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I got the Dark Tower!!!

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I got the Dark Tower!!!

Postby jo » March 25th, 2006, 1:40 pm

"I saw it begin,” said the Lord Digory. “I did not think I would live to see it die"

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re: I got the Dark Tower!!!

Postby jo » March 25th, 2006, 2:00 pm

"I saw it begin,” said the Lord Digory. “I did not think I would live to see it die"

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re: I got the Dark Tower!!!

Postby jo » March 25th, 2006, 4:50 pm

I finished it .. it was shorter than I expected :). I normally don't read unfinished books cos i hate not knowing what the author had in mind for something. That's the case here :(.

Generally though I enjoyed it. I found it creepy and I understand now why so many people refer to it as 'disturbing'.. there was an element of that about it. The combination of the familiar and the unfamiliar, the normal and the abnormal, was strangely unnerving in places. There were some genuinely unsettling scenes, for instance the one in which the reader first sees what the Stingingman does to his victims.

I didn't find this book especially 'un-Lewislike though.' I am not a Lewis scholar so I can't give academic reasons why it struck me as being 'like' his work, but it did. The style, sense of humour and odd turn of phrase all struck me as very similar. I do not think, either, that the book was anymore disturbing than THS was in parts. Incidentally, who was the homosexual character? One argument I always heard against it being written by Lewis was that Lewis would not write a homosexual character into his books. That seemed absurd to me anyway as Fairy was obviously a lesbian, but there was no overt homosexuality in TDT. Knellie, I suppose, was tacitly implied to have been a homosexual but it was hardly explicit.

Has anyone read 'From a Buick 8' by Stephen King? That is what I was immediately put in mind of by this excerpt. I wouldn't, in fact, be surprised if King hadn't read it (he wrote a series of books called 'The Dark Tower' himself, after all) and have decided to run with the idea. Both books involve a window into another time or 'dimension' in which some things are familiar and some grotesque and unsettling .. although in Lewis's work, unlike in King's, the world was reached deliberately and by the contrivance of men.

Some more thoughts: Ransom has changed from what he was in That Hideous Strength, and I neither like that or 'approve' of it. I PRESUME that the book was supposed to follow on from the Trilogy (or could it have been intended to be inserted somewhere in the middle?) so I don't understand at all why Ransom has gone from a sort of semi divine status in THS back to a rather ordinary college professor who, it is hinted, might have had some extraordinary experiences in the past. It seems to me that the book would have been much better employed had it come between OOTP and Perelandra. As it is, I can't understand why Lewis would have elevated the character only to lower him again.

I got rather lost in the descriptions of time that the character S - I can't remember his name and I've left the book downstairs :) - encountered in Othertime. I wonder if anyone with any knowledge of physics would like to comment on their accuracy? I doubt that Lewis knew much about physics and I wonder whether he was wise to attempt such a thing.

I'd love to know where he was going with this story. Hell, even if it was a forgery - and I am inclined to think it probably wasn't - I'd love to know where HOOPER had intended to go with it, if, indeed, he had attempted to go anywhere at all. Any thoughts? Why do you suppose it was abandoned? I've heard it described as badly written but I did not find it so.. a bit clumsy in the first chapter or two perhaps but it soon picked up the pace and became very readable.
"I saw it begin,” said the Lord Digory. “I did not think I would live to see it die"

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Re: re: I got the Dark Tower!!!

Postby Theo » March 25th, 2006, 8:48 pm

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“First they came for Abdul Rahman and I spoke out because I was a Muslim. Then they came for the Palestinians and I raised hell because I was a Jew. Then they came for the Iraqis and I protested because I was an American. Then they came for the Muslims and I spoke out because I was a Christian, Then they came for the poor and I spoke out because I was rich. By the time they came for me, I had all the support a man could ask for.”
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re: I got the Dark Tower!!!

Postby jo » March 25th, 2006, 8:51 pm

"I saw it begin,” said the Lord Digory. “I did not think I would live to see it die"

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Re: re: I got the Dark Tower!!!

Postby Marcus_P_Hagen » March 29th, 2006, 2:41 am

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re: I got the Dark Tower!!!

Postby jo » March 29th, 2006, 1:15 pm

"I saw it begin,” said the Lord Digory. “I did not think I would live to see it die"

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re: I got the Dark Tower!!!

Postby Theo » March 29th, 2006, 1:32 pm

Considering the way Tolkien endlessly rewrote his writings, I'm actually not that sure he'd have liked all the various versions to be published - he might even have found some of it embarrassing. (Compare the way George Lucas, wrongly in my opinion, does not want anyone to show the original pre-Special Edition versions of the old Star Wars movies, ever.)

Still, he's dead and we're alive, and I'm glad we've got them. ;)
Member of the Religious Tolerance Cabal of the Wardrobe

“First they came for Abdul Rahman and I spoke out because I was a Muslim. Then they came for the Palestinians and I raised hell because I was a Jew. Then they came for the Iraqis and I protested because I was an American. Then they came for the Muslims and I spoke out because I was a Christian, Then they came for the poor and I spoke out because I was rich. By the time they came for me, I had all the support a man could ask for.”
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Re: re: I got the Dark Tower!!!

Postby Marcus_P_Hagen » March 29th, 2006, 4:57 pm

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re: I got the Dark Tower!!!

Postby jo » March 29th, 2006, 5:02 pm

"I saw it begin,” said the Lord Digory. “I did not think I would live to see it die"

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Re: re: I got the Dark Tower!!!

Postby Stanley Anderson » March 29th, 2006, 5:36 pm

…on a night of rain Frodo smelled a sweet fragrance on the air and heard the sound of singing that came over the water. And then it seemed to him that as in his dream in the house of Bombadil, the grey rain-curtain turned all to silver glass and was rolled back, and he beheld white shores and beyond them a fair green country under a swift sunrise.
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Re: re: I got the Dark Tower!!!

Postby Theo » March 29th, 2006, 6:49 pm

Member of the Religious Tolerance Cabal of the Wardrobe

“First they came for Abdul Rahman and I spoke out because I was a Muslim. Then they came for the Palestinians and I raised hell because I was a Jew. Then they came for the Iraqis and I protested because I was an American. Then they came for the Muslims and I spoke out because I was a Christian, Then they came for the poor and I spoke out because I was rich. By the time they came for me, I had all the support a man could ask for.”
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Re: re: I got the Dark Tower!!!

Postby Marcus_P_Hagen » March 29th, 2006, 11:45 pm

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re: I got the Dark Tower!!!

Postby Biff » April 13th, 2006, 3:16 am

"With hindsight perhaps it wasn't a good idea, oh well must be my hind cataracts..." Prof H.J. Farnsworth

"It was not for nothing that you are called Ransom" said the Voice..
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re: I got the Dark Tower!!!

Postby Stanley Anderson » April 16th, 2006, 1:44 pm

Here is a question I'd like to pose to those who like or think The Dark Tower is by Lewis (and even, I suppose to those who don't like it or think it a forgery): Do you see or feel any similarity in tone between The Dark Tower and at least parts of The Pilgrim's Regress?

I'm not sure exactly what I mean here, but it just sort of struck me that some of the "darkness" of TDT was reminiscent of the bleakness or weariness of various areas of the journies to the north and south in The Pilgrim's Regress. Anyone else get a sense of that? (or do you feel completly the opposite -- ie, that any similarity is minimal or random or non-existent. It's ok to disagree by the way -- I don't mind at all).

--Stanley
…on a night of rain Frodo smelled a sweet fragrance on the air and heard the sound of singing that came over the water. And then it seemed to him that as in his dream in the house of Bombadil, the grey rain-curtain turned all to silver glass and was rolled back, and he beheld white shores and beyond them a fair green country under a swift sunrise.
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