have done with it.”
Roland would’ve made a helluva psychotherapist!
Roland nodded, bent over the firepit, and struck at a piece of flint with a worn steel bar. Soon the kindling he had gathered was blazing. He added small sticks, one by one, and waited for Eddie to return.
And I stop reading here, waiting also for Jake to return.
I am now 43% of the way through The Waste Lands.
Day 889: Jun 7, 2024
Enjoyed listening to The Cast of Ka discuss the beginning portion of Chapter 3 of The Waste Lands. It was also refreshing to hear them talk about the first negative review they ever received!
Day 890: Jun 8, 2024
Vacation over. 😥 Time for a long drive home where I’ll be listening to the first half of Dark Tower Palaver‘s nearly 3-hour episode about just a portion of Chapter 3 of The Waste Lands.
Day 891: Jun 9, 2024
Finished off Dark Tower Palaver‘s nearly 3-hour episode leading up to the middle part of Chapter 3 of The Waste Lands.
Day 892: Jun 10, 2024
Back to reading Chapter 3 of The Waste Lands where I pick up at the halfway point.
Jake has been trying to find his way back to Mid-World for what seems like forever. But he received a clue from an old (homeless?) man at a Bronx housing complex.
Until the gunslinger shook him awake at four in the morning, he heard the wind racing endlessly over the plain below them…
Is there such a thing as “four in the morning” in Mid-World? Was it established that they also have a 24-hour clock?
From behind him came a burst of raucous male laughter. It was followed by an outraged female shriek: “You give that back!”
Jake jumped, thinking the owner of the voice must mean him.
“Give it back, Henry! I’m not kidding!”
Jake running into Eddie and the realization that they were about the same age (at least as of Jake’s “when”) is extraordinarily metaphysical!
The old boy held out the newspaper tube. The girl snatched it from him, and even from his place thirty feet farther down the street, Jake heard it rip. “You’re a turd, Henry Dean!” she cried. “A real turd!”
I know I had read the scene before but I’ve scoured through The Drawing of the Three and earlier sections of The Waste Lands and can’t find it. It might’ve been in one of the comic adaptations I read earlier which drew heavily from material found in this book.
I knew that scene was familiar. I thought it would’ve been cool had it been in The Drawing of the Three and King inserted Jake into it in Back to the Future style.
But no.
Anyhow, I’m going to stop here for the day where Jake had spent most of the time shadowing Henry & Eddie as they played some basketball then planned to go visit some local haunted mansion.
I am now 46% of the way through The Waste Lands.
Day 893: Jun 11, 2024
Continuing to read Chapter 3 of The Waste Lands.
Jake has been stalking Eddie and his brother Henry as they apparently were kids in Jake’s time. The brothers plan to visit a local haunted mansion, where I’m sure Jake will find his way to Mid-World. I’m mean, for crying out loud!
Roland buckled his gunbelt, then bent to knot the tiedown. He looked up at Susannah as he did it. “We may need Detta Walker,” he said. “Is she around?”
“That bitch always around.” Susannah wrinkled her nose.
Rude! I mean, does Roland ever ask if “Odetta Holmes” is there?
“Demons are not human, but they are male and female, just the same. Sex is both their weapon and their weakness”
…
“There’s no time to say this in a gentle or refined way,” Roland told her. “One of us will—”
“One of us gonna have to fuck it to keep it off Eddie,” Susannah interrupted. “This the sort of thing can’t ever turn down a free fuck. That’s what you’re gettin at, isn’t it?”
Roland nodded.
I love the bluntness! 😂
Susannah could now see the grasses due north of the speaking ring parting in a long dark line, creating a furrow that lanced straight at the circle of stones.
“Get ready,” Roland said. “It’ll go for Eddie. One of us will have to ambush it.”
Susannah reared up on her haunches like a snake coming out of a Hindu fakir’s basket.
That description of Susannah is the best!
Susannah howled and rocked backward, cords standing out on her neck. The dress she wore first flattened against her breasts and belly, and then began to tear itself to shreds. She could hear a pointless, directionless panting, as if the air itself had decided to rut with her.
Being sexually assaulted by a demon reminds me of that 80’s film “The Entity”.
A woman is tormented by an invisible being.
A snatch of poetry occurred to him suddenly, something Ms. Avery had read to them.
…
I will show you something different from either/Your shadow in the morning striding behind you/Or your shadow at evening rising to meet you;/I will show you…
“I’ll show you fear in a handful of dust,” Jake muttered, and put his hand on the doorknob.
Even if someone did happen to look, they wouldn’t see me, because I’m not really here. For better or worse, I’ve already left my world behind. I’ve started to cross over. His world is somewhere ahead. This…
This was the hell between.
Jake stepped into the corridor, and although he screamed when the door swung shut behind him with the sound of a mausoleum door being slammed, he wasn’t surprised.
Even when you know what’ll happen, King still brings the tension.
I’m done reading for the day. I’m now 47% of the way through The Waste Lands.
Day 894: Jun 12, 2024
The Cast of Ka continues their discussion about Chapter 3 of The Waste Lands.
Day 895: Jun 13, 2024
Listening to the first half of this episode where Dark Tower Palaver talks about Chapter 3 of The Waste Lands.
Day 896: Jun 14, 2024
Finishing this episode of Dark Tower Palaver‘s discussion about Chapter 3 of The Waste Lands.
Day 897: Jun 15, 2024
I’m nearing the midway point of The Waste Lands.
I left off at a very strange point where Susannah channels her inner Detta and begins making whoopie with a demon inside a stone circle while her husband carves a wooden key so that an 11-year-old boy can come through a world-portal.
I’m available to write other dust jacket summaries if you like.
For the first time since Detta had strode onto the sexual battlefield at the age of thirteen, she was losing. A horrid, engorged coldness plunged into her; it was like being fucked with an icicle.
Dimly, she saw Eddie turn away and begin drawing in the dirt again…
Eddie is the worst husband ever. Playing in the dirt while a demon has his way with his beloved wife!
Something fell into his hair with a flabby thump. Jake screamed in surprise, reached for it, and grasped something that felt like a soft, bristle-covered rubber ball. He pulled it free and saw it was a spider, its bloated body the color of a fresh bruise. Its eyes regarded him with stupid malevolence.
After a summer of having cicadas land randomly in my hair every time I went outside, I probably wouldn’t have even flinched at this.
He lunged into a space too big to be a parlor or living room; it seemed to be a ballroom. Elves with strange, sly smiles on their faces capered on the wallpaper, peering at Jake from beneath peaked green caps.
Ahhh, so THAT’S where this image came from.
A monster comes bursting from the haunted mansion’s wall towards Jake. And then this happens:
Jake’s hand closed on the key. As he brought it out, one of the notches caught in the pocket. His fingers, wet with sweat, slipped. The key fell to the floor, bounced, dropped through a crack between two warped boards, and disappeared.
I often get annoyed at the level of torture King puts his characters through!
He heard this one not in his head but with his ears, and understood it was coming from the other side of the door—the door he had been looking for ever since the day he hadn’t been run over in the street.
“Hurry up, Jake! For Christ’s sake, hurry up!”
I’m stopping here after Section 32 of Chapter 3 of The Waste Lands.
It’s only a matter minutes now before Jake makes his way into the ka-tet’s world.
I’m now 49% of the way through the book.
Day 898: Jun 16, 2024
Finishing off reading Chapter 3 of The Waste Lands this morning.
Jake is at a door marked THE BOY after having been chased by a “wall monster” (literally, a monster formed from the wall of a possess mansion). Roland and Eddie are on the other side of the door urging Jake through. Susannah is cashing in her “hall pass” with a sex demon.
Jake turned the key and felt a sudden surge of power rush up his arm. He heard a heavy, muffled thump as the locked bolt inside withdrew. He seized the knob, turned it, and yanked the door open. It swung wide. Jake cried out in confused horror as he saw what lay behind.
The doorway was blocked with earth, from top to bottom and side to side. Roots poked out like bunches of wire. Worms, seeming as confused as Jake was himself, crawled hither and thither on the door-shaped pack of dirt. Some dived back into it; others only went on crawling about, as if wondering where the earth which had been below them a moment ago had gone. One dropped onto Jake’s sneaker.
What a dirty trick! Eddie is on the other side of his dirt door and apparently fell asleep on the job.
What lied beyond the door.
The keyhole shape remained for a moment, shedding a spot of misty white light on Jake’s shirt. Beyond it—so close, so out of reach—he could hear rain and a muffled boom of thunder across an open sky. Then the keyhole shape was also blotted out, and gigantic plaster fingers curled around Jake’s lower leg.
Excellent painting published as part of this section!
Eddie saw and heard none of this. He heard only Jake, screaming faintly on the other side of the door.
The time had come to use the key.
He pulled it out of his shirt and slid it into the keyhole he had drawn. He tried to turn it. The key would not turn.
Of course.
The hand yanked backward at the same time, and what Jake had hoped for happened: his jeans (and his remaining sneaker) were peeled from his body, leaving him free again, at least for the moment.
What is it with King declothing the heroes of his story? First, it was Eddie at Balazar’s. Now Jake and the wall monster. Everybody has to fight without their pants in his story!
The gunslinger staggered back, almost knocked off his feet by the unseen weight of the demon. Then he rocked forward again with an armload of nothing.
Clutching it, he jumped through the doorway and was gone.
This whole segment of the doorway opening between the two world is going to be batshit crazy when rendered by Mike Flanagan at some point in the distant future!
Roland grabbed Jake and hauled him to his feet.
“You came!” Jake shouted. “You really came!”
“I came, yes. By the grace of the gods and the courage of my friends, I came.”
The music that would play during this scene almost writes itself!
He looked at her dazedly. “Yes, I think so. Where is he? The gunslinger? There’s something I have to ask him.”
“I’m here, Jake,” Roland said. He got to his feet, drunk-walked over to Jake, and hunkered beside him. He touched the boy’s smooth cheek almost unbelievingly.
“You won’t let me drop this time?”
“No,” Roland said. “Not this time, not ever again.” But in the deepest darkness of his heart, he thought of the Tower and wondered.
Ominous!
“Are your voices gone?”
Roland nodded. “All gone. Yours?”
“Gone. I’m all together again. We both are.”
What a great way to end this chapter! I’m now 51% of the way through The Waste Lands.
Day 899: Jun 17, 2024
The Cast of Ka concludes their reading of Chapter 3 of The Waste Lands.
Day 900: Jun 18, 2024
Wow. 900 days in a row spent with the Master of Horror!
Today, I’m listening to the first half of Dark Tower Palaver‘s episode covering the end of Chapter 3 of The Waste Lands.
Day 901: Jun 19, 2024
Listening to the 2nd half of Dark Tower Palaver‘s 3 HOUR LONG episode covering just the final quarter of Chapter 3 of The Waste Lands!
Day 902: Jun 20, 2024
Two Guys to the Dark Tower Came have some opinions about Chapter 3 of The Waste Lands.
Day 903: Jun 21, 2024
The Kingslingers have the final word on Chapter 3 of The Waste Lands.
Day 904: Jun 22, 2024
Finishing off the second half of the Kingslingers‘ episode about Chapter 3 of The Waste Lands.
Day 905: Jun 23, 2024
Back to reading The Waste Lands, kicking off Book 2: Lud – A Heap of Broken Images.
The first half of the book was a phenomenal adventure of Jake finding his way back to Mid-World. I’m guessing the second half will be the ka-tet taking a nice train ride.
FOUR DAYS AFTER EDDIE had yanked him through the doorway between worlds, minus his original pair of pants and his sneakers…
What is it with Stephen King and his penchant for making the heroes of his story naked or partially naked?
“How you doin, boy?” he asked softly.
“Oy!” the billy-bumbler replied at once, still looking at him anxiously. Its voice was low and deep, almost a bark; the voice of an English footballer with a bad cold in his throat.
Now THIS I do remember!
“What about up there?” Jake pointed toward the city. “Will there be mutants there, or—” He found it was as close as he could come to voicing his hope.
Roland shrugged. “I don’t know, Jake. I’d tell you if I did.”
Well, you can’t blame the kid for having a touch of PTSD from his last “vacation” to Mid-World.
“Will a strange dog bite?” the gunslinger countered.
“What’s that mean?” Eddie asked. “I hate it when you start up with your Zen Buddhist shit, Roland.”
“It means I don’t know,” Roland said. “Who is this man Zen Buddhist? Is he wise like me?”
That had me laughing out loud.
Eddie nodded to the butt of the Ruger, which protruded from the waistband of Jake’s bluejeans—the extra pair he had tucked into his pack before leaving home.
Jake was pantsless. Suddenly, he’s not.
This smells a little bit of Deus Ex Backpackina.
The man was wearing bib overalls and a huge straw sombrero. The woman walked with one hand clamped on his naked sunburned shoulder. She wore homespun and a poke bonnet, and as they drew closer to the marker, Susannah saw she was blind, and that the accident which had taken her sight must have been exceedingly horrible. Where her eyes had been there were now only two shallow sockets filled with scar-tissue.
When’s the casting call for these two characters?
“Shut up, Mercy,” he replied. Like the woman, he spoke with a thick accent Susannah could barely understand. “They ain’t harriers, not these. There’s a Pube with em, I told you that—ain’t no harrier ever been travellin with a Pube.”
Reading “Pube” as a monicker for Jake was funny.
Hearing it read aloud in the audiobook, drawn out with an extended “Pewooooob” was hilarious!
I’m stopping my reading here for the day.
I am now 53% of the way through The Waste Lands.
Day 906: Jun 24, 2024
I’m operating on 5 hours of sleep total from the past two nights in a horrid business trip from the East Coast to the West Coast USA . But still, I sit here reading The Waste Lands, continuing with Book 2: Lud – A Heap of Broken Images.
When I left off yesterday, the gang (sorry, “ka-tet) walks into a mysterious, seemingly abandoned town just on the outskirts of a mysterious booming city. Jake finds his Oy. And an old man calls Jake a “Pube”.
The crone appeared to be their leader. She hobbled toward Roland’s party on her cane, staring at them with gimlet eyes as green as emeralds. Her toothless mouth was tucked deeply into itself. The hem of the old shawl she wore fluttered in the prairie breeze. Her eyes settled upon Roland.
“Hail, gunslinger! Well met!” She spoke the High Speech herself, and, like Eddie and Susannah, Jake understood the words perfectly, although he guessed they would have been gibberish to him in his own world. “Welcome to River Crossing!”
The gunslinger had removed his own hat, and now he bowed to her, tapping his throat three times, rapidly, with his diminished right hand. “Thankee-sai, Old Mother.”
I see why Dark Tower readers often quote High Speech from the Dark Tower books. It has such a natural feel to it.
The old woman turned to the others. She spoke in a cracked and ringing voice—yet it was the words she spoke and not the tone in which they were spoken that sent chills racing down Jake’s back: “Behold ye, the return of the White! After evil ways and evil days, the White comes again! Be of good heart and hold up your heads, for ye have lived to see the wheel of ka begin to turn once more!”
This feels like dialogue lifted from Jim Henson’s “The Dark Crystal”.
Around them, the little company of old people—the last residents of River Crossing—were applauding. Most, like Aunt Talitha, were weeping openly. And now other glasses—not so fine but wholly serviceable—were passed around. The party began, and a fine party it was on that long summer’s afternoon beneath the wide prairie sky.
It can feel as if King enjoys shitting on his main protagonists.
But once in a while, he does indeed treat them to something wonderful.
“Gods bless and keep ye, gunslinger! If only I could see ye!”
…
He took her hands gently but firmly in his own, and raised them to his face. “See me with these, beauty,” he said, and closed his eyes as her fingers, wrinkled and misshapen with arthritis, patted gently over his brow, his cheeks, his lips and chin.
I half-expected Roland to cure her blindness as if he were the man Jesus himself!
At that Susannah stirred uneasily; one hand went to her belly, as if her stomach was upset.
Ooooooohhh… That line just stirred up a memory! Something to do with that demon she recently had a sexual wrasslin’ match with!
I’m stopping here for the night. Going to catch me some far overdue Zzzzzzzzs.
I am now 55% through The Waste Lands.
Day 907: Jun 25, 2024
Tuning into Dark Tower Palaver who covers The Waste Lands Ch 4 Sections 1-7.
Day 908: Jun 26, 2024
Listening to the second half of Dark Tower Palaver‘s episode discussing the beginning of Chapter 4 of The Waste Lands.
I laughed at their banter about “Roland’s hat”. These guys have worked through the entire Dark Tower series enough times that they pay attention to the mysterious hat that seems to pop in and out of existence around Roland. 😂
And dammit – now I’m going to be paying attention to that as well!
Day 909: Jun 27, 2024
It’s back to Chapter 4 of The Waste Lands, titled “TOWN AND KA-TET”.
Roland, Susannah, Eddie, Jake (and now Oy) have stumbled across a dusty town sparsely occupied by ancient people where they are treated with fine food, drink and respectful awe. This appears to be the high point in their journey so far – which means it’s probably going to come crashing all down in a few pages.
“YE’D HEAR MUCH, GUNSLINGER, and we know but little. One thing I do know is this: the city’s an evil place, especially for this youngster. Any youngster. Is there any way you can steer around it as you go your course?”
Well, we all know the answer to that, don’t we? If there’s an evil city to be walked through, Roland & gang are gonna walk through it!
“Do you know about trains?” Jake asked.
There was a long silence. Bill and Till exchanged an uneasy glance. Aunt Talitha only looked at Jake steadily. Jake did not drop his eyes.
Yeah – that’s pretty much the same reaction I get whenever I ask a question around a bunch of strangers.
“And I’ve heard it said that once, in the old days, Quick, the outlaw prince, actually flew up into the sky in a mechanical bird. But one of its wings broke and he died in a great fall, like Icarus.”
Another interesting overlap of lore with our world. And I love the random drops of ancient tales, like “Quick, the outlaw prince” for which an entire novel could be written from that one line, I’m sure.
The albinos, meanwhile, were continuing their story, handing its thread back and forth with the unconscious ease which probably nothing but lifetime twinship can provide.
Dark Tower Palaver made the same connection about these elderly albino twins as I did.
These old people of River Crossing knew of Gilead no more than Roland knew of the River Barony, and the name of John Farson, the man who had brought ruin and anarchy on Roland’s land, meant nothing to them, but all stories of the old world’s passing were similar . . . too similar, Roland thought, to be coincidence.
So few people know how much a master of high fantasy King can be.
“We last sent tribute to the Barony castle in the time of my great-gran’da,” he said. “Twenty-six men went with a wagon of hides—there was no hard coin anymore by then; o’ course, and ’twas the best they could do. It was a long and dangerous journey of almost eighty wheels, and six died on the way. Half fell to harriers bound for the war in the city; the other half died either of disease or devilgrass.
“When they finally arrived, they found the castle deserted but for the rooks and black-birds. The walls had been broken; weeds o’ergrew the Court o’ State. There had been a great slaughter on the fields to the west; it were white with bones and red with rusty armor, so my da’s gran’da said, and the voices of demons cried out like the east wind from the jawbones o’ those who’d fallen there. The village beyond the castle had been burned to the ground and a thousand or more skulls were posted along the walls of the keep. Our folk left their bounty o’ hides without the shattered barbican gate—for none would venture inside that place of ghosts and moaning voices—and began the homeward way again. Ten more fell on that journey, so that of the six-and-twenty who left only ten returned, my great-gran’da one of them . . . but he picked up a ringworm on his neck and bosom that never left until the day he died. It were the radiation sickness, or so they said. After that, gunslinger, none left the town. We were on our own.”
I’m more than halfway through this book and passages like this have me completely enraptured, wanting more and more and more!
Lud became, in effect, the last fortress-refuge of the latter world.
Amazing art capturing this feeling.
The balance of power had shifted to the besieging Grays—so called because they were, on average, much older than the city-dwellers. Those latter were also growing older, of course. They were still known as Pubes, but in most cases their puberty was long behind them.
Well darn, I was hoping that the “Pubes” were actually a warlike band of kids – like from Peter Pan – doing battle against the bad guys.
“These two sides still keep up their old enmity, gunslinger, and both would desire this young man you call Eddie. If the dark-skinned woman is fertile, they would not kill her even though her legs are short-ended; they would keep her to bear children, for children are fewer now, and although the old sicknesses are passing, some are still born strange.”
Well, that’s a pleasant thing to think about when they finally make towards Lud!
“Now that you’ve heard us old cullies to the end, are ye sure it would not be best to go around, and leave them to their business?”
Before Roland could reply, Jake spoke up in a clear, firm voice. “Tell what you know about Blaine the Mono,” he said. “Tell about Blaine and Engineer Bob.”
And that’s where I’ll leave off for today’s reading. I am now 58% of the way through The Waste Lands.
Day 910: Jun 28, 2024
The Cast of Ka discuss the beginning of Chapter 4 of The Waste Lands and the lore of Lud that was revealed.
Day 911: Jun 29, 2024
Back to reading The Waste Lands today.
The ka-tet had a little respite in the town of River Crossing and enjoyed some old-timey hospitality and received a headful of lore and wisdom about the surrounding area.
It’s nice that Roland can walk into a town and not have to slaughter everyone in it for a change.
“There is another mono,” she said, “unless ’tis the same one, running a different course. Either way, a different course was run by some mono . . . until seven or eight year ago, anyways. I used to hear it leaving the city and going out into the waste lands beyond.”
“Dungheap!” one of the albino twins ejaculated. “Nothing goes to the waste lands! Nothing can live there!”
Which, of course, means there is a mono going to the waste lands and things do live there.
She turned her face to him. “Is a train alive, Till Tudbury?” she asked. “Does a machine fall sick with sores and puking?”
I suppose if there were one line that would summarize the 2nd half of The Waste Lands, it would be this line, right?
Only the town elders had attended the dinner-party in the little Eden behind the Church of the Blood Everlasting…
I initially thought, “What a creepy sounding church!”.
But then, upon googling, it’s not so uncommon in our world.
Aunt Talitha came last. When she began to kneel, Roland caught her by the shoulders. “No, sai. You shall not do.” And before Eddie’s amazed eyes, Roland knelt before her in the dust of the town square.
I’ve seen this scene before…
“I see your heart is true, gunslinger, and that you hold to the old ways of your kind; ay, you hold to them very well. I bless you and yours and will pray that no harm will come to you. Now take this, if you will.” She reached into the bodice of her faded dress and removed a silver cross at the end of a fine-link silver chain. She took it off.
I’ve seen this scene another beautiful painting from the book that brings this to life!
“They’re so old!” Jake sobbed. “How can we just leave them like this? It’s not right!”
“It’s ka,” Eddie said without thinking.
“Is it? Well ka suh-suh-sucks!”
I’m stopping my reading here for the day. I am now 59% of the way through The Waste Lands.
Day 912: Jun 30, 2024
Continuing to read The Waste Lands today.
The ka-tet departed from River Crossing with the blessing of the geriatrics that lived there. They head towards Lud and the battle among the Grays and the Pubes.
Eddie smiled. “Me, too. And I can tell you something else: your good friend Edward Cantor Dean is looking forward to a long and leisurely squat in this grove of trees first thing tomorrow morning.”
Did he ever mention that his middle name was “Cantor” before?
They reached the place that would become, once the fire was lit, just another campsite on the road to the Dark Tower.
Just had to give the ole AI image generator a shot at this.
“Right is what all this is about,” Roland said. “But if you look too long at the small rights, Jake—the ones that lie close at hand— it’s easy to lose sight of the big ones that stand farther off.”
Boy, does this piece of wisdom hit home hard and hit home true with me right now.
AROUND NOON THE NEXT day they reached the top of another drumlin and saw the bridge for the first time. It crossed the Send at a point where the river narrowed, bent due south, and passed in front of the city.
“Holy Jesus,” Eddie said softly. “Does that look familiar to you, Suze?”
“Yes.”
“Jake?”
“Yes—it looks like the George Washington Bridge.”
The ka-tet stops at this bridge and so do I. I am now 61% of the way through The Waste Lands.
Day 913: Jul 1, 2024
Listening to Dark Tower Palaver discuss the ka-tet’s time spent in River Crossing.
Day 914: Jul 2, 2024
Finished off this Dark Tower Palaver episode about Chapter 4 of The Waste Lands.
Day 915: Jul 3, 2024
Continuing to read Chapter 4 of The Waste Lands.
The ka-tet has left the kindly old folk of River Crossing and now stand at a massive bridge in disrepair on the way to the mysterious city of Lud.
“WE ARE KA-TET,” ROLAND began, “which means a group of people bound together by fate. The philosophers of my land said a ka-tet could only be broken by death or treachery.”
Who is in YOUR ka-tet?
“I am not a full member of this ka-tet—possibly because I am not from your world”
That’s actually quite a shocking statement from Roland. Since he literally pulled each of them into his world, I had always thought of him as the center of the ka-tet.
“This closeness and sharing of minds is called khef, a word that means many other things in the original tongue of the Old World—water, birth, and life-force are only three of them. Be aware of it. For now, that’s all I want.”
Is “khef” a corollary to “the shine”?
Roland began with what had happened under the mountains, where Jake’s first life in this world had ended.
This has been bugging me.
The first half of the book was about bringing Jake back and the healing of Roland’s and Jake’s minds from the diverging timelines of Jake’s death/not death.
But what was actually resolved about those parallel timelines? Roland & Jake still both remember his first time in Mid-World, which wouldn’t have happened if he hadn’t died.
She finished with the story of how they had finally hauled Jake into this world, closing the split track of his and Roland’s memories as suddenly and as completely as Eddie had closed the door in the speaking ring
Closing? They both still have memories of Jake’s first pass through Mid-World. Does Jake remember being hit by the car? Does Roland remember pushing him out of the way before being hit?
There’s hand-waving here that I’m just going to have to live with.
I’m stopping here for now in my reading of The Waste Lands. Tomorrow, I’ll finish up Chapter 4.
I am 63% of the way through this tale.
Day 916: Jul 4, 2024
Finishing off Chapter 4 of The Waste Lands.
The ka-tet has paused at the massive & rickety bridge before city of Lud. They swap their personal stories and start to put some of the puzzle together.
“It was all suns,” Roland murmured. “It was everything real.”
“Yes! And it was right—but it was wrong, too. I can’t explain how it was wrong, but it was. It was like two heartbeats, one inside of the other, and the one inside had a disease. Or an infection.”
King is such a poet! That concept of two heartbeats is beautiful.
Susannah nodded. “…I had it on the train. I remember, because I kept asking my dad if Charlie the Choo-Choo was pulling us. I didn’t want it to be Charlie, because we were supposed to go to Elizabeth, New Jersey, and I thought Charlie might take us anywhere. Didn’t he end up pulling folks around a toy village or something like that, Jake?”
“An amusement park.”
I wasn’t the only one who immediately thought of Doctor Sleep.
Reddit: Interesting link between the Waste Lands and Doctor Sleep.
“We’re with you because we have to be—that’s your goddamned ka. But we’re also with you because we want to be. I know that’s true of me and Susannah, and I’m pretty sure it’s true of Jake, too. You’ve got a good brain, me old khef-mate, but I think you must keep it in a bomb-shelter, because it’s bitchin hard to get through sometimes. Roland. Can you dig what I’m telling you? I want to see the Tower.”
Eddie giving Roland some tough love.
But he knew something none of the others did. Perhaps, after the talk he’d just had with Eddie, he should tell them . . . yet he thought he would keep the knowledge to himself a little while longer.
In the old tongue which had once been his world’s lingua franca, most words, like khef and ka, had many meanings. The word char, however— char as in Charlie the Choo-Choo—had only one.
Char meant death.
Helluva way to end a chapter!
That’s all the reading for today. I am now 64% of the way through The Waste Lands and there’s a bunch of podcast episodes about this chapter that I’m now going to listen to.
But as a fun aside, I came across this video of a review about a video game called “Choo Choo Charles” where the tagline says, “It’s a very silly game about a killer spider-train.”
Day 917: Jul 5, 2024
The Cast of Ka summarizes Chapter 4 of The Waste Lands.
Day 918: Jul 6, 2024
Listening to Dark Tower Palaver talk about the final portion of Chapter 4 of The Waste Lands.
Day 919: Jul 7, 2024
Concluding with the second half of Dark Tower Palaver‘s episode about Chapter 4 of The Waste Lands.
Day 920: Jul 8, 2024
Two Guys to the Dark Tower Came published this episode about Chapter 4 of The Waste Lands.
Day 921: Jul 9, 2024
Kingslingers dive deep into Chapter 4 of The Waste Lands.
Day 922: Jul 10, 2024
Listening to the second half of Kingslingers‘ episode about Chapter 4 of The Waste Lands. And then tomorrow, it’s back to the book for the next chapter!
Day 923: Jul 11, 2024
Now onto Chapter 5 of The Waste Lands and whooboy – it’s a long one!
At this point, I believe the ka-tet is (finally!) about to enter into the mysterious city of Lud.
THEY CAME UPON THE downed airplane three days later.
Jake pointed it out first at midmorning—a flash of light about ten miles away, as if a mirror lay in the grass.
As foreshadowed by the old people of River Crossing.
The plane’s remaining wing still jutted from the encroaching grass. On it was a fading insignia which depicted a fist holding a thunderbolt.
And that explains the graphic at the beginning of the chapter.
Eddie hunched his shoulders and essayed a bad Rod Serling imitation. “Fasten your seatbelts and prepare for turbulence: you’re flying into . . . the Roland Zone!”
Jake and Roland, who were now standing beneath the plane’s remaining wing, ignored him.
I bet the phrase “ignored him” when referencing Eddie’s jokes is used dozens of times throughout this series!
“I knew it,” Jake said. There was another symbol beneath the fist-and-thunderbolt, and now it was almost totally revealed. It was a swastika. “I just wanted to see it. You can put me down now.”
A German WWII plane found crashed in Mid-World is yet another instance where a small, throwaway plot element could easily be revisited and make for a riveting standalone novel!
“Oh, it’s a riddle!” Jake struck another spark. This time a small flame glowed in the kindling before dying out. “You know some of those, too?”
Roland nodded. “Not just some—a lot. As a boy, I must have known a thousand. They were part of my studies.”
Ladies and gentlemen… This here is what we call a classic case of PLOT CONVENIENCE!
I bet if the ka-tet needed lemon miringue pie, Roland would’ve said he had to study pie-making as part of his studies.
Roland returned Jake’s smile, but his eyes were on Susannah, watching as she thumbed through the small, tattered book. He thought, looking at her studious frown and the absent way she readjusted the yellow flower in her hair when it tried to slip free, that she alone might sense that the tattered book of riddles could be as important as Charlie the Choo-Choo . . . maybe more important.
I wonder if they ever published this like they did with Charlie the Choo Choo?
Jake, who also knew the answer, winked at Eddie. Eddie winked back, and was amused to see Oy also trying to wink. The bumbler kept shutting both eyes, and eventually gave up.
If they ever render this on film, I will literally squeal with joy!
Jake read: “ ‘There is a thing that nothing is, and yet it has a name. It’s sometimes tall and sometimes short, joins our talks, joins our sport, and plays at every game.’ ”
King had better not finish this book without having provided the answer to this!
I stop here for the day. I am now 66% of the way through The Waste Lands.
Day 924: Jul 12, 2024
“When is a door not a door?”
How none of them answered with, “When it magically pops up on a beach and takes you into another person’s brain!” is beyond me.
I continue with Chapter 5 of The Waste Lands and their riddle-de-doo discussion.
He turned toward Lud again and cupped his ears forward with the sides of his hands.
Bump . . . ba-bump . . . ba-bump-bumpbump-bump.
I just had to share the audioclip of the audiobook where Frank Muller read that drumbeat. It was brilliant and may become my new ringtone.
He caught sight of the hive, bulging tumorously from the hollow of a tree in the center of the clearing, and broke off.
“What’s the matter with them?” Susannah asked in a soft, horrified voice. “Roland, what’s the matter with them?”
A bee, as plump and slow-moving as a horsefly in October, droned past her head. Susannah flinched away from it.
Roland motioned for the others to join them. They did, and stood looking at the hive without speaking. The chambers weren’t neat hexagons but random holes of all shapes and sizes; the beehive itself looked queerly melted, as if someone had turned a blowtorch on it. The bees which crawled sluggishly over it were as white as snow.
Nightmarish!
“I’d like to hear your whole story, from beginning to end, starting with Gilead. How you grew up there and what happened to end it all. I want to know how you found out about the Dark Tower and why you started chasing after it in the first place. I want to know about your first bunch of friends, too. And what happened to them.”
Roland removed his hat, armed sweat from his brow, then replaced it. “You have the right to know all those things, I suppose, and I’ll tell them to you . . . but not now. It’s a very long story. I never expected to tell it to anyone, and I’ll only tell it once.”
“When?” Eddie persisted.
“When the time is right,” Roland said, and with that they had to be content.
I wouldn’t have been surprised if Roland had responded, “I will, when that man sits down to write Book 4. Then you will learn all.”
Then came the sounds which Roland had hoped not to hear: a fast, sandy rattle of small-arms fire followed by a loud hollow bang—clearly an explosion of some kind. It rolled across the flatlands toward them like an invisible bowling ball. After that, the shouts, thuds, and sounds of breakage quickly sank below the level of the drums, and when the drums quit a few minutes later with their usual unsettling suddenness, the city was silent again. But now that silence had an unpleasant waiting quality.
Eventually, the ka-tet gonna have to reach Lud in this book. And King’s building it up to be a wild event!
That’s all the reading I’m going to do today. I’m now 68% of the way through The Waste Lands.
Day 925: Jul 13, 2024
Dark Tower Palaver shares some thoughts about the beginning of Chapter 5 of The Waste Lands.
Day 926: Jul 14, 2024
Listening to the second half of this Dark Tower Palaver episode about the beginning of Chapter 5 of The Waste Lands.
Day 927: Jul 15, 2024
After they encountered the Nazi plane in the field, the ka-tet spent a lot of time palaverin’.
Hopefully today, as I return to the book, there’s a little more movin’ instead and get themselves to at least knock on the door of the city of Lud!
Now that the high concrete barriers were gone, they could see exactly what old Si had described to them over cups of bitter coffee in River Crossing. “One track only,” he had said, “set up high on a colyum of man-made stone, such as the Old Ones used to make their streets and walls.” The track raced toward them out of the west in a slim, straight line, then flowed across the Send and into the city on a narrow golden trestle. It was a simple, elegant construction—and the only one they had seen so far which was totally without rust—but it was badly marred, all the same. Halfway across, a large piece of the trestle had fallen into the rushing river below. What remained were two long, jutting piers that pointed at each other like accusing fingers. Jutting out of the water below the hole was a streamlined tube of metal. Once it had been bright blue, but now the color had been dimmed by spreading scales of rust. It looked very small from this distance.
“So much for Blaine,” Eddie said. “No wonder they stopped hearing it. The supports finally gave way while it was crossing the river and it fell in the drink. It must have been decelerating when it happened, or it would have carried straight across and all we’d see would be a big hole like a bomb-crater in the far bank. Well, it was a great idea while it lasted.”
“Mercy said there was another one,” Susannah reminded him.
This is a longer passage that I captured, but it’s a marvelous description of a majestic city in ruin.
Jake paid no attention. He knew what he was seeing, and it wasn’t Blaine. The remains of the mono sticking out of the river were blue. In his dream, Blaine had been the dusty, sugary pink of the bubblegum you got with baseball trading cards.
The bridge, which had to be at least three quarters of a mile long, might not have had any proper maintenance for over a thousand years, but Roland guessed that the real destruction might have been going on for only the last fifty or so. As the hangers on the right snapped, the bridge had listed farther and farther to the left. The greatest twist had occurred in the center of the bridge, between the two four-hundred-foot cable-towers.
This came to mind.
AS SOON AS HE stepped onto the walkway, fear filled up Eddie’s hollow places like cold water and he began to wonder if he hadn’t made a very dangerous mistake. From solid ground, the bridge seemed to be swaying only a little, but once he was actually on it, he felt as if he were standing on the pendulum of the world’s biggest grandfather clock. The movement was very slow, but it was regular, and the length of the swings was much longer than he had anticipated. The walkway’s surface was badly cracked and canted at least ten degrees to the left. His feet gritted in loose piles of powdery concrete, and the low squealing sound of the box-segments grinding together was constant. Beyond the bridge, the city skyline tilted slowly back and forth like the artificial horizon of the world’s slowest-moving video game.
I can see King tapping into some of the dread he used in his short story “The Ledge” from Night Shift.
He closed his eyes for a moment. You’re not going to freeze. You’re not. I . . . I forbid it. If you need something to look at, make it long tall and ugly. Eddie opened his eyes again, fixed them on the gunslinger, forced his hands to open, and began to move forward again.
I stop reading at this point and will leave Eddie frozen in terror as he makes his way across the ancient bridge.
I am now 69% of the way through The Waste Lands.
Day 928: Jul 16, 2024
Listening to The Cast of Ka review the beginning sections of Chapter 5 of The Waste Lands.
Day 929: Jul 17, 2024
Back to Chapter 5 of The Waste Lands and the ka-tet are navigating a n ancient suspension bridge that most certainly violates a number of OSHA regulations.
Jake looked back and his heart sank. They had forgotten one member of the party when they were discussing how to cross. Oy was crouched, frozen and clearly terrified, on the far side of the hole in the walkway.
I have a mid-sized dog who is scared of his own shadow. More than once, I’ve had to carry him past places he was too scared to go. I can totally relate to how Jake must’ve felt.
The bumbler began to fall, and clamped his jaws on Jake’s reaching hand as he did. The pain was immediate and excruciating. Jake screamed but held on, head down, right arm clasping the rod, knees pressing hard against its wretchedly smooth surface. Oy dangled from his left hand like a circus acrobat
Can’t help but think of the parallel with Roland and and Jake at the bridge in “The Gunslinger” when Jake fell. But with one major difference: Jake held onto Oy.
Jake had sustained at least a dozen puncture-wounds in the back of his hand, his palm, and his fingers. Most of them were deep. It would be impossible to tell if bones had been broken or tendons severed until Jake tried to flex the hand
I absolutely wouldn’t be surprised if King crippled Jake’s hand permanently from this. Or gave him a Billy Bumbler infection of some sort. We know how he likes to torture his characters…
Another gust of wind struck them. The weather was turning dirty, and fast. “Eddie, we have to get off the bridge. Can you walk?”
“No, massa; I’sa gwinter shuffle.” The pain in his groin and the pit of his stomach was still bad, but not quite so bad as it had been a minute ago.
“All right. Let’s move. Fast as we can.”
Roland turned, began to take a step, and stopped. A man was now standing on the far side of the gap, watching them expressionlessly.
The newcomer had approached while their attention was focused on Jake and Oy. A crossbow was slung across his back.
Wow, I didn’t see this coming. Well done on delivering the shock!
The grinning pirate who had appeared while their attention was elsewhere was probably as close to a wise old elf as this broken, dying place could provide.
Roland pulled his revolver.
“Put it away, my cully,” the man in the yellow scarf said in an accent so thick that the sense of his words was almost lost. “Put it away, my dear heart. Ye’re a fierce trim, ay, that’s clear, but this time you’re outmatched.”
I’ve read The Waste Lands three times prior to this (but the last time was over 20 years ago) and I have absolutely no recollection of this “pirate”.
“Do yer know what I’ve got here, my dear ones?” the pirate asked. “Do yer ken whatcher old friend Gasher just happens to have laid his hands on? It’s a grenado, something pretty the Old Folks left behind, and I’ve already tipped its cap—for to wear one’s cap before the introductin’ is complete would be wery bad manners, so it would!”
“Gasher” – got it. Will remember him going forward.
“Why, you go on yer way without no trouble from us!” the man in the yellow headscarf returned promptly. “You have the Tick-Tock Man’s word on that.”
OK – now “Tick-Tock Man” does trigger a strong memory!
“Ay, my cully!” Gasher crooned. His lips spread wide, revealing a few remaining teeth that jutted from his white gums like decayed tombstones. “Ay, my fine young squint! Just keep coming.”
I’m nauseous from not only the description of Gasher’s mouth but also the fact that Jake is willingly walking over to him.
He bumped his crotch into Jake’s buttocks. “Maybe I ain’t quite s’far gone’s I thought. Don’t they say youth’s the wine what makes old men drunk? We’ll have us a time, won’t we, my sweet little squint? Ay, we’ll have a time such as will make the angels sing.”
I just lost my breakfast.
The ancient, rusty hulks of what had once surely been automobiles stood at intervals along both curbs. Most were bubble-shaped roadsters that looked like no cars Jake had ever seen before (except, maybe, for the ones the white-gloved creations of Walt Disney drove in the comic books), but among them he saw an old Volkswagen Beetle, a car that might have been a Chevrolet Corvair, and something he believed was a Model A Ford.
I love these overlaps with our world.
And now Jake saw a narrow alley in the not-quite-haphazard pile of concrete, splintered furniture, rusted plumbing fixtures, and chunks of trucks and automobiles. He suddenly understood. This maze would hold Roland up for hours . . . but it was Gasher’s back yard, and he knew exactly where he was going.
And now I see that the rest of this chapter (if not the rest of the book) is going to be about finding Jake.
When they were gone, a small, furry shape crept out from behind a concrete boulder. It was Oy. He stood at the mouth of the passage for a moment, neck stretched forward, eyes gleaming. Then he followed after, nose low to the ground and sniffing carefully.
Good boy, Oy!
And with that, I am 72% of the way through The Waste Lands.
Day 930: Jul 18, 2024
Tuning in to Dark Tower Palaver‘s second episode about Chapter 5 of The Waste Lands.
Day 931: Jul 19, 2024
Finished off Dark Tower Palaver‘s second episode about Chapter 5 of The Waste Lands.
Day 932: Jul 20, 2024
Continuing with Chapter 5 of The Waste Lands.
“Fresh Meat” Jake has been kidnapped by a dashing pirate. Oy stays on their trail. Eddie, Susannah and Roland were hoping for a better welcome into the city of Lud.
“Come on, yer little bastard! Move yer sweet cheeks!”
“Running . . . as fast as I can,” Jake gasped, and just managed to dodge a thick shard of glass which jutted like a long transparent tooth from the wall of junk to his left.
“You better not be, because I’ll knock yer cold and drag yer along by the hair o’ yer head if y’are! Now hup, you little barstard!”
King has a habit of heaping abuse on children in his books. I’ve become less comfortable with it as I age.
…a chrome-and-crystal fish as big as a private plane with one cryptic word of the High Speech—DELIGHT—carefully incised into its scaly gleaming side
This was such a vivid description, I thought I’d put it verbatim into the Imagen AI generator. Interesting outcome…
Now they were going downhill, and the walls of tightly packed paper had given way to ramparts of filing cabinets, jumbles of adding machines, and piles of computer gear. It was like running through some nightmarish Radio Shack warehouse.
Ahhhh. Radio Shack. Now there’s a brand I grew up loving and thought would be around forever!
“What’s in here, cully?” he asked, undoing the straps and peering in. “Got any treats for yer old pal? For the Gasherman loves his treaties, so he does!”
“There’s nothing in there but—”
Gasher’s hand flashed out and rocked Jake’s head back with a hard slap that sent a fresh spray of bloody froth flying from the boy’s nose.
One thing I do know, is that King always delivers grisly retribution towards those who abuse kids!
Eddie glanced up at the darkening sky and easily picked out the path of the Beam in the rushing clouds. He looked back down and wasn’t much surprised to see that the entrance to the street corresponding most closely to the path of the Beam was guarded by a large stone turtle. Its reptilian head peered out from beneath the granite lip of its shell; its deepset eyes seemed to stare curiously at them.
The Street of the Turtle was mercifully broad, and most of the corpses hanging from the speaker-poles were little more than mummies, but Susannah saw a few which were relatively fresh, with flies still crawling busily across the blackening skin of their swollen faces and maggots still squirming out of their decaying eyes.
And below each speaker was a little drift of bones.
“There must be thousands,” Eddie said. “Men, women, and kids.”
“Yes.” Susannah’s calm voice sounded distant and strange to her own ears. “They’ve had a lot of time to kill. And they’ve used it to kill each other.”
Lud is not quite the travel destination it once was.
Gasher apparently needed a breather, and this time he was slower getting his wind back. He stood bent over with his hands planted on the knees of his green trousers, panting in fast little whistling breaths. His yellow headscarf had slipped askew. His good eye glittered like a trumpery diamond. The white silk eyepatch was now wrinkled, and curds of evil-looking yellow muck oozed onto his cheek from beneath it.
“curds” is one of those words that looks and sounds as discussing as the object it describes.
I stop reading today with Roland & Oy hot on the trail of Gasher & Jake while Eddie & Susannah wander throughout Lud looking for Blaine the Mono.
I am now 75% of the way through the book. Based on the book cover, I would have thought most of the book would have been the gang on the train roaring through “The Waste Lands”, but three quarters of the way through and they haven’t even found the train yet!
Day 933: Jul 21, 2024
Listening to The Cast of Ka explore Chapter 5 of The Waste Lands and Jake’s kidnapping.
This episode was recorded as the nation locked down from the pandemic in 2020. It’s a time capsule of a moment in time that feels so far in the past now.
Day 934: Jul 22, 2024
Dark Tower Palaver heads into Lud and reviews a portion of Chapter 5 of The Waste Lands.
Day 935: Jul 23, 2024
Finished the second half of Dark Tower Palaver‘s episode about Chapter 5 of The Waste Lands.
Day 936: Jul 24, 2024
I’m back to reading Chapter 5 of The Waste Lands. This next subsection (sub 21) is a very long one!
The ka-tet has split up Fellowship of the Rings style in which Eddie & Susannah head in one direction to find the train. Pippin and Merry Jake is kidnapped by orcs Gasher and Aragon, Legolas and Gimli Roland and Oy head off to find him!
The shriek was choked into a long, dying gargle that sounded like the buzz of a cicada. Eddie felt the hair on the nape of his neck coming to attention. He glanced at the corpses hanging from the nearest speaker-pole and understood that the fun-loving Pubes of Lud were holding another public execution.
“fun-loving Pubes of Lud” would make for a great rock band name.
“Come on, you deucies!” a relatively young man snarled. He wore his blue scarf around his throat like a rally-racer’s ascot. He was bald except for two fluffs of frizzy red hair, one on each side of his head. To Susannah, this fellow looked like Clarabell the Clown; to Eddie he looked like Ronald McDonald; to both of them he looked like trouble.
To me, he looked like Pennywise the Clown!
“Stand where you are, beautiful. Officer Friendly says play it safe.”
I didn’t understand the reference of “Officer Friendly”, so I had to look it up.
“Railroad station?” the guy who looked like Jeeves the Butler asked. “What is a railroad station?”
“Take us to the cradle,” Susannah said. “Take us to Blaine.”
After gunning down a bunch of “Pubes”, Susannah stops and asks a survivor for directions.
With that, I stop reading for today. I am 76% of the way through The Waste Lands.
Day 937: Jul 25, 2024
Continuing with Chapter 5 of The Waste Lands.
Eddie and Susannah just laid waste to a bunch of radiation-poisoned misfits ala Tull-style. They continue their trek through Lud looking for Blaine the Mono.
The woman said somberly, “But it is death to enter Blaine’s cradle, mum, so it is. For Blaine sleeps, and he who disturbs his rest must pay a high price.”
These “Pubes” would rather die than approach Blaine the Mono. Interesting…
“It means you can take us to the cradle and risk the Wrath of Blaine, or you can stand your ground here and experience the Wrath of Eddie. … I’m having a very bad day in your city—the music sucks, everybody has a bad case of b.o., and the first guy we saw threw a grenade at us and kidnapped our friend. So what do you say?”
Eddie’s dialog is absolutely the best written stuff in this book!
Ahead of them, one building loomed above all others. It was a deceptively simple square construction of white stone blocks, its overhanging roof supported by many pillars. Eddie thought again of the gladiator movies he’d so enjoyed as a kid. Susannah, educated in more formal schools, was reminded of the Parthenon. Both saw and marvelled at the gorgeously sculpted bestiary— Bear and Turtle, Fish and Rat, Horse and Dog—which ringed the top of the building in two-by-two parade, and understood it was the place they had come to find.
What a sight!
“It’s too heavy for—” Jake began, and then the pirate seized him by the throat and yanked him upward until they were face to face. The long run through the alleys had brought a thin, sweaty flush to his cheeks and turned the sores eating into his flesh an ugly yellow-purple color. Those which were open exuded thick infected matter and threads of blood in steady pulses. Jake caught just a whiff of Gasher’s thick stench before his wind was cut off by the hand which had encircled his throat.
Wow – when King delivers the disgusting imagery, he lays it on thick!
Frank Muller reading as Gasher is a sound to behold.
I finish here in my reading of The Waste Lands. I am now 78% of the way through the book.
Day 938: Jul 26, 2024
Listening to the Kingslingers discuss the first half of Chapter 5 of The Waste Lands.
Day 939: Jul 27, 2024
Finishing off this long episode with the Kingslingers‘ deep dive into the first half of Chapter 5 of The Waste Lands.
Day 940: Jul 28, 2024
I’m reading the next two subsections of Chapter 5 of The Waste Lands and then moving onto the next podcast episode about this portion of the book.
I sure wish that these podcasters could have coordinated their cutoff points so I wouldn’t have to stop every few pages like I am now.
Oh well, on with the Jake and Gasher show!
ROLAND HAD COME CLOSE to tripping the crossed wires which held back the avalanche of junk, but the dangling fountain was absurd—a trap which might have been set by a stupid child.
…
He wondered if Jake had heard the fall of the fountain, and what he had made of it if he had… The boy should know better than to believe a gunslinger could be killed by such a simple device
Yeah, I don’t think Jake was thinking too clearly at this point in time.
The Cradle was so clean it almost hurt her eyes. No vines overgrew its sides; no graffiti daubed its blinding white walls and steps and columns. The yellow plains dust which had coated everything else was absent here… Interval sprays created by other hidden nozzles washed the steps, turning them into off-and-on waterfalls.
“Wow,” Eddie said. “It makes Grand Central look like a Greyhound station in Buttfuck, Nebraska.”
Yeah, I don’t think Jake was thinking too clearly at this point in time.
Eddie touched her shoulder and pointed higher. Susannah looked . . . and felt her breath come to a stop in her throat. Standing astride the peak of the roof, far above The Totems of the Beam and the dragonish gargoyles, as if given dominion over them, was a golden warrior at least sixty feet high. A battered cowboy hat was shoved back to reveal his lined and careworn brow; a bandanna hung askew on his upper chest, as if it had just been pulled down after serving long, hard duty as a dust-muffle. In one upraised fist he held a revolver; in the other, what appeared to be an olive branch.
Roland of Gilead stood atop the Cradle of Lud, dressed in gold.
Hah! I can only imagine the shock.
“We don’t have any choice,” Eddie said, and thunder banged overhead again, as if in agreement. “Now let me tell you something. I don’t know what’s underneath Lud and what isn’t, but I do know those drums you’re so whacked out about are part of a recording—a song—that was made in the world my wife and I came from.” He looked at their uncomprehending faces and raised his arms in frustration. “Jesus Pumpkin-Pie Christ, don’t you get it? You’re killing each other over a piece of music that was never even released as a single!”
That’s not exactly true, is it?
“‘Velcro Fly’ is the fourth single off ZZ Top’s 1985 album Afterburner.”
I stop here after subsection 24 of Chapter 25 of The Waste Lands.
I am now 79% of the way through this particular step of the journey.
However, I will move on today and listen to the first half of Dark Tower Palaver‘s episode about this part of The Waste Lands.
Day 941: Jul 29, 2024
Listening to the second half of this episode from Dark Tower Palaver.
Day 942: Jul 30, 2024
Going to read just Subsection 25 of Chapter 5 of The Waste Lands so that I can turn to another podcast episode covering the material.
The ka-split continue to inch toward their final destinations: Jake to wherever the hell Gasher is taken him; Roland and Oy to wherever the hell Jake is going; and Susannah and Eddie to Blaine and wherever the hell it’ll take all of them.
You better know sommat, ’less you want me to rip your ever-lovin spine right outcher back.” He paused, then added: “There’s haunts down here, boy. They live inside the fuckin machines, so they do. Singin keeps em off . . . don’t you know that? Now sing!”
“Ghost in the Machine” seems to be a common theme here in Lud.
The throb of machinery grew louder and the rosy glow grew stronger. The machines still didn’t sound right, but his ears told him these were in better shape than the ones above. And when he finally reached the bottom, he found the floor was dry. The new horizontal shaft was square, about six feet high, and sleeved with riveted stainless steel. It stretched away for as far as Jake could see in both directions, straight as a string. He knew instinctively, without even thinking about it, that this tunnel (which had to be at least seventy feet under Lud) also followed the path of the Beam. And somewhere up ahead—Jake was sure of this, although he couldn’t have said why—the train they had come looking for lay directly above it.
This journey of Jake and Gasher has been long and nearly bordering on dull. But this new place has caught my attention and I’m very curious now to learn where they are.
Had they come all this way, through the boobytrapped mazes and lightless tunnels, to be balked here at this watertight door simply because Gasher couldn’t remember the Tick-Tock Man’s password?
Given all the parallels with Lord of the Rings, I wouldn’t be surprised if the password was “Friend”.
“All right, Gasher,” he said calmly. “The word on this piece of paper is bountiful.”
Guess it wasn’t “friend” after all.
“Of course,” the Tick-Tock Man said. A machine started up somewhere nearby, making Jake jump. The valve-wheel in the center of the door spun. When it stopped, Gasher seized it, yanked it outward, grabbed Jake’s arm, and propelled him over the raised lip of the door and into the strangest room he had ever seen in his life.
And with that cliffhanger, I finish reading for the day. I am now 80% of the way through The Waste Lands.
Reading only one subsection today has left me some room to squeeze in this episode from The Cast of Ka who reviews The Waste Lands, Chapter 5, subsections 21 – 25.
Day 943: Jul 31, 2024
It’s back to Chapter 5 of The Waste Lands where I hope to get some more quality time with the Tick-Tock Man. So far, we’ve only heard his voice from behind a thick locked metal door. But now that door is opened and Jake and Gasher walk through. And I’m betting it’s not the famous Croc from Peter Pan.
And, of course, the rest of the ka-tet is out there in Lud somewhere ka-tetting away. Let’s return to the action!
And, just as they reached the shaft which led to the lower levels of this Dycian Maze, Roland had heard the sound of some new machine
I immediately went to google “Dycian Maze” but quickly found that this was an invented term by King, one that certainly made sense in Roland’s world, but not to us here in this one.
EDDIE AND SUSANNAH LOOKED up at the vastness of Blaine’s Cradle as the skies opened and the rain began to fall in torrents.
“It’s a hell of a building, but they forgot the handicap ramps!” Eddie yelled, raising his voice to be heard over the rain and thunder.
I like the name “Blaine’s Cradle”.
Now a sign hanging on thick chrome-silver chains swam out of the shadows:
Blaine is a pain…
Patricia is a… what? What rhymes with that? “Militia”?
High up on the wall, a series of sculpted heads seemed to push out of the marble, peering down at them from the shadows—stern men with the harsh faces of executioners who are happy in their work.
I gave Imagen AI a shot at this passage verbatim. Very please with the result! That one on the bottom kinda looks like Sai King himself!
Ahead, a vast grilled barrier like a castle barbican swam out of the gloom . . . and beyond it, they caught their first glimpse of Blaine the Mono.
A castle what?
She shook her head. “I think we better try to be ready for when they get here . . . because I’ve got an idea that they’re going to come on the run. Push me over to that box mounted on the bars. It looks like an intercom. See it?”
I just had a vision of Susannah pushing a button, activating Blaine, and launching it off without any of them on board.
The end.
The box looked like a combination intercom and burglar alarm. There was a speaker set into the top half, with what looked like a TALK/LISTEN button next to it. Below this were numbers arranged in a shape which made a diamond:
Interesting pattern!
…but there was a world of difference between the electronics gear available in her when, 1963, and his own, which was 1987. We’ve never talked much about the differences, either, he thought. I wonder what she’d think if I told her Ronald Reagan was President of the United States when Roland snatched me? Probably that I was crazy.
I hadn’t thought of that before. Entire chapters of dialog of Eddie explaining what’s happened over 20 years past Susannah’s time.
A rather random painting from the book placed right in the middle of Eddie’s first words with Blaine the Mono.
It’s rather disruptive when the artwork has nothing to do with the text!
“I’m Little Blaine,” the child’s voice whispered. “The one he doesn’t see. The one he forgot. The one he thinks he left behind in the rooms of ruin and the halls of the dead.”
…
“Big Blaine is the ghost in the machine—the ghost in all the machines.”
I wonder if we all have something of an inner “Little Blaine” that we don’t know about.
…but he did know how Jack in that old story must have felt when he realized that he had tried the beanstalk once too often, and awakened the giant.
“HOW DARE YOU DISTURB MY SLEEP? TELL ME NOW, OR DIE WHERE YOU STAND.”
Huh – I heard the exact same thing from my wife this morning.
“OKAY, PILGRIM. I BELIEVE YOU.”
Eddie and Susannah shared another glance, this one of confusion and relief. But when Blaine spoke again, the voice was again cold and emotionless.
“ASK ME A QUESTION, EDDIE DEAN OF NEW YORK. AND IT BETTER BE A GOOD ONE.” There was a pause, and then Blaine added: “BECAUSE IF IT’S NOT, YOU AND YOUR WOMAN ARE GOING TO DIE, NO MATTER WHERE YOU CAME FROM.”
I stop at this cliffhanger. I am now 83% of the way through The Waste Lands.
Day 944: Aug 1, 2024
Getting towards the end of Chapter 5 of The Waste Lands!
Eddie & Susannah have now encountered Big Blaine (and the very scared “Little Blaine”). Jake is in the lair of the Tick-Tock man (I so badly want to write “TikTok”) and Roland and Oy are undoubtably going to save him. It’s just a matter of how.
Sitting in the center of the room, with one massive leg thrown casually over the arm of a chair big enough to be a throne, was a man who looked like a cross between a Viking warrior and a giant from a child’s fairy-tale. His heavily muscled upper body was naked except for a silver band around one bicep, a knife-scabbard looped over one shoulder, and a strange charm about his neck.
Definitely NOT what I had expected.
The slim white hilt which had protruded from the scabbard looped over the Tick-Tock Man’s shoulder was gone. The knife was now on the other side of the room, sticking out of the dark-haired woman’s chest. Tick-Tock had drawn and thrown with an uncanny speed Jake wasn’t sure even Roland could match. It had been like some malign magic trick.
Questioning Roland’s skills when compared to this guy. Nice. You want to see a challenging fight at some point.
“He was your grandfather, wasn’t he?”
The Tick-Tock Man raised his brows interrogatively. His hands returned to Jake’s shoulders, and although his grip was not tight, Jake could feel the phenomenal strength there. If Tick-Tock chose to tighten his grip and pull sharply forward, he would snap Jake’s collarbones like pencils. If he shoved, he would probably break his back.
“Who was my grandfather, cully?”
Jake’s eyes once more took in the Tick-Tock Man’s massive, nobly shaped head and broad shoulders. He remembered what Susannah had said: Look at the size of him, Roland—they must have had to grease him to get him into the cockpit!
“The man in the airplane. David Quick.”
What an interesting connection!
Yes,” the Tick-Tock Man said thoughtfully. His hands tightened on the boy’s shoulders and drew Jake closer to that smiling, handsome, lunatic face. “I can see he’s pert. It’s in his eyes. But we’ll take care of that, won’t we, Gasher?”
It’s not Gasher he’s talking to, Jake thought. It’s me. He thinks he’s hypnotizing me . . . and maybe he is.
“Ay,” Gasher breathed.
Jake felt he was drowning in those wide green eyes.
“So fell Lord Perth, and the countryside did shake with that thunder.”
…
“If you ever speak to me of Lord Perth again . . . ever, ever, ever . . . I’ll tear off the top of your skull and eat your brains. I’ll have none of that bad-luck story in the Cradle of the Grays. Do you understand me?”
What is it about “Lord Perth” that triggered Tick-Tock man? I hope it gets explained.
Jake’s eyes drifted back to the ventilator grille. What he had seen before was still there; it hadn’t been just his imagination. Two gold-ringed eyes floated in the dark behind the chrome louvers.
Oy.
Good! About time Jake had a little hope!
I’m stopping here for today having only read subsection 28 of Chapter 25. But it was a looong section and I’m now 85% of the way through The Waste Lands.
Day 945: Aug 2, 2024
Taking a pause in reading to listen to Dark Tower Palaver chat their way through Chapter 5 of The Waste Lands.
Day 946: Aug 3, 2024
These Dark Tower Palaver episodes are nearly 3 hours long each! That’s why it usually takes me 2 days to get through them. Today, I listened to the second half of this episode about Chapter 5 of The Waste Lands.
Day 947: Aug 4, 2024
Back to reading Chapter 5 of The Waste Lands.
Jake has engaged with the Tick-Tock Man, Eddie & Susannah are verbally dueling with Blaine the Mono, and Oy has given Jake some hope through a vent grill.
Nevertheless, he had been able to help Jake when the boy had been trying to cross from his world to this one. He had been able to see . . . and when Jake had been trying to regain the key he had dropped, he had been able to send a message.
Flashing back a few chapters to a skill that very much might come in handy as Roland stands outside the steel door separating him and Jake.
Plot convenience?
He picked Oy up again, knowing Jake might live—might—but the bumbler was almost certainly going to die.
At this point, every reader has found themselves attached to Oy. What a cruel thought to have shared!
ASK ME A QUESTION, Eddie Dean of New York. And it better be a good one . . . if it’s not, you and your woman are going to die, no matter where you came from.
This constant POV change between chapters and each group is at its most intense moment… Well, that’s gonna make for some might fine MUST-SEE TV!
“Who built you, anyway?” Eddie asked frantically, thinking: If I only knew what the fucking thing wanted! “Want to talk about that? Was it the Grays? Nah . . . probably the Great Old Ones, right? Or . . .”
He trailed off. Now he could feel Blaine’s silence as a physical weight on his skin, like fleshy, groping hands.
“What do you want?” he shouted. “Just what in hell do you want to hear?”
A conversation that many a man has experienced with his woman at some point in his life! 😂
“DO YOU KNOW ANY MORE RIDDLES?” Blaine asked.
“Yes, lots,” Susannah said at once. “Our companion, Jake, has a whole book of them.”
“FROM THE NEW YORK PLACE OF WHERE?” Blaine asked, and now the tone of his voice was perfectly clear, at least to Eddie. Blaine might be a machine, but Eddie had been a heroin junkie for six years, and he knew stone greed when he heard it.
I didn’t know Lord of the Rings as much when I first read The Dark Tower, but the parallels!
“Will you take us, Blaine?”
“I MIGHT,” Blaine said, and Eddie was quite sure he heard a dim thread of cruelty running through that voice. “BUT YOU’LL HAVE TO PRIME THE PUMP TO GET ME GOING, AND MY PUMP PRIMES BACKWARD.”
“Meaning what?” Eddie asked
Ah – I got this right away. As a math nerd, I understood this allusion to the diamond number pattern they saw a few thousand words ago.
That’s all the reading for today. There’s a couple of podcast episodes that I have to listen to know that have covered up through Subsection 30 of Chapter 5.
I am now 87% of the way through The Waste Lands.
Day 948: Aug 5, 2024
Spending today listening to The Cast of Ka talking about Chapter 5 of The Waste Lands.
Day 949: Aug 6, 2024
Dark Tower Palaver enters into the lair of the Tick-Tock Man as they talk about Chapter 5 of The Waste Lands.
Day 950: Aug 7, 2024
Finished the second half of Dark Tower Palaver‘s deep dive into Chapter 5 of The Waste Lands.
Day 951: Aug 8, 2024
It’s back to reading Chapter 5 of The Waste Lands. It feels like all of the chess pieces are in play: Roland and Oy just outside the lair where the Tick-Tock Man and Gasher are holding Jake. Eddie & Susannah have begun to engage Blain the Pain Train with some riddles.
The tension is high and I’m here for the shitshow that’s sure to some any page now!
He looked like a college professor in a turn-of-the-century Punch cartoon.
“There’s a thousand of those ever-fucking dipolar computers right under the ever-fucking city, maybe a HUNDRED thousand, and the only one that still works don’t do a thing except play Watch Me and run those drums! I want those computers! I want them working for ME!”
Huh. Not too dissimilar to a boss I had when I worked in IT.
Jake opened his mouth to say something—he had no idea what— and then, incredibly, Roland’s voice was in his mind, filling it.
Distract them, Jake—and if there’s a button that opens the door, get close to it.
Even in a world of magical and fantastic things, this “mind talking” skill reeks of plot convenience. I’m not a fan of it. It was good enough in The Shining, but it doesn’t need to be pulled out in every difficult situation.
“Draw back,” he panted. “I loves you like a brother, Ticky, but if you don’t draw back, I’ll hide this blade in your guts—so I will.”
“You? Not likely,” the Tick-Tock Man said with a laugh. He removed his own knife from its scabbard and held it delicately by the bone hilt. All eyes were on the two of them.
Tick-Tock vs Gasher? Not quite the battle I was hoping for today, but it’ll do.
At least one of them is not getting out of this alive.
At that moment Oy leaped, hitting the flimsy ventilator grille and knocking it free. The Tick-Tock Man wheeled toward the sound, and Oy fell onto his upturned face, biting and slashing.
AND OY HAS ENTERED THE ARENA!
Copperhead lunged at Jake, got an arm around his throat, and then Oy was on him, barking shrilly and chewing at Copperhead’s ankle through the black silk pants. Copperhead screamed and danced away, shaking Oy back and forth at the end of his leg. Oy clung like a limpet.
Am I the only one that didn’t know what a “limpet” was?
“You dasn’t!” Tick-Tock said in a screamy whisper.
“Yes I do,” Jake said grimly, and pulled the trigger of the Tick-Tock Man’s runout gun. There was a flat crack, much less dramatic than the Schmeisser’s Teutonic roar. A small black hole appeared high up on the right side of Tick-Tock’s forehead. The Tick-Tock Man went on staring up at Jake, disbelief in his remaining eye.
Standing and cheering for Jake!
“I said I’d kill you for it, my narsty little pal,” a voice whispered in his ear, “and the Gasherman always keeps his promises.”
You know, I was just wondering what happened to Gasher in this melee.
Gasher looked up. “You,” he snarled.
“Me,” Roland agreed. He fired once and the left side of Gasher’s head disintegrated.
Finally!
A cluster of bright orange lights came on at the top of the capsule-shaped enclosure, and an alarm began to go off: in broad, hoarse blats that battered the walls. After a moment or two, the emergency lights began to pulse in sync with the alarm.
And with that image, I stop reading for the day. I am now 88% of the way through The Waste Lands.
Day 952: Aug 9, 2024
Continuing to read Chapter 5 of The Waste Lands.
Roland, Jake & Oy have taken care of the Grays in a nice little gun fight that Oy initiated.
I have no idea what Eddie & Susannah have been up to as the recent subsections have only been about the battle Tick-Tock Man’s lair.
Continuing to read Chapter 5 of The Waste Lands.
Roland, Jake & Oy have taken care of the Grays in a nice little gun fight that Oy initiated.
I have no idea what Eddie & Susannah have been up to as the recent subsections have only been about the battle Tick-Tock Man’s lair.
“Blaine, stop it!” Susannah shrieked. “How can we think of an answer to your riddle with that air-raid siren going off?”
The laughter stopped as suddenly as it began, but Blaine made no reply. Or perhaps he did; from beyond the bars that separated them from the platform, huge engines powered by frictionless slo-trans turbines awoke at the command of the dipolar computers the Tick-Tock Man had so lusted after. For the first time in a decade, Blaine the Mono was awake and cycling up toward running speed.
I liked the immediate cutover from Rolland triggering the alarm to Eddie & Susannah hearing it throughout Lud. The synchronization of the timeline was deft.
Roland dropped his head to Jake’s chest, slamming his palm against his other ear to deaden the pulse of the alarm. He heard the boy’s heartbeat, slow but strong. He slipped his arms around the boy, and as he did, Jakes’s eyes fluttered open. “You didn’t let me fall this time.” His voice was no more than a hoarse whisper.
Wow. Jake’s never gonna let that go, is he? He’s going to lord that over Roland forever.
“GUNSLINGER,” a voice boomed from everywhere.
Roland wheeled around, one arm cradling Oy and the other around Jake’s shoulders, but there was no one to see.
“Who speaks to me?” he shouted.
“NAME YOURSELF, GUNSLINGER.”
“Roland of Gilead, son of Steven. Who speaks to me?”
“GILEAD IS NO MORE,” the voice mused, ignoring the question.
Roland looked up and saw patterns of concentric rings in the ceiling. The voice was coming from those.
“NO GUNSLINGER HAS WALKED IN-WORLD OR MID-WORLD FOR ALMOST THREE HUNDRED YEARS.”
“I and my friends are the last.”
I am not breathing or blinking during this section!
The door of the oven suddenly dropped open like an unhinged jaw. A thick beam of blue-white fire shot out and engulfed the scruffy man’s head. He was driven backward with his clothes in flames and his skin boiling on his face.
Jake stared up at Roland, stunned and horrified. Roland put an arm about the boy’s shoulders.
“HE INTERRUPTED ME,” the voice said. “THAT WAS RUDE, WASN’T IT?”
King pulling a few tricks from Maximum Overdrive here…
A stainless steel panel in the ceiling slid open, revealing a square of darkness. Something silvery flashed within it, and a few moments later a steel sphere, perhaps a foot in diameter, dropped from the hole and hung in the air of the kitchen.
“FOLLOW,” Blaine said flatly.
Reminded me of this from the movie Phantasm.
“Jake!” Roland shouted. “You never let me in at all, did you?”
Jake shook his head.
“I didn’t think so. It was Blaine.”
I’m glad that was cleared up. I thought I had missed Jake setting the door open to Tick-Tock’s lair, but now I’m glad to see I hadn’t missed it after all.
One screen showed a barrel-chested giant tossing men and women into what looked like a blood-spattered stamping press. This was bad enough, but there was something worse: the victims were standing in an unguarded line, docilely waiting their turns.
This is but one scene of the people in Lud going insane from the wakening of the machines. King could linger in this chaos all day and I would be riveted.
Then he remembered Tick-Tock’s great-grandfather, who’d been brave enough to climb into an airplane from another world and take it into the sky.
There was some question as to whether that pilot they discovered was from this world or was carried by that plane from the other. This, I suppose, answers that question.
Far ahead of them, huge motors rumbled to life. A moment later a heavy grinding sound began and new light—the harsh glow of orange arc-sodiums—flooded down on them. Jake could now see the place where the moving belt stopped. Beyond it was a steep, narrow escalator, leading up into that orange light.
I stop reading here for the day. I am now 91% of the way through The Waste Lands.
Day 953: Aug 10, 2024
Listening to the first half of yet another episode from Dark Tower Palaver about Chapter 5 of The Waste Lands.
Day 954: Aug 11, 2024
Finished off this episode from Dark Tower Palaver about Chapter 5 of The Waste Lands.
Day 955: Aug 12, 2024
I can feel the end is so near for The Waste Lands. I’m tempted to rush through to the last page, but I will maintain discipline and savor ever word like I’ve been doing for the past few months.
Roland and Oy have rescued Jake and are now making a mad dash to the Cradle to meet up with Eddie and Susannah.
“Roland! Jake!” Eddie shouted. He leaped up, waving his hands over his head, and came down dancing on the edge of the slot. If he had been wearing a hat, he would have thrown it in the air.
They looked up and waved. Jake was grinning, Eddie saw, and even old long tall and ugly looked as if he might break down and crack a smile before long.
You just know the good feelings are not going to last much longer.
Not in King’s world.
“Yes,” Eddie said. He was peering into the slot. “What’s down there?”
“Machines and madness.”
A line I easily could’ve used when referring to my company’s data center.
“Because I think the mono’s engines are cycling faster,” Eddie said. “I mean, it’s hard to tell for sure with that alarm blatting, but I think it is . . . and it’s a robot, after all. What if it, like, leaves without us?”
That’s what I said earlier! (See Day 943)
“BECAUSE THEY BORE ME. YOU FOUR, HOWEVER, I FIND RATHER INTERESTING. OF COURSE, HOW LONG I CONTINUE TO FIND YOU INTERESTING WILL DEPEND ON HOW GOOD YOUR RIDDLES ARE. AND SPEAKING OF RIDDLES, HADN’T YOU BETTER GET TO WORK SOLVING MINE? YOU HAVE EXACTLY ELEVEN MINUTES AND TWENTY SECONDS BEFORE THE CANNISTERS RUPTURE.”
Blaine explains why he’s about to destroy the city. Makes sense to me.
“ANDREW.”
There is no Andrew here, stranger, he thought. Andrew is long gone; Andrew is no more, as I shall soon be no more.
“Andrew!” the voice insisted.
The next subsection opened with a name that hadn’t been used before. Well, not quite true. Andrew was Susannah’s chauffeur, but I high doubt HE’s making an appearance here.
“Andrew! Raise your head and look at me.”
He couldn’t . . . and wouldn’t even if he could. Better to just lie here and wait for the darkness. He was supposed to be dead, anyway; hadn’t the hellish squint put a bullet in his brain?
Ok… So Andrew is the Tick-Tock Man in whose head Jake had put a bullet.
I had forgotten that in King’s world, dead bad guys are never truly dead.
And who is talking to him? This sounds like how Flagg appeared to people in The Stand.
“Who are you?” the Tick-Tock Man asked. He moved slightly, and more of those weights went sliding through his head, ripping fresh channels in his brain.
…
“I have been called the Ageless Stranger,” the man said. He began to walk toward Tick-Tock, and as he did, the man on the floor moaned and tried to scrabble backward. “I have also been called Merlin or Maerlyn…”
I like the appearance of this Stranger, but still not thrilled that Tick-Tock is still alive.
“If you want to thank me—as I’m sure you do—you must say something an old acquaintance of mine used to say. He ended up betraying me, but he was a good friend for quite some time, anyway, and I still have a soft spot in my heart for him. Say, ‘My life for you,’ Andrew— can you say that?”
I KNEW IT!
(just like the Trashcan Man from The Stand)
Richard Fannin’s lips curled. “Bear and bone . . . key and rose . . . day and night . . . time and tide. Enough! Enough, I say! They must not draw closer to the Tower than they are now!”
Just when you thought our ka-tet had enough to deal with, with Blaine about to blow up the city… Now they have to deal with this multi-world wizard/demon?
And with that, I finished with a very long Chapter 5 and with reading for the day. I am now 93% of the way through The Waste Lands.
Day 956: Aug 13, 2024
Now that I’m finished with the epic Chapter 5 of The Waste Lands, I see a line of podcasters in my queue just dying to talk all about it.
Let’s start with The Cast of Ka.
Day 957: Aug 14, 2024
Listening to the first half of this episode where Dark Tower Palaver covers the end of Chapter 5 of The Waste Lands.
This must’ve released right around the time of news of Mike Flanagan and The Dark Tower because they’ve constantly been imagining who would play what role for every character they encounter (Gary Oldman as the voice of Blaine?).
Day 958: Aug 15, 2024
Listening to the second half of this episode where Dark Tower Palaver covers the end of Chapter 5 of The Waste Lands.
Day 959: Aug 16, 2024
The Kingslingers tackle the second half of the epic Chapter 5 of The Waste Lands.
Day 960: Aug 17, 2024
Finished off the second half of the Kingslingers‘ episode about Chapter 5 of The Waste Lands.
Day 961: Aug 18, 2024
The final word about Chapter 5 of The Waste Lands comes from Two Guys to the Dark Tower Came.
Day 962: Aug 19, 2024
I’m in my final week of reading The Waste Lands!
Today, I’m reading the first half of Chapter 6, “Riddle and Waste Lands”. The ka-tet are faced with a puzzle to solve in order to get Blaine going (“my pump primes backward”) and it’s discovered that Jake is the worst gunslinger in the world, shooting Tick-Tock Man in the head and not killing him.
“Roland,” Susannah said abruptly. “You have to help me.”
…
“What?” he asked. “What is it, Susannah?”
…
“I know the answer, but I can’t get it. It’s stuck in my mind the way a fishbone can get stuck in your throat. I need you to help me remember. Not his face, but his voice.”
…
“What voice would you remember, Susannah Dean?”
…
“Help me remember the voice of my father”
Roland will be playing the part of Grigori Rasputin in this next hypnotism trick!
“Try, Susannah,” Roland urged, and suddenly he felt Susannah change within the circle of his right arm. She seemed to gain weight… and, in some indefinable way, vitality as well. It was as if her essence had somehow changed.
And it had.
“Why you want to bother wit dat bitch?” the raspy voice of Detta Walker asked.
I totally did NOT see that coming! I mean, what’s possibly the worst thing that could happen at this very moment… And King’s gonna make it happen.
“and it wasn’t nuthin but funnybook algebra at dat! She could do de woik—if I could, she could—but she din’ want to. Poitry-readin bitch like her too good for a little ars mathematica, you see?”
This led me down a little rabbit hole concerning “ars mathematica”.
…she say, ‘Teacher says ain’t no formula for prime numbahs, Daddy.’ And Daddy, he say right back, ‘They ain’t. But you can catch em, Odetta, if you have a net.’ He called it The Net of Eratosthenes.
I’m listening to the audiobook while reading the text (great for immersing yourself in the story) and poor Frank Muller… He literally read all the remaining numbers out loud in this picture below.
“NOT BAD AT ALL,” Blaine said admiringly. “I’M LOOKING FORWARD TO THIS VERY MUCH. MAY I SUGGEST YOU CLIMB ON BOARD QUICKLY? IN FACT, YOU MAY WISH TO RUN. THERE ARE SEVERAL GAS OUTLETS IN THIS AREA.”
I’m listening to the audiobook while reading the text (great for immersing yourself in the story) and poor Frank Muller… He literally read all the remaining numbers out loud in this picture below.
Day 963: Aug 20, 2024
Continuing with the final chapter of The Waste Lands.
Where I last left off, Detta the mathematician makes an appearance under Roland the Mesmer’s spell. We get a deep lesson on prime numbers and are much the wiser for it.
The ka-tet is ready to board Blaine the Pain.
The pièce de résistance stood on a pedestal below the chandelier. It was an ice-sculpture of a gunslinger with a revolver in his left hand. The right hand was holding the bridle of the ice-horse that walked, head-down and tired, behind him. Eddie could see there were only three digits on this hand: the last two fingers and the thumb.
Forget everything else Blaine has done. Whipping up an ice sculpture in a matter of seconds is it’s most impressive power!
“Exactly where are we going, Blaine?”
Blaine replied in the patient voice of someone who realizes he is speaking to a mental inferior and must make allowances. “ALONG THE PATH OF THE BEAM. AT LEAST, AS FAR ALONG IT AS MY TRACK GOES.”
“To the Dark Tower?” Roland asked…
“Only as far as Topeka,” Jake said in a low voice.
“YES,” Blaine said. “TOPEKA IS THE NAME OF MY TERMINATING POINT, ALTHOUGH I AM SURPRISED YOU KNOW IT.”
Does a reader in Topeka go “Woah…”?
The throb of the engines became steadily stronger. A faint thud— not nearly as strong as the explosion which had shaken the Cradle as they boarded—ran through the floor. An expression of alarm crossed Susannah’s face. “Oh shit! Eddie! My wheelchair! It’s back there!”
OK, this is gonna be interesting!
The purple cloud began to catch up with the stragglers—mostly old people who were unable to run. They fell down, clawing at their throats and screaming soundlessly, the instant the gas touched them. Jake saw an agonized face staring up at him in disbelief as they passed over, saw the eyesockets suddenly fill up with blood, and closed his eyes.
Blaine gave them a great show as it shot through the city.
But… I wonder what happened to the Tick-Tock man who was magically alive at the end of the last chapter thanks to RF?
“YOU ARE LOOKING AT OUR ROUTE OF TRAVEL. ALTHOUGH THERE ARE SOME TWISTS AND TURNS ALONG THE BUNNY-TRAIL, YOU WILL NOTE THAT OUR COURSE KEEPS FIRMLY TO THE SOUTHWEST—ALONG THE PATH OF THE BEAM. THE TOTAL DISTANCE IS JUST OVER EIGHT THOUSAND WHEELS—OR SEVEN THOUSAND MILES, IF YOU PREFER THAT UNIT OF MEASURE. IT WAS ONCE MUCH LESS, BUT THAT WAS BEFORE ALL TEMPORAL SYNAPSES BEGAN TO MELT DOWN.”
I will never look at a route map at the subway the same ever again.
“AT MY TOP SPEED, WE WILL REACH THE TERMINATING POINT OF MY RUN IN EIGHT HOURS AND FORTY-FIVE MINUTES.”
“Eight hundred-plus miles an hour over the ground,” Susannah said. Her voice was soft with awe. “Jesus-God.”
“I AM, OF COURSE, MAKING THE ASSUMPTION THAT ALL TRACKAGE ALONG MY ROUTE REMAINS INTACT. IT HAS BEEN NINE YEARS AND FIVE MONTHS SINCE I’VE BOTHERED TO MAKE THE RUN, SO I CAN’T SAY FOR SURE.”
LOL. Blaine is SUCH a dick!
Beyond the Great Wall of Lud, the real waste lands began.
With that, I finish reading for the day. I am now 95% of the way through The Waste Lands!
Day 964: Aug 21, 2024
Dark Tower Palaver covers the first half of the final chapter of The Waste Lands.
Day 965: Aug 22, 2024
Listening to the second half of Dark Tower Palaver‘s episode about the beginning of the Chapter 6 of The Waste Lands.
Day 966: Aug 23, 2024
This is it! I’m in the final stretch of reading The Waste Lands!
The ka-tet is in the belly of Blaine the Pain Train and have shot out of the horrors of Lud and into an even worse set of horrors in the waste lands outside of that damned city.
The lands below had been fused and blasted by some terrible event—the disastrous cataclysm which had driven this part of the world deep into itself in the first place, no doubt. The surface of the earth had become distorted black glass, humped upward into spalls and twists which could not properly be called hills and twisted downward into deep cracks and folds which could not properly be called valleys. A few stunted nightmare trees flailed twisted branches at the sky; under magnification, they seemed to clutch at the travellers like the arms of lunatics. Here and there clusters of thick ceramic pipes jutted through the glassy surface of the ground. Some seemed dead or dormant, but within others they could see gleams of eldritch blue-green light, as if titanic forges and furnaces ran on and on in the bowels of the earth. Misshapen flying things which looked like pterodactyls cruised between these pipes on leathery wings, occasionally snapping at each other with their hooked beaks. Whole flocks of these gruesome aviators roosted on the circular tops of other stacks, apparently warming themselves in the updrafts of the eternal fires beneath.
This paragraph will need to be studied for the art of describing the landscape of Hell itself.
They had come to The Drawers and entered the waste lands; the poisoned darkness of that shunned place now lay all around them.
Very surprised that this sign wasn’t visible as they exited Lud.
BUT THESE LANDS, THOUGH poisoned, were not entirely dead. From time to time the travellers caught sight of figures below them—misshapen things which bore no resemblance to either men or animals—prancing and cavorting in the smouldering wilderness.
It’s at this point in the book that the artist decided to let loose all of his visions of madness.
Among the smaller creatures stalked larger ones—pinkish things that looked a little like storks and a little like living camera tripods. They moved slowly, almost thoughtfully, like preachers meditating on the inevitability of damnation, pausing every now and then to bend sharply forward and apparently pluck something from the ground, as herons bend to seize passing fish.
“You’re planning to commit suicide, aren’t you?” Jake held Oy in his arms, slowly stroking him. “And you want to take us with you.”
“No!” the voice of Little Blaine moaned. “If you provoke him you’ll drive him to it! Don’t you see—”
Jake is awfully calm when speaking that realization out loud.
“WOULD YOU LIKE A LITTLE MUSIC?” Blaine asked. “I HAVE OVER SEVEN THOUSAND CONCERTI IN MY LIBRARY—A SAMPLING OF OVER THREE HUNDRED LEVELS. THE CONCERTI ARE MY FAVORITES, BUT I CAN ALSO OFFER SYMPHONIES, OPERAS, AND A NEARLY ENDLESS SELECTION OF POPULAR MUSIC. YOU MIGHT ENJOY SOME WAY-GOG MUSIC. THE WAY-GOG IS AN INSTRUMENT SOMETHING LIKE THE BAGPIPE. IT IS PLAYED ON ONE OF THE UPPER LEVELS OF THE TOWER.”
I couldn’t find any way-gog renderings, so I took it to AI.
“NOW WAIT JUST A DURN MINUTE, PARD,” Blaine said in his John Wayne voice. “YOU DON’T WANT TO GET THE IDEA THAT I’M NOTHING BUT A TRAIN. IN A WAY, THE BLAINE YOU ARE SPEAKING TO IS ALREADY THREE HUNDRED MILES BEHIND US, COMMUNICATING BY ENCRYPTED MICROBURST RADIO TRANSMISSIONS.”
Jake suddenly remembered the slim silver rod he’d seen pushing itself out of Blaine’s brow. The antenna of his father’s Mercedes-Benz rose out of its socket like that when you turned on the radio.
That’s how it’s communicating with the computer banks under the city, he thought. If we could break that antenna off, somehow …
And now we come full circle to the opening chapter of the book in which the ka-tet had to take down Shardik the bear in the same manner.
“I HAD HEARD RUMORS, YOU SEE, THAT A GUNSLINGER WAS ONCE MORE ABROAD IN THE EARTH. I COULD SCARCELY CREDIT SUCH STORIES, AND YET I NOW SEE I WAS WISE TO WAIT.”
Roland stirred in his chair. “What rumors did you hear, Blaine? And who did you hear them from?”
But Blaine chose not to answer this question.
I too would like to know how rumors of Roland’s existence would have spread to Lud.
“WHAT DO YOU SAY?” In its clear disbelief, the voice of Big Blaine had once again become very close to the voice of his unsuspected twin.
“I said fuck you,” Roland said calmly, “but if that puzzles you, Blaine, I can make it clearer. No. The answer is no.”
This seems like a perfect place to stop reading for the day. I am now 98% of the way through The Waste Lands and I finish off this book tomorrow!
Day 967: Aug 24, 2024
What a trip! I finish reading The Waste Lands today!
I woke up before the crack of dawn in excitement and anticipation to reach the end of the massive story.
Where I last left off, Roland calmly and confidently told Blaine stick it somewhere deep in his gaskets – a bold move considering Blaine intends to commit suicide and take the ka-tet with it.
Roland of Gilead unfolded his hands and got slowly to his feet. He stood on what appeared to be nothing, legs apart, his right hand on his hip and his left on the sandalwood grip of his revolver. He stood as he had stood so many times before, in the dusty streets of a hundred forgotten towns, in a score of rock-lined canyon killing-zones, in unnumbered dark saloons with their smells of bitter beer and old fried meals. It was just another showdown in another empty street. That was all, and that was enough. It was khef, ka, and ka-tet. That the showdown always came was the central fact of his life and the axle upon which his own ka revolved. That the battle would be fought with words instead of bullets this time made no difference; it would be a battle to the death, just the same. The stench of killing in the air was as clear and definite as the stench of exploded carrion in a swamp. Then the battle-rage descended, as it always did . . . and he was no longer really there to himself at all.
Can you hear the music triumphantly playing?
“I cannot call you a sucker of cocks, for instance, because you have no mouth and no cock. … I cannot even say you fucked your mother, because you had none.”
Roland dropping verbal bombs on Blaine!
But as odd as it may sound to hurl insults at an AI train, I can’t say that I don’t do the same at my laptop at least once a day.
“I COMMAND YOU TO STOP IT OR I’LL KILL YOU ALL RIGHT HERE!”
“Kill if you will, but command me nothing!” the gunslinger roared. “You have forgotten the faces of those who made you! Now either kill us or be silent and listen to me, Roland of Gilead, son of Steven, gunslinger, and lord of the ancient lands! I have not come across all the miles and all the years to listen to your childish prating! Do you understand? Now you will listen to ME!”
I am breathless. What actor can possibly deliver these lines with this ferocity?
“Now I come to my proposal,” Roland said.
“I WILL LISTEN WITH GREAT INTEREST, ROLAND OF GILEAD.”
“Let these next hours be our Fair-Day. You will not riddle us, for you wish to hear new riddles, not tell some of those millions you must already know—”
“CORRECT.”
“I propose that, instead of a goose, our lives shall be the prize,” Roland said.
I remember reaching this point when I was a young man thinking, “WHAT? THERE’S ONLY A FEW PAGES LEFT IN THE BOOK!”
“We will riddle you as we run, Blaine. If, when we come to Topeka, you have solved every one of our riddles, you may carry out your original plan and kill us. That is your goose. But if we stump you— if there is a riddle in either Jake’s book or one of our heads which you don’t know and can’t answer—you must take us to Topeka and then free us to pursue our quest. That is our goose.”
The viewers of the upcoming TV series will be so pissed at this season finale!
“VERY WELL, ROLAND OF GILEAD.
“VERY WELL, EDDIE OF NEW YORK.
“VERY WELL, SUSANNAH OF NEW YORK.
“VERY WELL, JAKE OF NEW YORK.
“VERY WELL, OY OF MID-WORLD.”
Oy looked up briefly at the sound of his name.
“YOU ARE KA-TET; ONE MADE FROM MANY. SO AM I. WHOSE KA-TET IS THE STRONGER IS SOMETHING WE MUST NOW PROVE.”
There was a moment of silence, broken only by the steady hard throb of the slo-trans turbines, bearing them on across the waste lands, bearing them on toward Topeka, the place where Mid-World ended and End-World began.
“SO,” cried the voice of Blaine. “CAST YOUR NETS, WANDERERS! TRY ME WITH YOUR QUESTIONS, AND LET THE CONTEST BEGIN.”
Possibly the best cliffhanger I have ever experienced!
And now onto the “Author’s Note” where I’m sure King apologizes in advance for making us wait SIX YEARS before releasing the next book in the series and bringing us some resolution to the Battle of Riddles with Blaine.
I am well aware that some readers of The Waste Lands will be displeased that it has ended as it has, with so much unresolved. I am not terribly pleased to be leaving Roland and his companions in the not-so-tender care of Blaine the Mono myself, and although you are not obligated to believe me, I must nevertheless insist that I was as surprised by the conclusion to this third volume as some of my readers may be.
Oh yes, we’re aware King doesn’t plan his endings.
And that brings me to the CONCLUSION of reading The Waste Lands. What a marvelous trip its been. I view this book in a completely different light today than I had the first two times I read it decades ago.
But I’m not yet done with this step. There’s many podcasts still ahead that cover this story and there’s a graphic novel series I can’t wait to digest!
Day 968: Aug 25, 2024
I completed reading The Waste Lands yesterday, but I won’t be done with this step for another month or two! There’s quite a few podcasts that covered this epic story, starting with my constant companion, Dark Tower Palaver, and their final read-along episode covering the second half of Chapter 6.
Day 969: Aug 26, 2024
Listening to the second half of Dark Tower Palaver‘s wrap-up of The Waste Lands.
Here, I learned that Blaine travels at a speed faster than commercial airlines. Incredible!
Day 970: Aug 27, 2024
And The Cast of Ka finally wraps up their read-along series of The Waste Lands.
Day 971: Aug 28, 2024
Two Guys to the Dark Tower Came arrives at the end of The Waste Lands.
Day 972: Aug 29, 2024
Kingslingers read the final chapter of The Waste Lands.
Day 973: Aug 30, 2024
Finishing off the second half of this Kingslingers episode about the final chapter of The Waste Lands.
Day 974: Aug 31, 2024
The Kingslingers produced an overview wrap-up episode about The Waste Lands
But I wasn’t expecting to hear the voice of their guest (they typically don’t have guests), a young, and still alive (RIP), Scott Wampler who was just at that time launching The Kingcast. 😥
Day 975: Sep 01, 2024
Finished this Kingslingers overview episode about The Waste Lands with the infamous Scott Wampler (RIP).
Day 976: Sep 02, 2024
I just realized I’m several weeks away from reaching a 1000-day milestone in this little journey of mine. I probably should plan for something spectacular, but in the meantime, here’s The Losers’ Club with their review of The Waste Lands.
Day 977: Sep 03, 2024
Finished the second half of The Losers’ Club episode about The Waste Lands.
Man, it was weird hearing this entire book covered in only a single episode. Especially after months of deep dive episodes from everyone else. It really felt like they went fast forward in a book they should have spent 10 hours talking about. But on the other hand, I do appreciate the brevity at this point.
Day 978: Sep 04, 2024
It couldn’t have been a bigger contrast…
Dark Tower Palaver put in around 40 hours discussing The Waste Lands.
Chat Sematary gave it 30 minutes. I mean, why bother when you give such a massive work such little attention?
Day 979: Sep 05, 2024
From the very first minute of this episode, The Kingcast was in awe of The Waste Lands.
Day 980: Sep 06, 2024
Finishing the second half of The Kingcast‘s energetically fun review of The Waste Lands.
Day 981: Sep 07, 2024
The Stephen Kingcast casts a full analysis of The Waste Lands.
Can’t believe no one else thought of it, but the Stephen Kingcast opened their episode with this. Seems so obvious now.
Day 982: Sep 08, 2024
The Stephen Kingcast delivered an extra pair of short episodes about The Waste Lands. I’m starting off this morning with this one.
The Stephen Kingcast returned years later to talk about the cliffhanger ending of The Waste Lands.
Day 983: Sep 09, 2024
Dark Tower Radio landed an amazing guest to discuss The Waste Lands! It was none other than Bev Vincent, author of “The Dark Tower Companion”.
Day 984: Sep 10, 2024
The Year of the Underrated Stephen King released a pair of episodes about The Waste Lands.
Day 985: Sep 11, 2024
Here is the second episode of The Year of the Underrated Stephen King where the host covers the back half of The Waste Lands.
Day 986: Sep 12, 2024
Tower Junkies reviews the first three books of The Dark Tower series with Kim C of The Year of the Underrated Stephen King.
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Day 987: Sep 13, 2024
This Tower Junkies crossover with Kim C of The Year of the Underrated Stephen King was really entertaining! She had just finished The Waste Lands when this was recorded.
Kim C should do more episodes with guests. She’s quite funny when she has someone to play off of!
Day 988: Sep 14, 2024
I’ve reached the final podcast in my current plan that discusses the novel The Waste Lands. Just King Things has the final epic word.
Now, I still have the comic series and a few other miscellaneous items lined up. But the end of this phase of my journey is nearing completion!
Day 989: Sep 15, 2024
Finishing off this episode from Just King Things about The Waste Lands.
Tomorrow: Starting on the comic adaptations!
The Graphic Novel
Day 990: Sep 16, 2024
There was a limited comic series that covered Jake’s return in The Waste Lands (despite it being labeled as a story from The Drawing of the Three”).
Today, I’m reading the first issue of “The Sailor”.
I had to look this quote up. Who reads Emily Dickenson to a four-year-old?
And here we are, right at the opening pages of The Waste Lands before Shardik comes roaring through.
I knew he was coming. Still, I got really excited when I saw Shardik on this page. I can only imagine how I’ll flip my lid when I see Mike Flanagan adapt this to the screen.
Well that’s the end of issue #1. Looking forward to tomorrow!
Another amazing rendition, parasites and all!
Day 991: Sep 17, 2024
Now reading the second issue of “The Sailor” which covers Jake’s return to Mid-World from the beginning of The Waste Lands.
“I kill with my heart…”
Good, because she’s certainly not using her eyes!
Roland honoring Shardik was a very touching moment in the book, and they captured it perfectly here.
Roland tells the tale of the Twelve Guardians.
I remember this line from the book. I think one of the sub-sections ended on this. So very powerful!
And that wraps it up for this issue – a very faithful retelling of the opening of The Waste Lands. The artwork and dialog are spot on!
Day 992: Sep 18, 2024
Next is Issue 3 of “The Sailor” which covers Jake’s return to Mid-World from the beginning of The Waste Lands.
And that is the truth…
I’m glad the artist kept the design of Charlie the Choo-Choo consistent with the novel. It would have been too jarring to see a different interpretation.
See the Turtle!
I really enjoyed this fever-dream journey Jake took through Manhattan/Mid-World.
My God. If this gets rendered on the screen with half of this vividness, we are in for an amazing treat!
I had forgotten that Eddie also had a very vivid, heavily symbolic dream.
That’s it for today. Only 2 more issues left in this series to cover and it’s been phenomenal so far!
Day 993: Sep 19, 2024
Now reading Issue 4 of “The Sailor” which covers Jake’s return to Mid-World from the beginning of The Waste Lands.
Those little, insane mini-guardians were indeed creepy.
I recall that these words were not a quote from a majestic poem or haunted work. They sprang from King’s genius.
This was after Jake learned that he had received an A on the rambling essay he didn’t even remember writing. It is so enjoyable reliving these moments this way.
And that’s it for today. One last issue to go.
Day 994: Sep 20, 2024
This is the final issue of “The Sailor” which covers Jake’s return to Mid-World from the beginning of The Waste Lands.
It’s been a stellar series so far, and judging this one by its cover, I can’t imagine it not perfectly landing its ending.
Amazing to think of all of the physical injuries and infections that Roland endured and survived, yet ultimately it was a mental health problem that almost did him in.
Uh-oh. Now we’ve reached one of the most problematic parts of The Waste Lands, one that nearly every podcaster had issues with: Susannah’s “sexy time” with the demon.
A haunted house as a portal to another world, guarded by some sort of demon? Makes absolute sense
Big deal, we’ve got spiders this large in our state that drop on our heads all the time!
Not surprised at all that they completely watered down Susannah’s battle with the demon. I don’t think it would have gone well in a mass market comic anyway.
I don’t recall the evil house guardian being so wordy.
And Jake has finally been drawn through the door. It really does make sense for this entire comic series to be under the banner of The Drawing of the Three. It’s the true third draw, despite the attempt to retro-con it at the end of that book..
And that brings me to the conclusion of this graphic novel adaptation of the beginning of The Waste Lands. I really wish this had continued onward. Only imagine how Lud would have been rendered. It would have been epic!
But I am not yet done with
The Waste Lands! I still have one minor, but very interesting step to go. Until tomorrow…
Charlie the Choo-Choo
Day 995: Sep 21, 2024
I have hit a very interesting point in this milestone covering The Waste Lands.
In 2016, Stephen King formally published “Charlie the Choo-Choo” as a children’s book.
His quote on its cover is pure King dry humor!
This was very clever as well!
Well, hello Engineer Bob!
Charlie wasn’t ALWAYS evil!
Certain parties are very unhappy about the “brand-new Burlington Zephyr Diesel loco”.
The artwork truly makes Charlie the Choo-Choo a sympathetic character.
A great message for the kids!
I totally don’t remember the hint of sabotage when I first read this story in The Waste Lands.
Look at all those happy kids!
And that concludes that delightful little children’s tale. It’ll go right on the shelf next to “The Monster at the End of This Book featuring Grover.”
Next up is Derry Public Radio where the host CM Alexander reads this delightful little tale – WITH SOUND EFFECTS!
For those of you not familiar, Stephen King wrote this fictional children’s novel based on a very important plot piece in The Dark Tower III: The Waste Lands. I enjoyed reading this, and I hope you all enjoy listening to it.
Finally for today, it’s Two Guys to the Dark Tower Came with their short review of “Charlie the Choo-Choo”.
Day 996: Sep 22, 2024
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Day 997: Sep 21, 2024
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