Want a hardcover "Joyland"? ACT QUICKLY!!!

Titan Books put three limited-edition hardback versions of Joyland on sale this morning.  If you want one, go here, and if you want a signed edition, I wouldn't even finish reading this sentence.  See there, you probably missed out!

A Review of "I Travel By Night" [by Robert McCammon]

Howdy, y'all!  It's yer friendly neighborhood Stephen King fan, back again with a review of...yet another book not written by Stephen King.

What can I say, folks?  The word "mostly" is right there in the title of the blog, so I figure I'm covered.

Anyways, we could continue dwelling on my slight lack of focus, or we could just get to the review; let's do the latter.

Here's the lowdown on I Travel By Night, the new short novel by Robert McCammon: Trevor Lawson is a gunslingin', private-detectin', badass who used to be a Confederate Soldier in the War of Northern Aggression.  His exit from that war was facilitated by a pack of vampires, one of whom (a queen vamp named LaRouge) takes a shine to him and decides to add him to the group.

A Review of "NOS4A2" [by Joe Hill]

I'll go ahead and let you all in on a fact I was planning to keep secret: I did a lousy job of reading Joe Hill's new novel.  

  

Don't be confused by what that means.  I finished the book; I did the majority of my reading in three multi-hour chunks spread across four consecutive days off from work, and earlier tonight I completed page 692, closed the novel, nodded to myself at a goal accomplished, and that was that.  I had a cat in my lap, so I sat there for a few more minutes, petting Duncan Idaho and refusing to let him bite my fingers.  Then I got up and farted around on the Internet for a while; next thing you know, I'm writing this review.  But yeah, I definitely finished the book.

So when I say that "I did a lousy job" reading this novel, don't think that that means I gave up on it or anything like that.  Nope.  Not the case.  I read the entire thing.

It was a struggle, though.  

  

And when I say "it was a struggle," what I mean is that it was so fucking good that I literally had trouble focusing on the words.  I'd find myself getting in a groove where I'd get so wrapped up in what was happening that I was digesting entire pages in, like, ten seconds.

 

To shed some light on this, let me tell you a story.  I had a dog once.  Well...technically, he was my roommate's dog.  Well, technically, he was my roommate's ex-girlfriend's dog.  Doesn't matter.  Let's just say he was my dog, because it makes the story flow better.

I had a dog once.  And one night, me and my roommate cooked dinner.  What'd we cook?  Uh...I don't know...let's say it was country-fried steak and mashed potatoes and fried okra.  Seems entirely possible.  So anyways, we're eating, and the doorbell rings, and it was...well, I think it was a neighbor.  Let's say it was.  The neighbor had something to deliver, or something to tell us, or wanted some goddamn thing or another.  Doesn't matter.  Point is, both my roommate and I went to the door to speak with the neighbor, and at some point, it occurred to me to turn around and look and see what old Riley the dog was doing.  I could see the dining-room table through the kitchen, and what I saw was Riley, standing in the middle of the table, snarfing up food like he had some inside knowledge that the planet was about to be pulled into a black hole, and wanted to eat as much as he possibly could before shit got all stretchy and weird.

Either my roommate or me screamed at him to stop, and we took off for the dining-room.  As we approached, Riley actually accelerated his food intake.  It was astonishing; it was like his stomach was the black hole, and the black hole had chosen to begin its conquest of the planet Earth with some country-fried steak, mashed potatoes, and fried okra.  There's no way he was tasting anything, or actually enjoying it; this was simple, grim food annihilation.  

  

Riley annihilated until we reached the table, and then he scampered down off the table and went and hid in the nearest corner, shivering in fear of the retribution that surely awaited.  Shivering and scared, yes, but also licking his lips; scared to death, but with a foundation of immense self-satisfaction.

We thought it was the funniest fucking thing we'd ever seen.

Anyways, as I got further and further into NOS4A2, I found myself not so much reading the words as pulling them into myself at maximum speed, as if my brain was a black hole and it was dismantling the world one sentence at a time, starting with this Joe Hill hardback.

I was, technically speaking, reading the entire thing, but I occasionally began doing at such a fevered pitch that I'd realize I was getting very little actual use from the words.  I knew what was happening, story-wise; but the style in which it was happening was, at times, largely lost on me.

That is hardly the first time such an experience has happened to me.  It happens nearly any time I'm reading something that I am genuinely enjoying, especially if it is a first read of that book.  Most recently, I caught myself flying through Double Feature by Joe's brother Owen King; when reading 11/22/63, I had to fight the problem back like I was defending fucking Helm's Deep.  One tactic I have been known to employ in this fight is reading aloud; that forces me to slow down, and to take some actual taste from the words, rather than merely suck them up like I'm some sort of vacuum for prose.

I tried it with NOS4A2, and it would work for a bit, but inevitably, I'd find myself in black-hole territory again, devouring whole pages at breakneck pace.  As a result, while I certainly enjoyed the novel, I canot honestly say that I feel like I gave it its due as a reader.

And maybe that's okay.

Because if you think I won't be reading NOS4A2 several more times before my time on Planet Earth is done, you are 100% mistaken.  I figure half a dozen more, bare minimum; and that's not counting the audio version (which I really want, partially because it's read by Kate Mulgrew, one of my very favorite Star Trek captains).

Now, with that apology/explanation/praise dispensed, let's move on to the actual review.  It won't be heavy on plot, because I don't want to spoil the novel's contents for anyone.

NOS4A2 has two main characters: Vic(toria) McQueen and Charlie Manx.

Bryant Has Issues #31...Pun-Intended Edition

No Stephen King comics this week, folks, but in lieu of material directly inspired by Uncle Stevie, I've got some stuff that comes from people who've worked with King before.

We'll start with Saga, which is the brainchild of Brian K. Vaughan, the scripter of the upcoming Under the Dome television series.  Why am I telling you this, given that you already know it?  Easy: I couldn't think of any other way to begin the post.  Hey, I'm a hack; what can I say?

But, yes, we are going to be focusing on Saga at the outset today, and I may as well tell you right here, right now: you are going to see penises.  Not real ones; they're drawn by Fiona Staples.  But whatever solace the easily-offended amongst you might take from the fact that they are made of ink and paper rather than flesh and blood is likely to be offset by what these particular penises are doing.  I think we can agree that the result is certainly one of the natural functions for those organs; whether the final destination for the material resulting from that function is natural or not ... well, that's where some of you might be jumping ship tonight.

So if you are opposed to homosexual activity, I'll catch ya next time.  Or, if you like, scroll down until you see the cover of an issue of Batman.

It's 'bout to get rainbow-colored up in here.

So, here's what happened: there was, in the days leading up to the release of Saga #12 (Wednesday, April 10, 2013), a controversial happening in which -- due, supposedly, to the graphic depictions of gay oral sex in two panels of the comic -- Apple refused to put the issue for sale on iTunes.  If I understand things correctly, what actually happened was this: comiXology, a company which is the primary vendor for digitally-distributed comic books, decided that Apple would probably not approve the content, and decided to simply not even bother submitting it for approval.  A day or so later, Apple is all like, "Huh?" and comiXology is all like, "Oops, our bad."

A Review of "The Dark Tower Companion" [by Bev Vincent]

Released recently: Bev Vincent's book The Dark Tower Companion, which is described on the front cover as "a guide to Stephen King's epic fantasy."  This is not Vincent's first foray into writing about The Dark Tower; his exploration The Road to the Dark Tower came out in 2004, and is generally considered to be the most notable nonfiction work about King's magnum opus thus far.

The Dark Tower Companion cements Vincent's status as one of the preeminent King scholars working, and the preeminent Dark Tower scholar.  It's good stuff, and if you're a fan of the series, you really ought to add this to your collection.

That's the short review.

If you feel like reading a slightly longer review, one that'll give you a taste of the actual contents of the book, then step right this way; I can accommodate you.

TV Guide, April 26, 1997

All the talk about Glen Mazzara being hired to write the screenplay for Warner Bros.' prequel to The Shining (the Kubrick movie, not the King novel) got me to thinking about various things, and in the course of that thinking, I had cause to take my copy of the April 26, 1997 issue of TV Guide down off the shelf.

Doing that caused me to realize that I ought to scan in the pages that were King-centric, just so I'd have them in digital form.

Doing that made me think that maybe I ought to post some of those scans here.

And so I shall, although I may as well give you the bad news now: "Before the Play" will not be included among those scans.  I have no issue with posting some scans of an article about the making of the miniseries, but I'll have to draw the line at posting scans of an entire story.  Some artwork...?

That's a possibility.

An Interview with Owen King

If you've been reading my blog of late, you'll know that I'm a big-time fan of Owen King, whose novel Double Feature was recently published by Scribner.  You may have read my review of it, or my review of King's first book (the excellent story collection We're All In This Together).

Well, today I'm pleased to announce that Mr. King agreed to take part in an interview, and to prove it, I'm going to post that interview for you to read.  I'm generous like that.

No need for further preamble; let's just dive right in to the questions, which Mr. King was gracious enough to answer via email.

photograph © Danielle Lurie

 

Bryant Burnette:  Double Feature reads like a novel written by someone who is utterly in love with movies, and with going to the cinema.  Assuming I've intuited correctly, is there a specific movie that you think might have started that love affair with cinema?

Owen King:  Movies have been a part of my life for about as far back as I can remember, so I'm not sure that there's a particular film that set me off.  Movies were just always there, you know?  I do recollect that the first film I ever saw on a big screen was Key Largo, which is odd because I'm 36 and that's an old one.  It must have been at a revival theater or something.  Anyway, as a whole it baffled me.  My one (not insignificant) takeaway was that Bogey was very, very cool. 

Bryant Has Issues #30

Hip-hip-hooray!  We have a Stephen King comic this week!

I regret to inform that it is not particularly good.  In fact, in my personal estimation it is maybe one of the worst issues of the series so far.

The tale takes place seemingly a bit prior to the events of "The Little Sisters of Eluria," and involves Roland taking his slumber upon a bed of devil-grass.  The resultant bad dreams give us a window onto a scene from his past involving a raid upon an enemy camp between Gilead's fall and the battle of Jericho Hill.  Along for the ride are fellow gunslingers Cuthbert, Alain, Jamie, and Thomas.

Limited-Edition Hounds Are A-Holes

Dear readers, you may or may not be familiar with a certain type of subculture among "collectors" that engages in an activity I find to be particularly loathsome.

Are you familiar with the idea of limited-edition releases?  I am referring here to companies that offer only a pre-defined number of a certain type of product; the number is set and announced in advance.  For example, there was recently a limited-edition Blu-ray of John Carpenter's Christine released by the specialty label Twilight Time.  They made 3000 copies, and only 3000 copies, and the Blu-ray sold for $30.

All 3000 copies evidently sold out within about seven hours.  Yours truly was lucky enough to snag a copy.

A decent number of copies were obviously sold to people who purchased them strictly so that they could then turn around and flip them at a profit.

As I type this, there are at least 35 copies up for sale on eBay, most of them with bids currently approaching (or, in some cases, well over) $100.

How Bryant Was Defeated By Oxford, or: How to Not Enjoy Your Vacation

I'd planned to have a report on the reading/signing Owen King was doing in Oxford, Mississippi today.  However, that's not going to happen, on account of how one or more of the following statements are true:

(1)  I am a moron.

(2)  Oxford, Mississippi is as poorly-laid-out a town as I have ever visited, traffic-wise, and is incredibly difficult to navigate unless you already know where you are going.

(3)  Oxford, Mississippi seemingly has no place to park downtown.  (There was a single long-term parking lot, as far as I can tell, and it was totally full.  Say, town planners...?  Here's a helpful hint: when traffic at lunchtime moves to a standstill that consists of people endlessly circling the same square, hoping for a place to park, it might be time to consider erecting a parking garage or two.  Just sayin'.)

(4)  I have invested in neither a smart-phone nor a GPS, and therefore am still living in the wrong era, technologically-speaking.

Take your pick; it's one, or the other, or maybe a mixture of them all.

And that, friends, is the story of how I did not end up actually attending the Owen King-related events that I'd taken PTO for, driven to a different state for, and looked forward to for weeks.

Apologies for the blog fail!