It is listed as a Dark Tower related book in Wolves of the Calla, Song of Susannah, and The Dark Tower. What’s the deal? It doesn’t seem to be related
Off the top of my head, it makes several references to the Turtle.
Crazy Cat Lady’s got it on the nose. In It, when the gang is having the climactic battle with It, Bill encounters the Turtle. I can’t remember the rhyme right off the top of my head, but something like “See the turtle of enormous girth…”
Anyway, if you go back and re-read It, which I need to do again, you’ll see it. It’s towards the end.
“See the turle of enormous girth
On his shell he holds the Earth”
It’s in IT.
Slee
Not only that…
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When they go into that one house where the old lady claims to be Pennywise’s mom? There’s creepy wallpaper that has evil elves that attack people on it–just like the house that Jake went into in um…The Wastelands
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At one point in IT, Stan freaks out because of the weirdness and says something like “Y’know, if someone went into a deserted lot and saw a rose that started singing, some people might think it was beautiful, but I think I’d go mad.”
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The grown-up architect kid (Ben?) mentions that his home is in “Hemmingford Home, Nebraska”…where Mother Abigail lives in The Stand.
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When the black kid’s dad tells him about the club that burned down he mentions Dick Halloran (from The Shining )
Great opportunity for me to recommend Bev Vincent’s book, The Road to the Dark Tower. He discusses the connections between the books, and summarizes them nicely.
But don’t bother with the Concordance, which is pretty worthless unless you’re Stephen King himself. It was put together by an assistant to help him keep things straight, but the way it’s set up is not helpful at all to a general reader, IMHO.
I just read Insomnia, which is referenced in The Dark Tower, and has a few plot points in common. And it is set in Derry, and makes veiled references to previous bad happenings in that town.
Jeez, Fenris, you need to read IT again. Not that this is a bad thing, because it’s a good book, but … you know.
Well, first off, they don’t go into Mrs Kersh’s house - only Bev goes there, and she goes there because it was where she lived as a child. - and the wallpaper in question isn’t there anyway; it’s in the house on Neibolt Street.
Further, the elves on the wallpaper in IT don’t attack anybody - they just get elongated into horror masks when It’s illusion makes the ceiling stretch up a few hundred feet.
Last, you’ve got it backwards - Mrs Kersh claims to be Pennywise’s daughter. This is very significant in context, as first she claims that she and her father are one, and then It appears as Bev’s father. The implication It is making is that Bev is just one of It’s subsidiary creatures - like the leeches in the fridge - so she can’t hope to beat It because really she’s part of It. Total bullshit, of course, but the Ritual of Chüd is mostly psychological warfare so it isn’t unfitting.
Stan actually thinks about Jesus walking on the water, which I’m afraid messes up your point completely. What he thinks - not says - is that if he saw someone doing that, he would scream because “it wouldn’t look like a miracle, it would look like an offence [against nature]”.
Pedanting for its own sake here, but you know how it is when you’re on a roll. Ben’s farm is in Junkins, Nebraska. Hemingford Home is where you’d go to look for him, in the Red Wheel.
Dead on with this one, of course, but how is The Shining connected to The Dark Tower?
In The Dark VII: The Dark Tower, on the page listing all of King’s works, the books related to the DT saga are in bold print. The Shining is not one of them.
Any connection between the fact that both Mordred and It are spiders who can change shape? I’d venture to guess that The Crimson King could also change into a spider, though I have a feeling I should know that for sure. Damn memory.
You’re mistaken here. Paperback US edition, page 411, towards the bottom. Stan is ranting and thinks “…in this universe there might grow roses that sing…everything’s connected to everything.” right before the “Jesus/Miracle/Offense” comment you referenced.
Except that It is connected to the Dark Tower and The Shining is connected to IT, not at all (other than Mother Abigail used the term “The Shine” to describe psychic powers, which could just be one of those weird author things).
OK, fine, but your point is still invalid unless there are singing roses in one of the Dark Tower books - and I’ll admit I haven’t read the last three yet, I’m waiting for p/b editions that don’t cost £25. King described Roland’s universe as existing in a single molecule of a (perfectly ordinary) weed on a deserted lot. You cannot draw any connection to IT just because Stan thinks about an unusual rose.
He’s revised that chapter completely. Having read the series, I think a singing rose mentioned in IT is an absolutely direct reference to the Dark Tower.
There are
Because I haven’t actually read any but the first two Dark Tower books yet, this might be a painfully stupid question, but…
In “Eyes of the Dragon,” there’s Flagg (also, of course the name of the villain in the Stand) and Thomas. In one scene fron the Dark Tower (book two, I think?), Flagg and Thomas kinda… run across the page, so to speak, making a very brief and unexplained appearance. And of course the name of the original King in *Dragon * was Roland.
Is there officially a link between the two?
I don’t have the revised editions, on the simple basis that as was is as it was meant to be. Tie in later by all means, but don’t fuck me around doing it retroactively.
I’ll be happy to spoil the books for you if you’d like (trust me, you don’t want me to spoil them!), but the “singing rose” thing is not only mentioned but is an ongoing and a major recurring theme from The Wastelands (book 3) onward (As far as I know the first appearance in The Dark Tower series is in the Wastelands in a section called “Key And Rose” where Jake encounters a rose that sings. Grant Press hardcover edition page 157–soon after he leaves the bookstore) That rose in particular (and many others in general) play huge part in the series and books 5 and 6 revolve around that specific singing rose.
Where did he do this? If it was in The Dark Tower: The Gunslinger, he’s rewritten the book–and I don’t remember exactly what or how he’s changed.
In The Wastelands it (and everything else) is contained in a singing rose in a deserted lot.
Um…yes I can and I’d be right!
On preview, Munch is mistaken if he’s refering to the chapter in It as being revised. I just went and dug up my 1st edition hardcover (Viking Press) of It and the “singing rose” line is there too, in exactly the same place as it is in the paperback edition. The rest of the chapter might or might not be totally revised (I’m not about to check every line!), but the paragraphs containing the “singing rose/Jesus/offended” lines are word-for-word identical. (Not that King would be above retroactive rewrites! )
I believe that Munch was referring to the revised version of The Gunslinger. I could be wrong, but I don’t think there’s a revised version of It.
I actually just started re-reading It this week, and this line jumped out at me - it’s right at the beginning of section 3, Chapter 7: “It was one of those perfect summer days which, in a world where everything was on track and on the beam, you would never forget.” The idea of the Beam first comes into the Dark Tower books in The Wastelands, I think. Roland and his ka-tet have to follow the path of the Beam to get to the Tower; he brings it up over and over again. It’s possible that the Beam reference in It was accidental, but I’m not so sure.
Rubystreak - I’ve always kind of wondered if It was the Crimson King or one of his agents, but I don’t know how well I could prove it. What makes me really wonder is the end of Insomnia:
At the end, Ralph Roberts comes into contact with the Crimson King himself, who he sees first as his mother, then as a giant female catfish. Both of those connect to things that had really frightened him as a child. Right up until the end of It, It appears as things that the kids are frightened of - the Wolfman, the Creature from the Black Lagoon, etc. Granted, it’s kind of a stretch, but we do know that the Crimson King is very interested in Derry, interested enough to come there himself. It’s not that improbable that he might have been there all along.
:: light dawns ::
Got it!
(On the other hand, King being King, and given the rewrites of his other books (The Stand has been revised at least 3 times that I know of*) it was possible that he’d rewritten IT!
*Yes. The Stand. It was set as contemporary in it’s original hardcover edition in '78 (which is why a 16 year old Frannie remembers listening to Lief Garrett records a few years earlier). It was revised in the very early '80s, updating only the year (and Frannie, circa 1984 having listened to Lief a few years earlier made less sense.) Then he rewrote it and added back in some stuff that he’d had to cut out earlier in the “Complete” version from the early '90s–strangely, ISTR Frannie still listened to Lief Garrett–even though she wouldn’t have been born (or was an infant) when Lief was hot)
OK, so you can draw a very tenuous connection in that someone thinks of something in one book and that thing later appears in another. It still doesn’t link the two books, any more than Donnie Darko is linked to IT because Rosie Darko is seen reading it.