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It's The Dark Tower. This is poor world-building dressed up with a bunch of unnecessary neologisms to make it seem otherworldly. The character isn't compelling or sympathetic (if there are hidden depths to him, who cares?), the situations are forced and bizarre (a disembodied sexghost? what the gently caress?), and any of Cormac McCarthy's one-line toss-offs about the desert make King's efforts to evoke the vast wasteland seem like the stoned meanderings of a slightly weird nineteen year-old. Which, apparently, they might have been. To say nothing of the stirring conclusion: "yeah, but what if our galaxy is just, like, molecules in another galaxy, man?" Make it Stop posted:Yar. He darkles. He tincts. He is in all times. Yet there is one greater than he. Grapw. He suxits. He terbles. I just threw up in my mouth a little bit.
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May 14, 2009 05:44
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Aturaten posted:Did you just insult Gunslinger? If it's that travesty The Dark Tower VII, then fine, but not Gunslinger. Nope, definitely insulting Gunslinger. Thankfully haven't made it to The Dark Tower VII, but I'm staring at The Drawing of the Three sitting on my desk, and considering returning it to the library unread. My least favorite part about Stephen King is his faux-folksy act. His vision of working-class culture is locked somewhere in between 1950 and 1970. So when he tries to write "folksy", it comes off as fake and anachronistic. He's like the Lynn Johnston of thrillers. And in Gunslinger, he basically takes his pretensions to folksiness, and turns them into the basis for an entire world. Howken? Thankee, sai? Would foller him into the sea if he asked; so I would? Really? Tell me what's cool about the book aside from the opening line and the concept. I'll grant that "The man in black fled across the desert, and the gunslinger followed." is an amazing opener, and the idea of The Dark Tower as a macguffin is interesting, but this is some of the most hackneyed and disjointed nonsense I've ever read. I like Stephen King, and I like his short stories in particular, but this book is the epitome of hack genre fiction. Metonymy fucked around with this message at 07:36 on May 14, 2009 |
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May 14, 2009 07:30
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Tuxedo Catfish posted:This might have something to do with The Gunslinger being written in the seventies. Haha. Fair enough. But that doesn't change the fact that his forced folksiness and neologisms feel awkward. Whether it's cockadoodie or howken, it feels like it darkles or tincts, and it's so grating that it takes me out of the story. Which is ironic, because I think the vocabulary is supposed to make me feel like it's a well-developed world. A Hack posted:"That would go you five bocks. Do you ken bocks?" What's the point here? Are we supposed to assume she's saying "bucks" with an accent? If so, why doesn't she have any accent with any other word? Why not just say bucks in the first place? So now we're watching a character try and interpret the same nonsense that we're trying to interpret and there's no reason for it. Granted, it's not a big jump at all, but that's part of what makes it stupid. If he called a hamburger a "grilled groundbeef" in the series, it wouldn't add anything to the texture of the world. There's a maxim that a lot of bad writing comes from insecurity, and I think King's insecurity here is his fear that his world won't seem different enough from Earth unless he introduces bogus words. Maybe some people like it, but it feels like the equivalent of S.F. authors inserting apostrophes into their character's names (e.g. Rg'labn, Nur'fl'a). For an example of this done well, compare and contrast with A Clockwork Orange. Or Tolkein. Or George Martin's deliberate use of homophones in the place of popular modern names or "sir" so that he effectively slightly disassociates himself from Arthurian legends. Metonymy fucked around with this message at 19:02 on May 14, 2009 |
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May 14, 2009 18:52
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Astfgl posted:'Aye, say thankya, commala big-big.' Yeah, that settles it. I'm going to return the The Drawing of the Three without reading it. The Gunslinger posted:I've heard many complaints about The Dark Tower series but this is definitely a first. If it's not your cup of tea then fair enough but you're harping on what really attracted most people to the story in the first place. That's fair. It's a kind of writing that doesn't appeal to me at all, but if other people get something out of it, more power to them. Metonymy fucked around with this message at 20:48 on May 15, 2009 |
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May 15, 2009 20:45
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QuentinCompson posted:Yes, it makes perfect sense to refuse to read the second-best book in a series because of language in one of the worst books in the series. I'm not refusing to read it. But if it develops the world that was introduced in the first book, and it does it in the same style, I'm not interested. Especially given all of the negative comments I've seen about the later books in the series. If you watched Air Bud and weren't into it, would you be fired up to see Air Bud: Golden Receiver because some dude on the internet told you that the series really came into its own with the sequel? I typically like Stephen King, and I wanted to like The Dark Tower because the concept and the imagery is compelling, but I just couldn't get past the ham-handed execution. And neither could King, because he apparently went back and revised it thoroughly. I recently read a short story by Joe Lansdale that captures some of the pulp, Western gothic atmosphere that I think people like in The Dark Tower. And the The Chronicles of Amber, by Roger Zelazny, has a cool take on alternate realities and parallel worlds. Metonymy fucked around with this message at 00:11 on May 18, 2009 |
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May 17, 2009 23:54
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Ortsacras posted:Interesting.  There's a distinction between "opting not to" and "refusing to". "Refusing to" implies some closed-mindedness and final judgment. If people posted some compelling prose or vivid imagery from The Drawing of the Three I might pick it up again. Or even if more people were just like, "the scene with the psychic mutants & the unicorns was really sweet i like the part where he shoots them", or "It's actually quite different. I recommend you read that and the wastelands..." I'm less interested in convincing people The Gunslinger sucked, and more interested in hearing about what they liked about it and some of the other books in the series. If people cite "Aye, say thankya, commala big-big" and "ka-babbies" as a positive, I know we're on a different page. If people describe interesting scenes or concepts or some well-written passages, then I can change my mind.
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May 18, 2009 18:35
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