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Thread: Eddie's Age - Which One Is It?

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    Roont jayson is on a distinguished road

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    Default Eddie's Age - Which One Is It?

    So I've been re-reading Drawing and it occurred to me that King is inconsistent with Eddie's age...

    At one point fairly early in the book King writes, "...there was enough steel left in his spine for him to have some to loan this scared twenty-one-year-old junkie."

    A bit later on Eddie tells Odetta that he is twenty-three. Not only does he say he's twenty-three, but says that he was born in 1964 and was drawn into Roland's world in 1987, which would confirm that he was twenty-three.

    So which is it? Not that it matters all that much, but I wish (a) King were a bit less sloppy with things like this, and (b) that an editor would have done their job properly and caught this mistake.

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    Banned The Lady of Shadows is on a distinguished road

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    it's a continuity mistake. just like the time of odetta's drawing gets messed up.

    originally she was drawn right after kennedy's assassination (approx. feb or march of 1964) because when she gets back from her "detta walker jaunt" andrew is talking about how kennedy was the last gunslinger and odetta is completely mortified by this comparison. remember? and when roland enters her doorway and comes back he asks eddie what he sees and he says they were wearing coats and boots and roland thinks that eddie missed the gloves and scarves but otherwise did well.

    but she talks about being jailed in the summer of 1964 which would have occurred after she was drawn. Michael Schwerner, Andrew Goodman, and James Chaney, who she talks about having gone down to mississippi because of (even though they disappeared from ohio) didn't disappear until june of 1964 after being arrested for speeding and then being released.

    so, if the timeline is to be believed, odetta was drawn in jan, feb, or march of 1965 and we know she wasn't because of her age and what was said in her conversation with andrew and what was on the news the night before she was drawn while detta was shoplifting.


    my point, in this roundabout way, is that eddie is 23 and odetta was drawn in early 1964 and all other references are mistakes that got melded into the text and kept going. then the story got built on them and he couldn't get rid of them.

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    Banned The Lady of Shadows is on a distinguished road

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    Quote Originally Posted by Alex View Post
    Kind did that a lot in all the books.
    well seriously, no offense, but you try writing a seven volume magnum opus that spans over 30 years. with about a hundred characters. and about 20 different settings. and a multitude of languages. and in the middle of it getting hit and almost killed by a stupid van. and kicking drugs, alcohol, and tobacco while you're doing it.

    oh, and writing all trivial little other stories in the process.


    my brain would be a little fucked up too.




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    Roont jayson is on a distinguished road

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    I agree with you Alex.

    Although the continuity mistakes like these are minor, they are bothersome and could have been avoided. He could at least keep the details about his major characters consistent. And if not King, an editor should have caught these things.

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    yes, we've discussed it elsewhere - and I am still firm in my opinion that all those so-called "mistakes" only reflect the immense complexity and intrinsic self-contradictoriness of existence. There're things in the way the universe/multiverse is organized that is beyond human comprehension, and they manifest themselves in phenomena we perceive as paradoxes and contradictions.

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    I always say the same: thank God I am not clever enough to notice mistakes.

    Roland would have understood.

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    it's not the question of "clever". It's just that you trust the author, because the author is God of his creation, and you put yourself into His hands. I think that's what makes a reader really happy with reading, and turns a book into a whole new universe, not just a pile of paper sheets typed on.

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    Quote Originally Posted by R_of_G View Post
    He could at least keep the details about his major characters consistent.
    I agree completely. I mean, he's one of the major characters in what's considered to be your Magnum Opus, shouldn't you go through even further lengths to ensure that his information lines up across the story properly/accordingly?

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    I am only surprised there weren't more errors than there are.
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    It's easy enough to keep notes on characters. Rolodex, notebook, computer file, index cards, etc.

    While I forgive King the mistakes, I do wish he had done one of the above to prevent them. I remember reading that some author even went so far as to hang the index cards on a corkboard and run colored yarn between the characters to denot relationships and timelines.

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    Roont jayson is on a distinguished road

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    Quote Originally Posted by Woofer View Post
    While I forgive King the mistakes, I do wish he had done one of the above to prevent them.
    That's pretty much exactly how I see it. I don't really "blame" King. Fact is, I kind of like finding the mistakes because (a) it's a good way to see how much I'm really retaining of what I read, and (b) it reminds me that King is human. It breaks the spell a little bit when I catch a mistake, but overall it doesn't take away from the overall magic of the series.

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    originally she was drawn right after kennedy's assassination (approx. feb or march of 1964) because when she gets back from her "detta walker jaunt" andrew is talking about how kennedy was the last gunslinger and odetta is completely mortified by this comparison. remember? and when Roland enters her doorway and comes back he asks Eddie what he sees and he says they were wearing coats and boots and roland thinks that eddie missed the gloves and scarves but otherwise did well.
    Hmmm...I think what you are thinking of was a memory of a past one. When Roland draws Suze, she is Detta again isn't she? I always got the impression that the "JFK is gunslinger" moment was from a previous outing. Not that we were picking up the moment right then.

    As far as Eddie's age, it may be inconsistant but I also believe that if you are talking to someone from the past in a totally different world, your age isn't really traceable anyway.
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    Quote Originally Posted by Matt View Post
    As far as Eddie's age, it may be inconsistant but I also believe that if you are talking to someone from the past in a totally different world, your age isn't really traceable anyway.

    Perhaps Eddie just doesn't know how old he is. I mean he's not a real person right? He's a character in a book.

    Spoiler:
    Maybe he should have asked King when they met. "Hey, how old am I anyway?"

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    I know people complain about the continuity mistakes but I always attributed the confusions to the fact the beams were broken... There's only one or two blatant mistakes I get mad at SK for.

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    Quote Originally Posted by LadyHitchhiker View Post
    I know people complain about the continuity mistakes but I always attributed the confusions to the fact the beams were broken... There's only one or two blatant mistakes I get mad at SK for.


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    Quote Originally Posted by Matt View Post
    originally she was drawn right after kennedy's assassination (approx. feb or march of 1964) because when she gets back from her "detta walker jaunt" andrew is talking about how kennedy was the last gunslinger and odetta is completely mortified by this comparison. remember? and when Roland enters her doorway and comes back he asks Eddie what he sees and he says they were wearing coats and boots and roland thinks that eddie missed the gloves and scarves but otherwise did well.
    Hmmm...I think what you are thinking of was a memory of a past one. When Roland draws Suze, she is Detta again isn't she? I always got the impression that the "JFK is gunslinger" moment was from a previous outing. Not that we were picking up the moment right then.

    As far as Eddie's age, it may be inconsistant but I also believe that if you are talking to someone from the past in a totally different world, your age isn't really traceable anyway.
    could it be that perhaps people, especially those intimately involved in the civil rights movement, were still talking about JFK and his death in 1965??
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    I don't have a clue about the age thing. Read this thread before a re-read and I still don't know.
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    Last edited by Whitey Appleseed; 12-28-2008 at 07:55 PM. Reason: spoiler

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    Quote Originally Posted by R_of_G View Post

    So which is it? Not that it matters all that much, but I wish (a) King were a bit less sloppy with things like this, and (b) that an editor would have done their job properly and caught this mistake.
    SK doesn't need to be less sloppy. The editor is the one who screwed it up. We know King is famous for these kinds of mistakes. I personally don't look to an author to apologize for these mistakes. You start looking into continuity constantly as a writer while writing a story and you interrupt the flow of your work. You can't write. It slows you down. It interrupts the story telling/narrative flow. While writing, a writer has the option of backtracking to previous statements about a character's age or pushing on with expressing ideas as they fly through his/her head. The creative process can not be interrupted. Even when doing rewrites/revision. Let the editor take the blame for these published misses. Let the writer worry about the story.

    I think too that it's worth noting that you caught this on your re-read. Assuming that you missed it on read through #1 then I say the inconsistently does not matter to the casual reader. So SK was right to push on and not worry about Eddie's age. His narrative flow remained unbroken and you didn't even look back as a reader because you were so into the story.


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    Roont jayson is on a distinguished road

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    Quote Originally Posted by EdwardDean1999 View Post
    You start looking into continuity constantly as a writer while writing a story and you interrupt the flow of your work. You can't write. It slows you down. It interrupts the story telling/narrative flow. While writing, a writer has the option of backtracking to previous statements about a character's age or pushing on with expressing ideas as they fly through his/her head. The creative process can not be interrupted. Even when doing rewrites/revision.
    Of course this can all be avoided if the writer uses an outline or some of other form of organizational procedure prior to writing the text.

    I agree that the fault lies more with the editor for not catching this mistake, that's an important aspect of the editor's job, but I don't think the writer can be completely absolved.

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    The White! MonteGss is on a distinguished road MonteGss's Avatar

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    If I knew I was getting into a BIG project such as The Dark Tower (like King did), I would keep some pretty good f*ckin notes or outlines, doodles, scratch papers, whatever. However, getting the story out is what matters.

    King was kinda lazy for not doing these things while writing but his editor DOES have more of the blame for not catching the mistakes and fixing them before publication. The end.

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    Along the Path of the Beam Matt of Gilead is on a distinguished road

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    King started with outlines, but over the course of 30 years things get misplaced. Now, there is little excuse for mistakes within a single book. That is, indeed, the editor's job.
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    I disagree. The editor should also be checking for continuity errors as well, imo.

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    I agree Monte. I think the editor is responsible for catching all manner of errors prior to publication. King gets some blame for making the mistake, but the editor gets the larger share for not catching it.

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    ...and the original outline King started with was lost prior to publication of The Gunslinger (or at least very early on in the series) if I recall correctly. It wouldn't have been hard at that point for him to start a new one. Although I actually don't think outlines are really necessary myself. I don't think it's the writer's responsibility to catch every mistake. I think it's the editor's, but hey in a work of that magnitude (the whole series) there are bound to be some mistakes I think.
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    Banned obscurejude is on a distinguished road

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    See, here's the thing. I'm pretty sure that King hates editors and once he was a money making machine, as was the case by The Drawing of the Three, I'm pretty sure he only hired people that took a relatively hands off approach.

    I do absolve King, though, in the name of father, son, and holy spirit.

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