Even before Facebook and social media made political discussions a rage filled collision of unresearched but volatile memes, I've hated them.

I've occasionally convinced someone to back down from a particularly tactless method of conversation, or had them admit that their sources were unreliable,and I've even had people fray at my own methodology and language, and question my own sources, but I don't believe I've ever truly changed anyone's worldview, and I don't believe anyone has fully altered mine. So why bother.

After the contentious election of 2000, I was living in Burlington, Vermont, a very left-wing, very political city. I agreed with the politics but didn't have the passion to do more than shake my head at the television.

In the summer of 2001, I moved back to Boston, and back in with a family that included someone who was heavily invested in protesting. I started making signs, driving people to protests and hoping I had enough money on me to post bail if it came to that, and writing really terrible politically based poetry that was entirely too clever (by which I mean it imagined itself clever...it wasn't) to be taken seriously.

Dark days. Ah, Discordia.

My proximity to protesting didn't last long, though. I couldn't handle the vitriol, even regarding issues I agreed with. My close friend who protested, while definitely in agreement with her fellow protesters, seemed to be more attracted to the theatre of protests rather than their ability to change anything. In that way, at least, they weren't delusional.

The human antagonists in Insomnia are right wing protesters. And they believe in the theater of violence. It is disconcerting to read how far these fictional characters are willing to go, and to realize how similar they are to people I encountered at protests.

At my worst, I have my own violent thoughts about people I find morally reprehensible, but the imagined violence is always preceded by an imagined trial where they are found guilty of a crime worthy of their punishment. I am never the imaginary judge at this imaginary trial. I am never on the imaginary jury. I am neither an imaginary lawyer or witness. I imagine the machines of this imagined justice will do its work without me, and I'll just get imagined satisfaction seeing the imagined outcome of the imagined scenario. My imaginary hands are free of the imaginary blood.

It is when people believe they must make their imagined scenarios happen in reality that things go horribly awry. Hands of God, Director of Fate, Justice's Bullet. These are dangerous titles to imagine for yourself or a colleague or enemy.

Much of Insomnia hovers around abortion rights. And how willing a particular fictional faction of pro-lifers are to murder adults and children to protect the idea of unborn fetuses. 

It's a tough subject. One I didn't imagine King would handle well. He's not known for subtlety. And while he's not subtle here, I think he's more realist than in any other book I've read so far.

The connection to The Dark Tower is that the human antagonist doesn't see himself as a servant of God, but as a servant of The Crimson King who might be Randall Flagg or Walter or someone higher up the chain, we're not really sure at this point. We also learn about the bags that surround people and work as a sort of Video Game Health Meter. We'll be seeing these alluded to later on. 

Stray Observations:

--I read this several months before making this post (I've post-dated it) and have forgotten what I intended for this Stray Observations section

--Presumably, a character or two from this book will show up later on in the chronology, but I have just a few hundred more pages to go, and have seen no mention of any of them

--given the roles vampires play in The Dark Tower (not Dracula vampires, but vampiric creatures), it's interesting to see the protagonists portrayed as also being a  type of vampire

--you can tell this book was written by someone who has experienced long bouts of insomnia themself

--we are 6,549 pages closer to the crumbing Dark Tower, O Discordia

​1.​ The Case Of Velvet Claws. Hearts In Atlantis is chock full of book references, as the main character has his coming of age moments via literature recommendations from an old man who moves in upstairs. This is the Perry Mason book that Bobby Garfield is reading at the beginning of the book before he meets Ted Brautigan. 

​2. Ring Around The Sun is the book in Bobby's hands when he first meets Brautigan, who informs him that it's a great book, before offering him a job to read the newspaper to him on a daily basis. I haven't read any Simak, but this will be the first one I do once I"m done with my own Dark Tower chronology read through.

​3. Lord Of The Flies is the classic book that Brautigan recommends and that Bobby falls in love with. The moral play of the kids on the island factors into many of his decisions as the story progresses, and even other characters later in the book are noted to have read or be reading it.

​4. The Midwich Cukoos is the basis for the classic movie The Village Of The Damned, which Bobby and Brautigan go to see together in theaters. 

​5. But Brautigan claims that Wyndham's best book is The Kraken Wakes. I don't intend on  repeating many authors, or having too many books in the same genre back-to-back, but since both of these are mentioned, I thought I'd include them He also mentions that Day Of The Triffids is very good but that this book is better.

​6. Cosmic Engineers marks three sci-fi books in a row from the recommendation of a fictional Breaker from The Dark Tower series. King, himself, also recommends this book in On Writing.

​7. Roman Hat Mystery is a closed-room mystery,and the first of the Ellery Queen books. Bobby Garfield sees it on a library cart, and debates picking it up and reading it. The period mystery is a nice break from the sci-fi books, I hope.

​8. The Inheritors is another novel by The Lord Of The Flies author, this one about prehistoric man, and the extinction of the Neanderthals. This is the book that Bobby Garfield picks up in place of The Roman Hat Mystery.

​9. The Complete Stories Of Flannery O'Connor is the first book mentioned by Carol Gerber, Bobby's young love interest. She mentions that she should be in her dorm reading one of these stories instead of going to see a movie with another student.

​10. I debated putting The Things They Carried by Tim O'Brien on this list, as it's one of my all-time favorite books. But If I Die In A Combat Zone is one of the many phrases that shows up in the second section, so I thought this book might be a slightly better fit.

​11. As has become evident, much of the latter portion of Hearts In Atlantis is about the Vietnam War. This was the first twentieth century war that Americans were willing to admit being ambivalent about. (We way over-romanticize our involvement in World War II considering how long we waited to get involved.) Jerry Lembke is a Vietnam vet and a sociologist who attempts to dis-spell some of the false narratives that have sprung up about the Vietnam era in the past forty years. I thought a non-fiction book might be a nice change of pace here.

​12. I'm not a big Hemingway fan, but The Sun Also Rises gets name checked as one of the books recommended to one of the characters.

​13. Finally moving into The Wind Through The Keyhole, here's the story of a changeling, which is awfully similar to The Skin Man that Roland is sent after in the story-within-a story, and which Tim Ross is afraid of encountering in the story-within-a-story-within-a-story.

​14. Wild Seed is another book that deals with the changeling trope. I'm always looking for an excuse to put Octavia Butler on a reading list, and this fits real nicely here.

​15. Our story-within-a-story-within-a-story features a young boy whose father dies, and he and his mother are thrust into an adventure when she remarries. Queen Sugar is about a mother and daughter in a similar situation.

​16. Tim from our s-w-a-s-w-a-s is on a quest that blurs the lines of fantasy and reality, and takes him along various literature references along the way. Grant Morrison and Sean Murphy's Joe The Barbarian is a more modern take on that trope, in graphic novel form. The story is great, and the art is lovely.

​17. During his journey, Tim encounters creatures that I visualized as very similar to Swamp Thing. Alan Moore has the most famous run on the series, but in 2012 Scott Snyder began his run, which isn't better than Moore's from a storytelling perspective but Yanick Pacquette's art is mesmerisingly good, so I recommend checking that out instead.

​18. Has it been mentioned at all that Roland is supposedly descended fromhis world's version of King Arthur And His Knights Of The Round Table? That seems important. And Maerlyn keeps getting name-dropped over the course of the series, but this is the first time we meet Maerlyn by his name, so nows as good a time as any to brush up on Arthurian legends.

​19. The ka-tet's journey to the tower is along the Bear-Turtle Beam, which gets referenced with some frequency both in the main series, and in It. Mainly, it's the turtle who gets the headlines, but they do have to defeat Shardik The Bear in The Waste Lands. But in the s-w-a-s-w-a-s, Tim is journeying along the Eagle-Lion Beam. He meets Maerlyn in the form of a tyger, and believes him to be one of The Beam's guardians, but Maerlyn points out that the guardian of this beam is Aslan, sooo...Narnia is a part of The Dark Tower, too.

​20. When one of the characters in Insomnia starts to lose his shit, he starts quoting a bunch of Bible verses. We don't have time to read The Bible for this chronology but Mark Russell and Shannon Wheeler's God Is Disappointed In You is a great modern, illustrated cliff-note version. Well worth your time.

​21. The aforementioned Bible quoter is fixated on a powerful female historian named Susan Day, who is fictional. I think Hannah Arendt is one of her real world contemporaries, as this book would definitely piss off Ed Deepnau. And, really, in this horrible time in American history, it never hurts to read up on how The Origins Of Totalitarianism threatens.

​22. Closing off this list, although I'm only 100 pages into Insomnia right now, is Even Cowgirls Get The Blues, which is the book Deepnau is reading when Ralph approaches him after a significant event in the book. Tom Robbins is one of my favorite writers from when I was in high school.

In September, I suggested a reading order for the extended universe of Stephen King's The Dark Tower, a series I loved, but hadn't read any of since Volume 7: The Dark Tower came out in 2004. I realized that I missed the characters from the series, and wondered if the reading order I suggested would really hold someone's interest all the way through. I scoured some local bookstores, and then the internet for the hardcovers of the books, and prepared for my quest to read a Super Long series of books.

In my Goodreads review, I noted how conflicted I am by this book. This set of intertwining short stories shifts focus, shifts narrators, and shifts timeframes. Something Stephen King is usually very good at, but which I found clunky in this collection. I think the first and final stories are excellent but the journey between them is lackluster. But the first story did inspire me to start the companion series of blog entries:  A Masochist's Journey To The Dark Tower For People Who Hate Stephen King. I imagine if you're still reading these entries, though, you're probably somewhere with me riding on this Stephen King bandwagon.

1. Low Men In Yellow Coats

I'm a reader.

You know this. You're reading a series about me reading.

I've enjoyed books since I was young. I'm happy to talk with you about which ones I liked and which ones I didn't.

My step-grandfather on my father's side encouraged me toward books that were better than what I'd found on my own. Upgraded from Garfield to Calvin & Hobbes. From Jay Leno's "Headlines" series to E.E.Cummings's poetry. 

The first story in this collection is about an old man who influences a young New England boy to read better books. 

Its also about the Low Men who we will encounter more and more often during the final stretch of the Dark Tower chronology.

It's a 5 out of 5 star story for me. 

*****

2. Hearts In Atlantis

I went away to school. I played Hearts.

My high school years occurred during and after the Persian Gulf War. An unpopular war. A war much of our country was against.

I still couldn't care about this section of the book. It dragged. I had to force myself to finish it.

It's 2 out of 5 stars for this story.

**

3. Blind Willie

I am not a veteran. I am infrequently blind.

Despite its connection to Low Men In Yellow Coats and the return of a character who is probably Randall Flagg, I was not excited to read this story, either.

2 out of 5 stars again.

**

4. Why We're In Vietnam

I am still not a veteran. I'm not a TV activist lawyer. I'm not an alcoholic.

There are many stories about Vietnam that are important to me. Particularly those by Tim O'Brien. But growing up in the 80s and 90s, Vietnam was THE era of discussion that led nostalgia culture. So many TV shows. So many movies. So many books.

There are people who love to read about eras. Become experts on World War 2, or Civil War era America, or The Roman Empire.

I'm not one of them. I did feel a bit more for the characters in this section than the previous two, so I'll say it's 3 out of 5 stars.

***

​5. Heavenly Shades Of Night Are Falling

I've gone back to the place where I grew up. I've reunioned with old flames. I've attended funerals of those I was only passingly close to.

This story is a solid coda to the book.

It reminds me of nostalgia. But in a good way.

4 out of 5 stars.

****

Stray observations:

--I could die happily never reading another Baby Boomer's remembrance of Vietnam.

--I, initially, skipped over entire swaths of the second and third stories, but felt guilty, and went back and read them. I wish I hadn't.

--While I like reading this book at this place in the chronology, it is interesting that this is the first way we will encounter The Low Men, and it will be quite a bit before the characters become directly connected to The Dark Tower. But I suppose it's not as long a separation as the chasm between Salem's Lot an when Salem's Lot becomes relevant to the larger story.

--Think of ice cream. Think of cigarettes. Think of anything except that we are 5,762 pages across this crumbling beam. Don't let the Low Men suspect that you're here.

In September, I suggested a reading order for the extended universe of Stephen King's The Dark Tower, a series I loved, but hadn't read any of since Volume 7: The Dark Tower came out in 2004. I realized that I missed the characters from the series, and wondered if the reading order I suggested would really hold someone's interest all the way through. I scoured some local bookstores, and then the internet for the hardcovers of the books, and prepared for my quest to read a Super Long series of books.

I believe I'm over halfway through my reading of the expanded Stephen King Dark Tower universe. I'm certainly at the halfway of the official books, as I've read The Gunslinger, The Drawing Of The Three, The Waste Lands, and Wizard And Glass, which leaves Wind Through The Keyhole, Wolves Of Callah, Song Of Susannah, and The Dark Tower.

Maybe you are envious of this project but you don't really like Stephen King's writing style. You can still have a similar experience. King's work is loaded with allusions and references. I don't feel they often overtake the narrative (though the final chunk of Wizard And Glass is a bit too on-the-nose Wizard Of Oz for me), but they're there. I've taken somehwat lazy notes during the first half of this journey, and I present you with a list of books that approximate the Dark Tower chronology experience. You can also consider this a For Further Reading List, if you ever do decide to read through the Stephen King chronology. Though, really, you'd be better off getting a time machine, and reading these first, so that you catch all the references during the Dark Tower.

​10. Paradise: While we're at it, why not have a story that features a Black woman with mental illness that's actually written by a Black woman. I haven't yet read a Toni Morrison book that I wouldn't recommend but this seems the most appropriate in reference to The Drawing Of The Three.

​11. Shardik: From the author of the most violent children's book about small, fuzzy, animals comes the tale of a hunter who believes a giant bear is actually a god. This hugely factors into the beginning of The Waste Lands. I kept thinking the reference had something to do with Watership Down, and that my memory was going. Like a bear. Like a bear who was once a god.

If you are a teenager then you are romance.  You are sex. You are a body. Maybe heart. Maybe brain. But definitely body. 

You may say yourself alone. You may dress yourself independent. Wear books. Say video games. Build happy solitude like medieval armor.

But if you boy, you at fourteen are want girls. Even if you also want boys. Even if you grow up all boys and know at fourteen only boys, you will want story girls. You will want fictional flutter heart girls. Because boys at fourteen think every girl Juliet. Because boys at fourteen all body. All romance. All sex. Every fourteen boy loves nonreciprocal girl. Maybe classmate. Maybe neighbor. Maybe older woman. Probably fictional. Maybe book girl, maybe TV sweetheart. Maybe Princess fucken Leia. But girl. Even if woman, fourteen boy thinks of as girl.

Girl doesn't actually exist. Or is not who fourteen boy imagined. Either way doesn't love him heart sex. Boy moves on. Maybe not until fifteen. Maybe not until twenty. Maybe thirty. Maybe him die fourteen at age seventy-nine. Those boys live ugly. Those boys troll computers and women. Stalker boys. Creeper boys. Cult boys. Men's Rights Activists. Republican politicians. Gross boys old men. Hearts broken by their dumb eyes. Can't see difference between teenage romance and real life. Always think themselves hero. Fourteen boys always protagonists of their own dull stories. Fourteen boys insufferable. Never adorable. Don't believe any writer any storyteller who says fourteen boys men. Men can lie. But men Know when they are lying. Fourteen boys think every lie true.

At the heart and the body of Wizard and Glass is fourteen boy. Is love. Is romance. Is death and heroes and trust and manhood and magic and all those things that fourteen boys color in the background of romance because they are so afraid of romance. Afraid because friends say romance is girl thing. And fourteen boys fear being girl things. Because stupid. Gendering anything stupid. Romance languages give nouns gender. English killed that overt declaration of gender. Keeps gender in shhhhhhh background. Because stupid.

Roland gunslinger in this section is teenage boy. Moves to strange new world. Adolescence.  Bring friends. Everyone changing. World moving on. New temporary home is ancient. Everything about themselves is a lie created by their fathers. Roland finds intrigue. Roland finds danger. Roland finds love.  World crashes down around him like world always crashes around fourteen year old gunslinger bodies.

Adult Roland we've known for so much of this list. No love. Only heartbreak. Only him fourteen in the back of his solitude. Not hate women. Not fear women. Not think less women. Roland stupid. Roland flawed. But Roland not misogynist, though of course misogyny courses through Roland like the blood in all humans it is. Now this story why Roland so lonely. So gunslinger. So eyes and cold caliber. So wet shells. So dark tower always at horizon.


​Stray observations: 

--Despite it being referenced in the title of the book and on the cover, I'd forgotten about the crystal ball mythology in The Dark Tower.

--My reading chronology offers a bunch of breaks from the ka-tet that still fit in The Dark Tower journey. This five hundred page flashback focus on Roland is a fun journey, but it made me wish Susannah, Eddie, and Jake had sequences like this. Then I remembered that they all do have their own sequences in other books, they just don't stand out as starkly as this one.

--We are 5,239 pages closer to the tower than when we began, say thankya.