Introduce yourself

Quote:

Originally Posted by Talisgirl19

Long Days, peeps.
I read my first SK book at 13, Misery.
2 journeys to the tower, about 1/3 of the Marvels...but
as I am finishing a second read (after 15+years) of Insomnia,
I have recently acquired the rest of the Marvels currently available.
They are sitting untouched on a shelf untouched until I finish Insomnia.
And then I shall savor each one slowly...

I don't have a favorite character. They're people, and they fuck me up.

I'm from California, in my late 30's, nice to meetcha.

a.k.a. Drunkenmimes, Ecclectic LadyLand and found this place from a search result in regards to copyright and the KA symbol

Okay so I just finished Insomnia, but realized at the end that I'd forgotten to read the dialogue with a Maine accent, so here goes round three.
:wink1:
Yeah right.
The re-read was because the first time was pre-DT

I read Insomnia before I knew anything about The Dark Tower and loved it. One of my favorites by King. Been meaning to re-read it since it's been so long but I just hate re-reading when I could be reading something new.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Talisgirl19

The re-read was because the first time was pre-DT

I struggled to get through Insomnia my first time around (also pre-Dark Tower), so when I finished the Dark Tower series, I thought "I'll give it a go again and see if it resonates differently". I think I hated it more the second time. :lol:

Quote:

Originally Posted by Girlystevedave

Quote:

Originally Posted by Talisgirl19

The re-read was because the first time was pre-DT

I struggled to get through Insomnia my first time around (also pre-Dark Tower), so when I finished the Dark Tower series, I thought "I'll give it a go again and see if it resonates differently". I think I hated it more the second time. :lol:

Sorry to hear that. I appreciated it more this time

Yeah, I was pretty disappointed. It's a shame for there to be such a long King book in existence that I can't appreciate. :(

Blasphemy!

:lol: I know!

Welcome!!!!!!!

Quote:

Originally Posted by Girlystevedave

Yeah, I was pretty disappointed. It's a shame for there to be such a long King book in existence that I can't appreciate. :(

Outrageous! - How do you sleep at night? :evil:

By making little children cry by the sounds of it!!!

:lol:

WELCOME FOLKS!!!!!

How did you discover the Dark Tower?
Girlfriend at the time was on her 3rd read and begged me to read it. Finished Gunslinger in 3 days and the rest is history. On my 3rd reading.

Who is your favorite character?
The age old question.. like being asked what your favorite family member is. I guess I'd have to say my Aunt Talitha or Oy

What is your favorite book?
Wizard and Glass

How old are you?
28

Where are you from?
King's Winter City

do you have a nickname?
Ashane

how did you find this site?
Googled on my North Central Positronics Laptop

Welcome, Ashane, son of Talitha, from the Winter City of King.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Ashane son of Talitha

How did you discover the Dark Tower?
Girlfriend at the time was on her 3rd read and begged me to read it. Finished Gunslinger in 3 days and the rest is history. On my 3rd reading.

Who is your favorite character?
The age old question.. like being asked what your favorite family member is. I guess I'd have to say my Aunt Talitha or Oy

What is your favorite book?
Wizard and Glass

How old are you?
28

Where are you from?
King's Winter City

do you have a nickname?
Ashane

how did you find this site?
Googled on my North Central Positronics Laptop

Welcome - Let us know when your NCP laptop crashes. :thumbsup:

Welcome, Ashane.

Welcome!!!!!!

Quote:

Originally Posted by Ashane son of Talitha

Who is your favorite character?
The age old question.. like being asked what your favorite family member is.

I thought picking favorite family members was easy. :lol:

Welcome to the site!

Introduction

How did I discover The Dark Tower?
- I've been a Stephen King fan for a while now and I am slowly but surely reading my way through all his books. Somewhere I read that he was most proud of/fond of the Dark Tower books so I figured I'd give them a try. There is also the movie coming out this August and I generally try to read the book before I see the movie.

Favorite Character?
- Roland

Favorite Dark Tower book?
- The Gunslinger (so far)

How old am I?
- 18

Where am I from?
-Central Illinois

Nicknames?
- Don't have any

How did I find this site?
- Browsing Stephenking.com, it was on a list of suggested additional sites.

Welcome!

WELCOME FOLKS!!

Welcome!

Hi all...

Long time King fan (35+ years) but never read The Dark Tower cycle until recently. Finished book 7 today.

There's one little thing that's bugging me about something I read in book 7. I feel like I may have missed a previous detail, or perhaps the thing that's bugging me was explained in Insomnia (which I read, but so long ago and without frame of reference for DT).

The thing that's bugging me is when Roland and Susannah go down into Dandelo's basement and meet Patrick Danville for the first time, how did Roland know Patrick's name? "Is thee Patrick?" "Is thee Patrick Danville?" Other than the title of the chapter, I don't remember any other reference to Patrick by name before Roland asks him if he is Patrick Danville.

Wondering if someone here can help me figure out what I missed, or which site forum is the best to ask this kind of thing? I tried to Google this, but not finding anything. Makes me think I must've missed some reference to Patrick earlier in the book that I'm not remembering.

Thanks!

Introduction

How did I discover The Dark Tower?
- I was very into SK in High School back in the 80's and tried The Gunslinger back then, but didn't get into it and quit about 1/3 of the way through. A friend of mine recently recommended the series and told me (as much as he loved the first one) that he thinks I would appreciate the rest of the series more than the initial book. I tried again and while I was able to appreciate book 1 enough to finish it, I did end up liking the second half of the book quite a bit. Once Roland stepped through that first door in The Drawing of the Three, I was hooked!

Favorite Character?
- Tough to say. Tied between Eddie Dean and Detta Walker.

Favorite Dark Tower book?
- The Drawing of the Three

How old am I?
- 48

Where am I from?
-Philly 'burbs

Nicknames?
- Remus

How did I find this site?
- Google Search looking for an answer to the question of how Roland knew Patrick Danville's name.

Quote:

Originally Posted by OyVey

Hi all...

Long time King fan (35+ years) but never read The Dark Tower cycle until recently. Finished book 7 today.

There's one little thing that's bugging me about something I read in book 7. I feel like I may have missed a previous detail, or perhaps the thing that's bugging me was explained in Insomnia (which I read, but so long ago and without frame of reference for DT).

The thing that's bugging me is when Roland and Susannah go down into Dandelo's basement and meet Patrick Danville for the first time, how did Roland know Patrick's name? "Is thee Patrick?" "Is thee Patrick Danville?" Other than the title of the chapter, I don't remember any other reference to Patrick by name before Roland asks him if he is Patrick Danville.

Wondering if someone here can help me figure out what I missed, or which site forum is the best to ask this kind of thing? I tried to Google this, but not finding anything. Makes me think I must've missed some reference to Patrick earlier in the book that I'm not remembering.

Thanks!

Spoiler:

Eleven
“First, the news from the folks in New Mexico,” Marian said when Roland had resumed his seat. “They have watched you as well as they can, and although what they saw Thunder-side was hazy at best, they believe that Eddie told Jake Chambers something—perhaps something of importance—not long before he died. Likely as he lay on the ground, and before he…I don’t know…”
“Before he slipped into twilight?” Roland suggested.
“Yes,” Nancy Deepneau agreed. “We think so. That is to say, they think so. Our version of the Breakers.”
Marian gave her a little frown that suggested this was a lady who did not appreciate being interrupted. Then she returned her attention to Roland. “Seeing things on this side is easier for our people, and several of them are quite sure—not positive but quite sure—that Jake may have passed this message on before he himself died.” She paused. “This woman you’re traveling with, Mrs. Tannenbaum—”
“Tassenbaum,” Roland corrected. He did it without thinking, because his mind was otherwise occupied. Furiously so.
“Tassenbaum,” Marian agreed. “She’s undoubtedly told you some of what Jake told her before he passed on, but there may be something else. Not a thing she’s holding back, but something she didn’t recognize as important. Will you ask her to go over what Jake said to her once more before you and she part company?”
“Yes,” Roland said, and of course he would, but he didn’t believe Jake had passed on Eddie’s message to Mrs. Tassenbaum. No, not to her. He realized that he’d hardly thought of Oy since they’d parked Irene’s car, but Oy had been with them, of course; would now be lying at Irene’s feet as she sat in the little park across the street, lying in the sun and waiting for him.
“All right,” she said. “That’s good. Let’s move on.”
Marian opened the wide center drawer of her desk. From it she brought out a padded envelope and a small wooden box. The envelope she handed to Nancy Deepneau. The box she placed on the desktop in front of her.
“This next is Nancy’s to tell,” she said. “And I’d just ask you to be brief, Nancy, because this man looks very anxious to be off.”
“Tell it,” Moses said, and thumped his cane.
Nancy glanced at him, then at Roland…or in the vicinity of him, anyway. Color was climbing in her cheeks, and she looked flustered. “Stephen King,” she said, then cleared her throat and said it again. From there she didn’t seem to know how to go on. Her color burned even deeper beneath her skin.
“Take a deep breath,” Roland said, “and hold it.”
She did as he told her.
“Now let it out.”
And this, too.
“Now tell me what you would, Nancy niece of Aaron.”
“Stephen King has written nearly forty books,” she said, and although the color remained in her cheeks (Roland supposed he would find out what it signified soon enough), her voice was calmer now. “An amazing number of them, even the very early ones, touch on the Dark Tower in one way or another. It’s as though it was always on his mind, from the very first.”
“You say what I know is true,” Roland told her, folding his hands, “I say thankya.”
This seemed to calm her even further. “Hence the Calvins,” she said. “Three men and two women of a scholarly bent who do nothing from eight in the morning until four in the afternoon but read the works of Stephen King.”
“They don’t just read them,” Marian said. “They cross-reference them by settings, by characters, by themes—such as they are—even by mention of popular brand-name products.”
“Part of their work is looking for references to people who live or did live in the Keystone World,” Nancy said. “Real people, in other words. And references to the Dark Tower, of course.” She handed him the padded envelope and Roland felt the corners of what could only be a book inside. “If King ever wrote a keystone book, Roland—outside the Dark Tower series itself, I mean—we think it must be this one.”
The flap of the envelope was held by a clasp. Roland looked askance at both Marian and Nancy. They nodded. The gunslinger opened the clasp and pulled out an extremely thick volume with a cover of red and white. There was no picture on it, only Stephen King’s name and a single word.
Red for the King, White for Arthur Eld, he thought. White over Red, thus Gan wills ever.
Or perhaps it was just a coincidence.
“What is this word?” Roland asked, tapping the title.
“Insomnia,” Nancy said. “It means—”
“I know what it means,” Roland said. “Why do you give me the book?”
“Because the story hinges on the Dark Tower,” Nancy said, “and because there’s a character in it named Ed Deepneau. He happens to be the villain of the piece.”
The villain of the piece, Roland thought. No wonder her color rose.
“Do you have anyone by that name in your family?” he asked her.
“Do you have anyone by that name in your family?” he asked her.
“We did,” she said. “In Bangor, which is the town King is writing about when he writes about Derry, as he does in this book. The real Ed Deepneau died in 1947, the year King was born. He was a bookkeeper, as inoffensive as milk and cookies. The one in Insomnia is a lunatic who falls under the power of the Crimson King. He attempts to turn an airplane into a bomb and crash it into a building, killing thousands of people.”
“Pray it never happens,” the old man said gloomily, looking out at the New York City skyline. “God knows it could.”
“In the story the plan fails,” Nancy said. “Although some people are killed, the main character in the book, an old man named Ralph Roberts, manages to keep the absolute worst from happening.”
Roland was looking intently at Aaron Deepnau’s grandniece. “The Crimson King is mentioned in here? By actual name?”
“Yes,” she said. “The Ed Deepneau in Bangor—the real Ed Deepneau—was a cousin of my father’s, four or five times removed. The Calvins could show you the family tree if you wanted, but there really isn’t much of a connection to Uncle Aaron’s part of it. We think King may have used the name in the book as a way of getting your attention—or ours—without even realizing what he was doing.”
“A message from his undermind,” the gunslinger mused.
Nancy brightened. “His subconscious, yes! Yes, that’s exactly what we think!”
It wasn’t exactly what Roland was thinking. The gunslinger had been recalling how he had hypnotized King in the year of 1977; how he had told him to listen for Ves’-Ka Gan, the Song of the Turtle. Had King’s undermind, the part of him that would never have stopped trying to obey the hypnotic command, put part of the Song of the Turtle in this book? A book the Servants of the King might have neglected because it wasn’t part of the “Dark Tower Cycle”? Roland thought that could be, and that the name Deepneau might indeed be a sigul. But—
“I can’t read this,” he said. “A word here and a word there, perhaps, but no more.”
“You can’t, but my girl can,” Moses Carver said. “My girl Odetta, that you call Susannah.”
Roland nodded slowly. And although he had already begun to have his doubts, his mind nevertheless cast up a brilliant image of the two of them sitting close by a fire—a large one, for the night was cold—with Oy between. In the rocks above them the wind howled bitter notes of winter, but they cared not, for their bellies were full, their bodies were warm, dressed in the skins of animals they had killed themselves, and they had a story to entertain them.
Stephen King’s story of insomnia.
“She’ll read it to you on the trail,” Moses said. “On your last trail, say God!”
Yes, Roland thought. One last story to hear, one last trail to follow. The one that leads to Can’-Ka No Rey, and the Dark Tower. Or it would be nice to think so.
Nancy said, “In the story, the Crimson King is using Ed Deepneau to kill one single child, a boy named Patrick Danville. Just before the attack, while Patrick and his mother are waiting for a woman to make a speech, the boy draws a picture, one that shows you, Roland, and the Crimson King, apparently imprisoned at the top of the Dark Tower.”
Roland started in his seat. “The top? Imprisoned at the top?”
“Easy,” Marian said. “Take it easy, Roland. The Calvins have been analyzing King’s work for years, every word and every reference, and everything they produce gets forwarded to the good-mind folken in New Mexico. Although these two groups have never seen each other, it would be perfectly correct to say that they work together.”
“Not that they’re always in agreement,” Nancy said.
“They sure aren’t!” Marian spoke in the exasperated tone of one who’s had to referee more than her share of squabbles. “But one thing that they are in agreement about is that King’s references to the Dark Tower are almost always masked, and sometimes mean nothing at all.”
Roland nodded. “He speaks of it because his undermind is always thinking of it, but sometimes he lapses into gibberish.”
“Yes,” Nancy said.
“But obviously you don’t think this entire book is a false trail, or you would not want to give it to me.”
“Indeed we do not,” Nancy said. “But that doesn’t mean the Crimson King is necessarily imprisoned at the top of the Tower. Although I suppose it might.”
Roland thought of his own belief that the Red King was locked out of the Tower, on a kind of balcony. Was it a genuine intuition, or just something he wanted to believe?
“In any case, we think you should watch for this Patrick Danville,” Marian said. “The consensus is that he’s a real person, but we haven’t been able to find any trace of him here. Perhaps you may find him in Thunderclap.”
“Or beyond it,” Moses put in.
Marian was nodding. “According to the story King tells in Insomnia—you’ll see for yourself—Patrick Danville dies as a young man. But that may not be true. Do you understand?”
“I’m not sure I do.”
“When you find Patrick Danville—or when he finds you—he may still be the child described in this book,” Nancy said, “or he could be as old as Uncle Mose.”
“Bad luck f’him if that be true!” said the old man, and chortled.
Roland lifted the book, stared at the red and white cover, traced the slightly raised letters that made a word he could not read. “Surely it’s just a story?”
“From the spring of 1970, when he typed the line The man in black fled across the desert and the gunslinger followed,” Marian Carver said, “very few of the things Stephen King wrote were ‘just stories.’ He may not believe that; we do.”
But years of dealing with the Crimson King may have left you with a way of jumping at shadows, do it please ya, Roland thought. Aloud he said, “If not stories, what?”
It was Moses Carver who answered. “We think maybe messages in bottles.” In the way he spoke this word—boh’uls, almost—Roland heard a heartbreaking echo of Susannah, and suddenly wanted to see her and know she was all right. This desire was so strong it left a bitter taste on his tongue.
“—that great sea.”
“Beg your pardon,” the gunslinger said. “I was wool-gathering.”
“I said we believe that Stephen King’s cast his bottles upon that great sea. The one we call the Prim. In hopes that they’ll reach you, and the messages inside will make it possible for you and my Odetta to gain your goal.”
“Which brings us to our final gifts,” Marian said. “Our true gifts. First…” She handed him the box.
It opened on a hinge. Roland placed his left hand splayed over the top, meaning to swing it back, then paused and studied his interlocutors. They were looking at him with hope and suspenseful interest, an expression that made him uneasy. A mad (but surprisingly persuasive) idea came to him: that these were in truth agents of the Crimson King, and when he opened the box, the last thing he’d see would be a primed sneetch, counting down the last few clicks to red zero. And the last sound he’d hear before the world blew up around him would be their mad laughter and a cry of Hile the Red King! It wasn’t impossible, either, but a point came where one had to trust, because the alternative was madness.
If ka will say so, let it be so, he thought, and opened the box.