Book to Movie: The Illustrated Man (1969)

Book to Movie: The Illustrated Man (1969)
Screenplay by Howard B. Kreitsek
Directed by Jack Smight

Movie Trailer

In 1969, three stories from Ray Bradbury’s The Illustrated Man were adapted to the big screen by screen writer Howard B. Kreitsek. The stories were, The Veldt, The Long Rain, and the Last Night of the World.

The movie starts just as the book, with the young vagabond encountering the wandering stranger with all the “skin illustrations.” (Calling them tattoos makes him very angry). He’s looking for the house where the woman who drew the illustrations lives so he can kill her, he explains.

Just as in the book, he explains that the illustrations come to life and people can see tales of horror in them. The blank spot is reserved for the person to see visions of their own death.

In the book, the two pass the time fairly amicably before the Illustrated Man falls asleep and the tales unfold for the viewer. The opening sequence in the movie is a bit longer. Rod Steiger’s portrayal of the Illustrated Man is more menacing than Bradbury’s character, and he starts recounting his visit to the strange woman he theorizes is from the future. The first sequence opens with her tattooing a rose into the palm of his hand, then melts into The Veldt.

The plot of The Veldt unfolds much as it did in the short story with the spoiled children unhappy that their father vows to shut down, lest they become too attached to it.

What is fundamentally different is the attitudes of the parents; their attitudes toward each other and toward the society in which they live.

As I noted in my review of the story, many of Bradbury’s stories featured homes or devices that rendered mundane domestic tasks performed by humans to be obsolete. In Bradbury’s world of the 1950s, this was a good thing. In the 1950s, Americans avidly pursued modern conveniences, having been deprived of them during the war years. By 1969, society was much more cynical. The two bemoan the emptiness of their lives, with all of the chores being done for them – including the raising of their children.

In the story, the tension between the parents arose from disagreements over how to reign in their children’s fascination with the playroom. In the movie, there were obvious marital problems. Early on, the woman blurts out, “make love to me!” The husband responds with “Why?” She says, “Maybe this time it will be different.” Obviously, this was not a happy marriage. Later that night, as they lie in bed, he reaches out for her hand and she pulls it away.

The parents meet their end when their family therapist, who had recommended the nursery as part of some psychological program for raising children (shades of Dr. Spock) finds the tattered remains of their clothing in the veldt, with well fed lions lying nearby.

There is more flashback to the Illustrated Man’s visit to the illustrator which bear not on the next story which is The Long Rain. When Bradbury penned the story in the late 1940s, we had no idea what lied beneath the clouds of Venus. By 1969, we knew whatever there was not hospitable. Therefore, the planet in the movie’s story is not named.

This story unfolded almost exactly as it was told in the book. The chief weakness of the film version was, the story did not translate well to the big screen. Bradbury’s prose did an excellent job building the tension between the astronauts as they go slowly insane in the constant driving rain. Despite decent performances by the cast, the segment was dull. They couldn’t build the tension without overacting. Had the segment been longer, the rain would have driven the audience insane, but we really felt no sympathy for the characters, for who hasn’t had to spend time in the rain?

In the third segment, Kreitsek tries to upstage Bradbury by twisting the ending of Bradbury’s short tale of the end of humanity. The story, The Last Night of the World, was a short character study that’s tone was melancholy, but not gloomy and certainly not tragic. I’ll not spoil the ending for those who have not seen it, but Kreitsek gives it a twist to make the story an ironic tragedy. It’s not so bad as to make one groan in anguish, but Bradbury is a better writer than Kreitsek and Kreitsek should have known it. This story, like The Long Rain, just wasn’t a good candidate for the big screen.

Frankly, few of the tales in The Illustrated Man would have made for good movie or television. Unlike The Martian Chronicles that had a combination of philosophy and action driving the plot, most of what is in The Illustrated Man were observations of people in fantastic situations. There was a great deal of character study and sociological reflection in the book which Bradbury writes well. But it makes for a poor movie.

Kreitseck was not a particularly successful screenwriter. He wrote the horrible sequels to the original Walking Tall and a couple other titles I’ve never heard of. The Illustrated Man was his first screenwriting effort. I won’t say he did the best he could with what he had to work with, because it could have been a much better movie. However, if an anthology was going to be made of this book, he should have chosen stories like The Fox and the Forest and Marionettes, Inc. which were better stories and would have worked much better on screen.

This is the second Jack Smight movie I’ve reviewed – the first being Damnation Alley. There are no major flaws in the directing and credit Smight for not driving his actors to overact in The Long Rain. Steven Spielberg could not have made this film much better. The script was just too thin.

Rod Steiger is intense as The Illustrated Man. That’s good because the opening sequence with Steiger killing the garter snake and feeding it to his Pomeranian was probably the best part of the movie. Science fiction fans would recognize Steiger from his work in Mars Attacks!. Claire Bloom, who plays the tattoo artist is adequate. Horror and science fiction fans would recognize her from the 1965 version of The Haunting and Clash of the Titans (1981). She is well recognized now for having played Queen Mary in The King’s Speech.

The movie was a flop and deservedly so. Despite having Jack Smight, who was a veteran of directing science fiction and horror direct the film, the script was too weak and uncompelling to make interesting.

The Dead Zone By Stephen King

The Dead Zone
By Stephen King
Copyright 1979

With the publication of The Dead Zone in 1979, Stephen King created a venue which would serve as a backdrop for several of his books and short stories. Castle Rock, Maine was the setting for The Dead Zone, Cujo, The Body from Different Seasons, The Dark Half, and The Sun Dog from Four Past Midnight. Needful Things was billed as the last Castle Rock book although it would be the setting for one more short story – It Grows on You in Nightmares and Dreamscapes.

The stories aren’t serialized and share loose connections at best. The sheriffs Bannerman and Pangborn are the most frequent recurring characters. Unlike ‘Salem’s Lot, the town is not a character, just a setting.

I’ve moved on from reading the Dark Tower and have started The Castle Rock series.

The Dead Zone opens with a prologue informing the reader that, despite the fact that he could not remember it, Johnny Smith suffered a head injury in his youth, colliding with another kid who was playing hockey on a frozen pond.

In the other half of the prologue, we meet a door to door Bible salesman working the Nebraska countryside, moving from farm to farm. While stopped at a farm where the owner was not home, he kicks their dog to death. His name is Greg Stillson and the young man on the move is sure great things lie in store for him as he drives off, dead dog miles behind him.

There are a few plot lines that run parallel in the story and meet at various points through the story. The opening chapter is set in 1970. We meet Johnny Smith, teacher and as mild mannered as his vanilla name implies, and his girlfriend, Sarah Bracknell. The two high school teachers are headed to a carnival and Sarah is anticipating this will be the first time Johnny spends the night instead of just dropping her off at her apartment.

They get to the carnival and enjoy themselves thoroughly. On their way out, Johnny spots a roulette wheel. He smells burnt rubber and develops a throbbing in his head and suddenly is drawn to play. He cleans the carnie out by guessing the right number. Johnny makes more than $500 in about fifteen minutes.

Sarah’s plans for a romantic evening are thwarted when she started throwing up a bad hot dog while watching Johnny play the wheel. He leaves her at her apartment and catches a cab home. On the way home, the cab is hit head on by kids drag racing. The cabbie is killed instantly, as are the kids. Johnny has been gravely injured with massive head trauma.

He is transported to the hospital. Emergency surgery saves his life, but he’s in a deep coma. The damage is so bad, the neurologist tells Johnny’s stricken parents and a dazed Sarah, that it is unlikely that Johnnie will ever awaken.

The world moves on. . . .

The Vietnam War ends.

Spiro Agnew resigns. Nixon resigns. Gerald Ford becomes president

Johnny’s mother falls into fanatical and fantastic religion, believing that flying saucers are going to transport Christ’s true believers to a star in Orion where Heaven is located.

Johnny’s dad gets older prematurely dealing with his wife’s mania and his son’s deteriorating physical condition. He wishes his son would just die.

Sarah Bracknell moves on, finds a young and politically upward bound attorney, falls in love, and marries him.

A serial killer starts work in Castle Rock, killing ladies from 17 to 70, strangling them with their own stockings.

Greg Stillson becomes mayor of a New Hampshire town and sets his sights on a congressional seat.

A man crisscrosses New Hampshire, selling lighting rods. His stops by a bar named Cathy’s in Castle Rock and tries to make a sale over a couple beers with the barkeep. The barkeep insists that he already has lightning rods, when in fact he does not.

And Johnny Smith wakes up from his coma after missing more than four years of his life.

His brain is damaged and he loses words and images in what he calls “the Dead Zone” of his brain, but he also develops telepathy and precognitive ability.

He first displays it when he grasps his physical therapist’s hand and immediately senses that her house is on fire. Then he is able to tell his neurologist that his mother actually survived the blitzkrieg of Warsaw after they were separated. Soon the media picks up on his ability and he becomes a reluctant celebrity.

He is finally discharged from the hospital and sent home to live with his father, now a widower since Johnny’s mom died from hypertension. Strangers from all parts of the country send Johnny little items for him to fondle and reveal their secrets. Find lost loved ones, reveal deep secrets, and even assistance in choosing lottery numbers. He is miserable and bored, hating the attention and missing Sarah who moved on while his world stayed still.

Sarah stops in to visit Johnnie. She is terribly conflicted, feeling guilt for having abandoned Johnny and moved on, for falling in love with someone else and for leaving him behind. As they part company, he grasps her hand to tell her where it was she lost her wedding ring while she and her husband honeymooned. It was stuck in the luggage. Sarah returns home and finds her long lost wedding ring. She flushes it without telling her husband and tries to forget what she knows is true about Johnnie and his abilities.

She visits again, enticing Johnny to invite her to his father’s place when her husband is away on business and she is visiting friends nearby. There, she tries to make peace with the past by making love to Johnnie, telling him that this one act must make up for the night they lost that tragic night and a lifetime of lost love.

Johnny receives a call from his old principal who invites him to come back to teaching at the high school when he’s physically ready. Johnny is thrilled at the opportunity to get back to utilizing his old skills at pedagogy. He also receives a call from Castle Rock Sheriff George Bannerman. Bannerman needs Johnnie’s new skills to help him. Johnny reluctantly agrees to meet with him.

There is another murder in Castle Rock. This time, it’s a 14 year old girl walking between the library and the school. The public pressure is on and Bannerman is desperate.

The meet and Johnnie agrees to try to discern some clues from a cigarette pack found at the scene. He then insists on visiting the crime scene. Upon arriving at the location of the latest murder, Johnny is able to discern that the rapist and murder always wore a raincoat so none of his victims could scratch him. He staggers to a nearby earlier crime scene that leads Bannerman to his suspect, who commits suicide just as Bannerman confronts him.

Johnny once again becomes the focus of national media attention. That high profile costs him his teaching gig and he moves on to tutoring the son of a textile magnate who has a reading disability and needs help desperately. Johnny moves into the guest house on the family’s estate and begins work.

While tutoring, he develops a fascination with politics and the 1976 election. He meets Jimmy Carter and knows instantly that he will win a close election over Gerald Ford. He also follows closely a New Hampshire independent named Greg Stillson, running for Congress.

Greg Stillson has come a long way from being a door to door Bible salesman. He’s now a successful insurance agent and mayor of a middle class New Hampshire city with a tough on crime philosophy. Greg also recruits outlaws to serve as his personal security. He runs an unorthodox campaign with wild policy pronouncements (We’ll blast the pollution into outer space), to unorthodox festival bordering on maniacal campaign rallies. Greg Stillson is a cult of personality and he is the favorite to win in the New Hampshire third congressional district.

Johnny decides to attend a Stillson rally and see the carnival of American politics for himself. He gets to the rally and fights hard against the compulsion to grab Stillson’s hand. Finally, he loses the battle and Stillson grabs his hand. Both are galvanized.

Johnny has visions of an older and grayer Greg Stillson taking the oath of office for the presidency. He then sees visions of a world on the brink of world war, with Greg Stillson leading the charge to Armageddon.

Johnny is stunned by what he’s just learned. He has just shaken hands with the man who will end civilization on earth. He ponders what his responsibilities are as custodian of this knowledge and what, if anything, he should do about it.

His tutoring job is going very well with his charge dramatically improving his reading and writing skills. He will now graduate on time with his class and, after a short stint in prep school will go to college.

The young man’s father hosts a party the night before graduation for friends and their parents. While there, Johnny learns that there is going to be a tragic fire at Cathy’s restaurant where most of the kids plan to go after graduation the next night. Johnny pleads with the father and the children not to go. Johnny’s pupil believes him and insists that his dad host a party instead and invite everyone to the house instead of allowing them to go to Kathy’s. Some kids accept, but many opt to stay with their original plans.

Events unfold just as Johnnie predicted. Lightning struck Cathy’s restaurant and sets the place ablaze. Kids rush for the exits and are stuck at the exits, trying to squeeze out when smoke and fire overtakes them. More than 40 kids died.

After the fire, Johnny opts to disappear.

Here, King dramatically alters his narrative style. No longer are we privy to Johnny Smith’s thoughts. In a detached style, King walks us through Johnny’s growing obsession with Greg Stillson and his campaign. He goes to a gun store and buys a sniper rifle and ammunition. People notice that he has a badly bloodshot eye.

He is living in Phoenix and working on a road crew, having disappeared from the world after the new, unwanted fame that came from the prediction of the disaster at Kathy’s. His former student’s father tracks him down and offers him a large sum of money (King never reveals the amount). Johnnie keeps refusing. Finally, after the man has sent several checks, Johnnie takes the money to fund what he has come to believe is sad duty to perform for history.

He writes several letters, to his father, to Sarah, to his neurologist, explaining what he is doing and why he is doing it. He mails them and then heads north for New Hampshire where he prepares to save the world.

He sneaks into a hall where Stillson is preparing to address a crowd. He waits with his rifle for his target to appear. Finally, Greg Stillson arrives and Johnny takes his shot and misses. He fires again and misses again. After he takes a third shot, Stillson’s body guards fire back and shoot Johnny. Mortally wounded, he fires one more shot. Just as he dies, he sees Greg Stillson grab a kid and use him for a shield. A photographer takes a picture of Stillson’s cowardly act.

In the epilogue, we read Johnny’s letters. We learn that he had developed a brain tumor. He insists to his father to never believe that the tumor had caused him to act. His mother’s parting words to him were that God had a special purpose for him and he should not act as Jonah, but act as God’s instrument. He was saving humanity from Greg Stillson.

There were also Senate hearings chaired by newly minted Maine Senator William Cohen. Here, we learn that Johnny’s tumor was operable, but that he refused the operation. His final days on the road crew were full of blackouts caused by the tumor. People testified to his how ill he looked in his final days.

The book ends with Sarah approaching his grave and weeping for all that had happened.

The Dead Zone was Stephen King’s first departure from horror. There are psychic elements to the story, but no true horror that was found in his earlier works.

The story of Johnny Smith is a tragedy. The story didn’t have a hero at the end. Jonnny Smith just wanted the life he lost to tragic circumstances. But every time he got a shot at resuming life, the curse of his new ability doomed him. Of all King’s works, this one is the most tragic.

Many King fans rank this as one of his best. I rank it as one of his second tier works with books like The Talisman and Eyes of the Dragon.

It’s an entertaining and engaging story with several plots evolving at once. The plots were simple and drawn together simply. A more mature King could have woven a lot more complexity into the story and made it better. But at this early stage of his career, horror was what he wrote best. His first deviation from the horror formula was not bad. He would later show the world with works such as Different Seasons that, as he matured, he was quite capable of writing outside the genre. But with The Dead Zone, he’s venturing forth for the first time, and a lack of maturity shows.

We will meet Sheriff George Bannerman again in King’s next Castle Rock installment, Cujo.

A movie starring Christopher Walken and Martin Sheen was made in 1983. The story is changed dramatically toward the end to give the ending greater drama. It’s a slightly above average adaptation of a slightly above average King work.

There was also a television series based loosely on the novel entitled Stephen King’s The Dead Zone and starred Anthony Michael Hall. I never watched the series. Fans give it 7.3 stars on IMDB, so it must not be too bad. It ran for six seasons, from 2002 to 2007 on the USA network.

Henry Clay: The Essential American By David S. Heidler and Jeanne T. Heidler

Henry Clay: The Essential American
By David S. Heidler and Jeanne T. Heidler
Copyright 2010

Any serious study of the period between the so called Era of Good Feelings and the Civil War must include Henry Clay. As much as the presidents of this era, he helped define the nation’s course through its most tumultuous time. His career in national politics spanned from the era where the new United States established itself as a truly independent nation through the calamitous lead up to disunion and the Civil War.

Clay was born in Hanover County, Virginia in 1777 the seventh of nine children his mother would have with his father. (She went on to have another seven with her second husband) His father, a Baptist minister, died when Clay was four. His mother remarried and his family moved to Kentucky, leaving Clay and several of his siblings behind in Virginia to be cared for by friends and relatives. Clay worked in Richmond as a shop assistant and then in a law office. He had little formal education – something that he regretted for his entire life.

When he was in his late teens, he joined his mom and stepfather in Lexington, Kentucky and established what would become a lucrative law practice. He married Lucretia Hart in 1799.

One of his most famous cases was the defense of vice president Aaron Burr when the state of Kentucky brought him up on charges of trying to divide the United States and seize western lands. Clay’s avid defense of Burr earned Burr an acquittal of the charges in Kentucky. Later, history would bear out most of the charges brought against Burr and Clay lived with the embarrassment of having secured the acquittal of a traitor and the man who murdered the country’s favorite Federalist, Alexander Hamilton. Years later, the two would meet and Clay would not even acknowledge his presence.

Clay’s law practice brought him wealth and he and Lucretia purchased 600 acres for a plantation they called Ashland. Clay’s first foray into politics was election to the Kentucky state legislature where he quickly distinguished himself by advocating the movement of Kentucky’s capital to Lexington which he regarded as the center of Kentucky commerce. His fellow legislators thought enough of him to serve as at least a place holder in the U.S. Senate and elected him to that position in 1806 even though he was but 29 years of age and constitutionally unqualified to serve. Although he was there for just a few months, that first taste of Washington politics and its intrigues lit a lifelong fire in Clay that death barely extinguished. He, again would be called upon to serve out the final months of the term of another Kentucky senator who resigned. It would be several years before he would return to the Senate. He had a great deal of work to do in the House first.

Clay was elected to the House of Representatives in 1811 and was promptly elected Speaker – the only freshman ever elected to the position. While in the House, he consolidated and strengthened the position of the War Hawks who supported President James Madison’s call for war against the British in the War of 1812.

He would go on to serve as a member of the U.S. delegation to Ghent to develop and sign a treaty to end the war. It was here that he came to know John Quincy Adams – a man who would be forever tied to Clay’s political fortunes and misfortunes.

The two men did not get along particularly well. Adams, like his father, was puritanical in his conduct and beliefs. Clay was not an immoral man or given to flights of vice. However, he did enjoy drinks with friends and enjoyed gambling. According the Dr. and Dr. Heidler, it was this knack for gambling that helped Clay read the British delegation and determine what their fallback position would be – what poker players call, “the tell.”

Adams and Clay were also in conflict because they came from different regions. The country was essentially united in war, but different territories had different aims in peace. The British opening proposal at Ghent asked for navigation rights on the Mississippi – an anathema to those in the west that would not stand for British ships sailing through its territory. The British also wanted to restrict commercial fishing off of the coast of Nova Scotia which was vital to the economic interests of New England. Adams was willing to give on the Mississippi navigation question. Clay was willing to give up Nova Scotia fishing. The delegation had to do quite a bit of negotiating themselves before they could negotiate with the British. Eventually, America got a peace they could live with and Adams and Clay returned to the United States heroes.

However, weeks after the treaty was signed and hostilities ceased, a new American hero emerged. Colonel Andrew Jackson had won an unlikely and important victory over the British at New Orleans, securing that port city for America. Jackson would bedevil Clay for the rest of his life.

Most of what is generally known about Clay is his work in the Senate, being the Great Compromiser. However, it was he who modernized and refined the post of Speaker of the House and made a center of power – power he wielded as an equal to the president. Through the skillful use of House rules and parliamentary procedure, he used the Speaker’s chair and gavel to shape legislation. He appointed committees – not with regional balance in mind – but rather with a mind’s eye toward achieving legislative goals.

While in the House, Clay developed a plan of internal improvements he called The American System. He envisioned federal investment in internal infrastructure to build roads and bridges to facilitate commerce. Again, the sectional nature of American political culture hampered progress in implementing Clay’s system of federally funded improvements. South Carolina farmers were bound to resent funding the Maysville Pike that ran between Washington, D.C. and the western states and territories just as Ohio farmers were loathe to have their tax dollars supporting improvements at South Carolina ports.

Perhaps Clay’s greatest accomplishment in the House was the Missouri Compromise. It is a popularly held belief that Clay was its author since he receives so much credit for its passage. He was not its author. However, it was he who brokered the deal that separated Maine from Massachusetts and allowed it to become a state along with Missouri. Despite a general prohibition on slavery in Missouri’s constitution that required a second compromise, President Monroe signed both enabling acts, bringing to the union a free state and an at least nominally slave state, maintaining the ever important sectional balance in Congress.

By 1824, Clay was a strong national figure and was a candidate for the presidency. He finished third in the field. However, neither of the top finishers, John Quincy Adams nor Andrew Jackson managed to secure a majority in the Electoral College and the election was sent to the House of Representatives to be settled.

Much research has been conducted and much speculation swirled around the ultimate decision that led to the election of John Quincy Adams as president. Adams and Clay were not friendly with each other. That was well known. Clay had vociferously defended Andrew Jackson’s reprehensible conduct toward British civilians and Seminole Indians in Florida. Yet, when the time came to cast ballots in the House, Clay came down on the side of Adams. Shortly thereafter, Adams named Clay as his secretary of state. In the early 19th century, the position of secretary of state was a pathway to the presidency.

Jackson backers immediately claimed that Clay had sold his vote to Adams in exchange for the plumb position. They offered as evidence a late night meeting the two men had just weeks prior to the House vote. One man stepped forward to say that he had delivered the offer to Clay. No definitive proof exists of the “Corrupt Bargain” as Jackson’s disciples came to call it, but no evidence exists that completely refutes it either. The Heidlers offer no opinion either way. The election of 1824 set off one of the most bitter periods in American political history –perhaps matched only by the Civil War itself in overt political and personal animus.

Clay’s tenure as secretary of state was not as distinguished as that of his predecessors perhaps because few foreign crises hampered the JQA administration. It is known fact that JQA was the principal author of the Monroe Doctrine and was determined to see it enforced. As an extension of that, Clay became an ardent supporter of the recognition of South American country’s rights to self determination and led the effort for the Adams administration to recognize most of the governments of South America.

Clay worked hard to secure the reelection of JQA in 1828, but the Jacksonians were not to be thwarted in their quest for the presidency. With the echoes of the Corrupt Bargain still ringing throughout the country, Andrew Jackson and his Jacksonian Democrats launched into the most vociferous presidential campaigning to date, literally hounding Adams from office. Clay left the State Department, but was promptly returned to the Senate by the Kentucky legislature.

Clay immediately became President Jackson’s chief adversary. From what the Heidler’s write, it was not so much policy differences that separated Jackson and Clay as it was consolidation of power within the chief executive. For the first 50 years, the president and the Congress acted as equals with Congress proposing and the president ratifying or vetoing as he saw fit. Most presidents saw themselves simply as a bulwark against unconstitutional legislation or legislative over reach on the part of Congress. Jackson, however, being a general and used to being obeyed, was a different political animal.

Jackson proposed programs and vetoed items, not because he thought them unconstitutional or congressional over reach. He vetoed them because he did not agree with them. He was not above applying political pressure to gain votes in Congress – an executive practice rarely used in the early days of the Republic. Furthermore, Jackson often acted, not out of principle or belief, but rather personal animosity. It is well known that Jackson was a world class grudge holder and he held few grudges stronger than the one he harbored against Clay for the Corrupt Bargain. Clay was appalled at Jackson's consolidation of power within the executive mansion.

The largest political battle fought during the eight year reign of Jackson was that over the charter of the Second Bank of the United States – or the National Bank. Clay had been against the charter of the First Bank of the United States, but now had come to believe that the nationally charted institution provided economic stability in an era of loose currency printed by unchartered state banks.

Unfortunately, the Heidlers to not cover this epic battle in any great detail. During this time, Andrew Jackson took his sights off Clay briefly and aimed them squarely at the bank’s president, Nicholas Biddle. Clay fought the good fight in leading the charter through the Senate. Jackson ultimately vetoed the charter through the practice of pocket veto – simply not signing the legislation whilst Congress is in recess. This was a huge defeat for Clay and the National Republicans who were beginning to call themselves Whigs. What the Heidlers do not discuss is just how badly Nicholas Biddle, cocky, arrogant, and determined to tweak Jackson’s nose at every opportunity, hurt the efforts of bank proponents. It is true that entire books have been written on this titanic legislative battle, but it deserved more coverage than the Heidlers gave it.

The Nullification Crisis, the contrivance of vice president John C. Calhoun made Clay and Jackson unlikely allies and permanently split the political friendship of Clay and Calhoun. To raise revenue, Jackson secured the passage of a series of tariffs. Tariffs benefited northern industrialists because it protected their industries from foreign competition, but hurt the south that relied on exports of the raw materials they produced. Called the “Tariff of Abominations” by southerners, the act set off a looming constitutional and sectional crisis that was a precursor for sectional tensions to come.

Calhoun postulated that, in a republic, each state had the right to nullify through its state legislature, any act by the federal government they did not feel was in their best interests. Jackson, now firmly entrenched as the chief executive, insisted that federal will always superceded state whim. South Carolina threatened to not enforce the tariff and to perhaps leave the union. Jackson countered that he would send federal troops to enforce the tariff.

While Clay’s principles put him in Jackson’s camp, he revealed his penchant for brokering deals, fostering compromise, and defusing crises in a way that allowed both parties to save face and allowed equilibrium to be maintained. Clay went to work in the Senate and secured passage of legislation that gradually lowered the tariff, allowing the country to meet its need for revenue while slowly relieving the burden on the South.

In their narrative of Clay’s life, the Heidler’s do an excellent job of recreating the chaos and disorganization that was the Jackson cabinet. The hot headed and impetuous Calhoun was ill suited for the vice presidency under the imperialistic Jackson. The silly Eaton affair and Jackson’s over reaction to it led Jackson to demand and receive the resignations of his entire cabinet. The cabinet reorganization led to Secretary of State, Martin Van Buren, being elevated to the vice presidency and it quickly became clear that he was Jackson’s heir apparent.

Clay was the clear choice of the new Whig Party in 1832. However, Jackson remained a folk hero in the hearts and minds of his countrymen and he crushed Clay in an election that was never really a contest.

Of all the presidents under which and with which Clay served, he had his best personal and least politically acrimonious relationship with Martin Van Buren who was elected in 1836 over a number of Whig candidates run by the party with the hopes of fracturing the electorate and causing the election to be sent to the house.

Van Buren is very much like Herbert Hoover in presidential history. The seeds of his destruction were planted in the economy in the prior administration. The decentralization of banking combined with the demands that territorial land purchases be paid in specie caused a run on banks and widespread deflation that developed into a national fiscal crisis that hurt at every level of the socio economic strata.

As usual, the government was deadlocked over what to do. The fracture came along sectional lines rather than party lines. The north wanted higher tariffs for revenue. The south opposed them. The west wanted a relaxation of credit to allow for territorial land purchases to increase the value of the deflated land values. The eastern financial establishment opposed them. Misery and suffering were hallmarks of the Van Buren years.

It would seem that 1840 would finally be Henry Clay’s year. As leader of the Whig Party, he felt certain that he would be the party’s nominee to run against the unpopular Van Buren. But Whigs were reluctant to back a man who had lost in the past. Instead, they looked for a general who might replicate the aura of national hero that Jackson had so aptly cast. They found their man in William Henry Harrison.

Clay did not think highly of Harrison. He did not respect his intellect and thought him lazy. He was probably right on both counts, but history will never know for he died just thirty days into his presidency.

However, between his election in November 1840 and his death in April 1841, it was clear that Harrison had little respect for Clay. As the party’s leader in Congress, Clay figured to have a prominent role in the appointment of the cabinet and dispensing patronage. Harrison ignored his recommendations, much to Clay’s embarrassment. When John Tyler ascended to the presidency, Clay fought a hard political battle to have Tyler – the first vice president to ascend to the presidency through Article 2, section 1 of the U.S. Constitution – to be called “President” rather than “Acting President.” Yet Tyler’s snubs of Clay were more onerous. This would set the stage for four more years of governmental gridlock.

The battle between Clay and Tyler resembles the modern day difficulties experienced between President Jimmy Carter and House Speaker Tip O’Neill. Tyler, like Carter was a proud and arrogant man, determined to chart his own course. Clay, like O’Neill, was a Washington fixture, used to influencing presidential appointments and policy. Like Carter and O’Neill, Tyler and Clay were of the same party. Like the years of Carter and O’Neill, little got done on behalf of the country.

The Tyler years were terribly demoralizing for Clay. Tyler biographer, Norma Lois Peterson lays the blame on Clay, claiming that he tried to co-opt the presidency and make Tyler his puppet. The Heidlers describe Tyler as a vain, imperious man whose goals were moving targets that Clay could never hit, despite his best efforts. Given that Whigs eventually expelled Tyler from their party, history seems to bear out the Heidlers.

Tyler was first against a new Bank of the United States. Then he was for one with limited powers. When presented with legislation that chartered a new national bank with limited powers, he vetoed it. He seemed to be in favor of nothing and against everything that came his way from Congress to deal with the ongoing economic crisis.

With Tyler out of the party if not out of the White House, the Whigs chose his chief adversary, Henry Clay to be their nominee for the presidency in 1844. The Democrats chose former House Speaker James K. Polk of Tennessee.

The election of 1844 shows how difficult it is to run for the presidency after having served as the leader of the Senate (in those days, President Pro Tempore, today Majority Leader). It was hard for Clay to be for or against anything because he had been in the middle of so many compromises. He stated that he abhorred slavery. Yet he owned slaves. He could claim no regional alliance in the north or the south because he came from the west. Polk could lay claim to southern loyalties, but New York, which was the prime mover in northern politics never completely trusted Clay and New York power brokers Thurlow Weed and William Seward were not eager to see Clay become more powerful. Their efforts in surreptitiously backing anti-slavery candidate James Birney cost Clay that important state.

Polk favored that annexation of the Texas territory into the United States. Clay, wary of souring relations with Mexico and upsetting the delicate balance between free and slave states opposed it. Polk balanced the equation by including bringing the Oregon territory into the United States, thereby creating a scenario where the U.S. would be at odds with two foreign powers at one time because the British were disputing claims to part of the Oregon territory. Clay, as was his nature, wanted to be cautious and deliberative. However, cautious and deliberative are seldom recipes for electoral success and Polk’s expansionist views won the day.

Clays fears of war with Mexico were realized when Mexico tried to defend its claim to the Texas territory. Clay vociferously opposed American entry into the Mexican American War. However, expansionist fever ran rampant in the country. Clay would pay with his dearest blood in that fight as his son, Henry, Jr. died at the Battle of Buena Vista.

When the Whigs again looked to a general to be their standard bearer in 1848, Clay was frustrated and tired and resolved to retire from politics. His chief political ally for most of his career, John Crittenden, a fellow Kentuckian, had betrayed him, working to secure the nomination for the hero of the Mexican American War, Zachary Taylor. Clay lost the nomination and retreated to his plantation.

His retirement was short lived, for Kentucky sent him back to the Senate. Just as it had been with Tyler, his entreaties for cabinet and patronage appointments were ignored by the new president, Zachary Taylor. Taylor was a dull man and given to listening to the opinions of those closest to him, right or wrong. John Crittenden, trying to establish himself as a national figure, did not need Clay’s influence peddled in the White House and blocked Clays entreaties.

Although the Texas territory had been secured from Mexico upon the end of the war, internal strife now bedeviled the nation as settlers in the area prepared to go to war with each other over the boundary between Texas and New Mexico. Taylor prepared to send U.S. troops to the area to maintain an uneasy peace. Hoping to spare bloodshed in the region, Clay went to work again to fashion a compromise that would allow Texas, New Mexico, California and Utah to enter the union without bloodshed.

Whilst this wrangling was afoot in Washington and Texans and New Mexicans squared off over territorial boundaries, Zachary Taylor met an unfortunate end with a bout of gastroenteritis. According to Taylor biographer K. Jack Bauer, Taylor was prepared to settle the dispute with an agreement of his own construction. However, new president Millard Fillmore was eager to let Congress decide the issue.

During Taylor’s final days, Clay had led an effort to create an omnibus bill that would allow the states to enter the union and decide the issue of slavery by popular sovereignty. Taylor, a slave holder and southerner, nonetheless did not want to see slavery spread to the pacific. After a great deal of brokering and dealing on Clay’s part, Taylor scuttled the deal. With Taylor out of the way, the door was open to maintaining the precarious peace between slave and free states.

Again, Clay is often given credit in history for being the author of the Compromise of 1850 that preserved the union for ten more years. He was not. Sen. Stephen Douglas of Illinois, a Democrat, was its principle author with Clay, now near death, providing oratory and political support. Fillmore, not the strongest of chief executives, grasped at the lifeline offered by Congress and signed the bill that brokered an agreement that allowed Texas to enter the union as a slave state. Texas gave up its claims on New Mexico in exchange for debt relief which it desperately needed. California entered the union as a free state, and New Mexico and Utah remained territories left to determine the issue of slavery by popular sovereignty.

It was Clay’s last and perhaps greatest act in a distinguished career of civil service that few have matched.

The Heidels did an absolutely wonderful job of weaving into their narrative a great deal about Clay’s personal life that makes this book something greater than a history text. Personally, Clay was torn between his love of his wife and family and his love of politics. He would leave home for long periods of time. Lucretia was no fan of the Washington social scene and did not return to the capital after Clay’s term as Secretary of State. The correspondence between them that survives demonstrates a strong, mutual love that endured for 53 years.

Lucretia, however, was not a political wife in the mold of Abigail Adams or Dolley Madison. She had no political views that she ever offered and seemed to offer her husband no advice. Nothing in her surviving writings indicates that she bore any ill will against anyone in politics, friend or foe to her husband.

In terms of children, Henry and Lucretia’s life was tragic. They had six daughters, all of which died before reaching middle age. Several died in early childhood. Henry’s personal favorite was Anne. Anne took ill soon after giving birth to a child. She rallied after her illness and just as she seemed to rally and Henry drew a breath of relief, she died. Clay was on the senate floor when he received the news and had to be carried from the chamber by friends.

Their sons were a mixed blessing. Theodore Clay suffered a head injury as a child and behaved erratically from that point on, suffering from periods of deranged violence that eventually landed him in an asylum where he spent the rest of his unfortunate life. Son Thomas was a restless soul who failed at many endeavors and his misfortunes piled debt on the Clay household. Late in life, he would find his way, much to the relief of Henry and Lucretia. The aforementioned Henry, Jr. met a hero’s death at Buena Vista.

Clay's devotion and dedication to the practice of politics drove him to inexplicably take one final trip to Washington, D.C. even though he had to be certain he was dying of tuberculosis. It would have been easy for him to have spent his final days in the comforting confines of Ashland, surrounded by his family. Instead, he headed for Washington, ostensibly to argue cases before the Supreme Court. Once he got to D.C. however, it was clear he was not long of this earth. He sent for his son, Thomas and urged him to hurry. Meanwhile, he spent what time he had left resolving old differences with old political enemies before meeting his maker. Only John Crittenden, once his closest ally, was not offered forgiveness.

Thomas arrived in time to be at his father’s bedside when he died of tuberculosis. He was feted on the floor of the Senate – the first man to receive such an honor. His funeral would become the model used for that of Abraham Lincoln. His coffin, oddly hued to the shape of a person and provided with a window that allowed viewers to see his face, was borne across the country via train so the nation could pay its respects. No man who did not hold the office of president was ever shown so much affection and adoration in death as was Henry Clay.

This book was selected as the book of the month by my book/scotch/cigar club. The theme was “Kentucky: in honor of the Kentucky derby. However, the subject was much more about the United States in its most trying times than it was about Kentucky or its famous horse race.

Many in our group said the came away from the book not really knowing what Henry Clay was all about politically or personally. He was not a man of letters and not a prodigious keeper of a journal like John Adams and John Quincy Adams. His daughter in law took it upon herself to become custodian of his personal papers before he died, but she was selective in what she kept. While not the enigma that James Monroe – who took great pains to destroy all of his personal papers – much of the man who was Henry Clay is lost to history.

Most historically significant senators are associated with great causes. Therefore, their personalities and political inclinations are evident. Clay had no great causes for which he fought. His cause was to find balance and compromise between competing factions. Even his political party – the Whigs – essentially stood for very little which is why they vanished. To be a Whig was to stand for very little except opposing Jacksonian Democracy.

Yet Henry Clay is feted as a great American as he should be. The Heidler’s title is apt, for Henry Clay, through his legislative prowess and ability to build coalitions, kept the union together just long enough for another essential American to guide us through our darkest hour. One can not study America’s formative years between 1815 and 1860 without studying Henry Clay. More than any chief executive with the possible exception of Andrew Jackson, Clay shaped and molded this country’s government as it evolved from an experiment in a republic divided by sectionalism into a nation forged into one by a bloody civil war.

Book to Movie: Audrey Rose (1977)

Book to Movie: Audrey Rose (1977)
Screenplay by Frank DeFelitta
Directed by Robert Wise

Soon after publishing his best selling novel, Frank DeFelitta retooled it for the big screen. What emerged was an average movie that was devoid of the strong characters that made the novel enjoyable.

The movie is a straight retelling of the book. There are just a few, very minor deviations from the book. There are major deletions, however; many of which were proper for telling a story in a visual medium. One might conclude, however, this story was not a good one for a movie.

As I noted in my review of the book, the novel’s strong point was the development of each character’s motive and how Ivy became a secondary consideration as parents, pseudo parents, and ambitious lawyers and judges all subjugated Ivy’s mental and physical health to their own agenda. Only Ivy’s mother seem to care first and foremost about Ivy, but her actions ultimately were to cleanse her conscience rather than aid her daughter.

DeFilitta did this in print with well crafted reflection and internal dialogue. This is hard to accomplish in the visual medium as is evidenced best by the foolish internal dialogue penned by Richard Matheson for his hero in his otherwise stellar script for the movie version of Duel. Internal dialogue, voiced by an actor or detached narrator – with the possible exception of The Ten Commandments – just reflects the inability of the screenwriter to accomplish through action what authors accomplish through words.

The movie could have been a psycho thriller a la Sybil or The Exorcist or it could have been a good legal thriller. It tried to be both and didn’t have enough substance to be either.

The movie was well cast and the cast did the best they could with the script with which they were provided. Long before he emerged as the sadistic Hannibal Lecter of Silence of the Lambs, Anthony Hopkins played the meek and mild Elliot Hoover to perfection. His soft voice, with just a hit of British propriety in his dialogue, made him the unlikely villain that Defilitta created in his prose.

Marsha Mason deftly walks a fine line between frantic drama and over acting in the scene’s final climax. Her performance was true to Defillita’s anguished mother character and emerged as the central character in the movie version.

Susan Swift also successfully traverses that dangerous territory between dramatic portrayal and over acting in bringing Ivy Templeton to the big screen. A bad performance by Ivy Templeton’s portrayer would have destroyed this movie now matter how strong the script or cast. Even though her character was a supporing role, the movie’s success or failure rested on how successfully this young, untrained actor performed in her first role.

Swift did not ham it up. Her screams were not so shrill as to hurt one’s teeth. Her violent thrashing was not so violent as to be comedic. Her portrayal of Ivy Templeton’s malady was flawless and again, perfectly replicated what DeFelitta authored in his novel. It’s too bad that other than a supporting role in the hit movie, Harper Valley PTA, Swift did not have a distinguished or long acting career.

The weak link in the cast was John Beck as Bill Templeton. Bill Templeton, in the novel was a slightly pretentious, professionally ambitious advertising executive who loved his family and tried to do what he could to protect them, even proposing the desperate gambit of his daughter’s life to protect the family. Only as he’s pushed does he actually resort to anger and a bout of violence.

Beck portrays Bill Templeton as a man always at the edge of violence. Bill Templeton was a frustrated man to be sure. But nothing in the novel indicated he was predisposed to anger. The fault, I think, lies not with any flaw in Beck’s acting but rather it being a case of Beck being miscast in the role.

Director Robert Wise is well known in Hollywood if not to the general public. His directing credits include the iconic The Day the Earth Stood Still, The Sound of Music, The Haunting (the superior 1965 version), and The Andromeda Strain. Other than not reigning in Beck’s excessively edgy performance, Wise did the best he could with the script he had.

As I noted in my review of the novel, DeFellita should have authored more books because his first effort was incredibly strong for a first foray into the world of writing novels. He did author a handful of books, one of which, The Entity, was made into a movie that I would describe as incredibly pedestrian horror. Other than, The Entity, I’ve not seen any of his other movie or television writing efforts and other than Audrey Rose, I’ve not read any of his other novels. But based on what I’ve read and seen, he was better suited for writing novels.

The Dark Tower Book 7: The Dark Tower

The Dark Tower Book 7: The Dark Tower
By Stephen King
Copyright 2004

There is no seam in the action between The Song of Susannah and the concluding volume of King’s magnum opus, the Dark Tower. The book picks up with Jake and Father Callahan preparing to enter the Dixie Pig to rescue Susannah.

Susannah, meanwhile, is now physically and mentally detached from Mia. She watches as Mia gives birth to an abomination – a spiderlike creature that promptly devours its mother. This creature, Mordred Deschain, carries his father’s surname and his father’s piercing blue eyes.

Susannah seizes and opportunity and is able to wrest a gun from one of her captors and mows down the medical staff and her guards in the proudest tradition of shooting by Gunslingers. She manages to land a shot on baby Mordred, leaving the arachnid with just seven legs as he flees the hospital compound – this compound that housed hundreds of twins from Calla Bryn Sturgis whilst the essence of life was sucked from their brains.

Jake, Oy, and Father Callahan enter the Dixie Pig and are set upon by Low Men and Low Women as well as Type I (low level) vampires. They go in guns ablaze and Oriza plates flying. They manage to defeat the Crimson King’s agents, but Father Callahan falls on his sword rather than being taken by the vampires. It is here that the member of the Dark Tower ka tet met first, way back in 1977, exits our story forever.

With Oy tracking her scent, Jake follows Susannah’s trail through the underground passages beneath New York and the Dixie Pig. The eventually meet and prepare to enter Fedic, the doomed town that Mia inhabited before she became human and the town was swept away by the Red Death.

Roland and Eddie are still in Maine and pay a visit to their old friend John Cullum who rescued them from the shootout at the convenience store. They had asked him to make himself scarce and head for Vermont, lest the Crimson King seek revenge upon him for aiding Roland and Eddie. But they know he has not done as instructed.

They go back to Collum and lay out their entire story, and an important business deal they need him to help construct as part of the Tet Corporation. After securing Collum’s allegiance, they find the door on Turtleback Lane where the “Walk Throughs” come in and transport themselves to the door from the one constant world of 1999 (where everything is real and everything is for keeps) to the door to Fedic. There, they encounter what is left of Richard Sayre’s men and gun them down without mercy.

Susannah, equipped with the password, is able to let Eddie, Jake, and Roland pass from New York 1999 to Fedic where the ka-tet is joyously reunited. They palaver and Roland learns that, while in New York 1999, Susannah was listening to the news and heard that a writer by the name of Stephen King was killed when he was hit by a car near his home in Bridgeport, Maine. This is an ill omen for Roland and his ka tet because Roland is certain that King has not yet finished his tale.

Meanwhile, Mordred is growing and maturing quickly. He is now in human form and has the size and maturity of a young boy. He is nursing his wound near the door to Fedic under Castle Discordia, near the ka-tet when he is visited by none other than Walter O’Dim, AKA Randall Flagg. Flagg is interested in striking a deal with Mordred to overthrow the Crimson King (Mordred’s red father), kill Roland (Mordred’s white father) and occupy the Dark Tower to rule the universe. Mordred responds by killing and eating Randall Flagg. Thus exits permanently from our story the second oldest character in the tale, first introduced in The Stand in 1978.

Roland and the ka tet decide to travel to Thunderclap which was the lair of the wolves that bedeviled Calla Bryn Sturgis. When they arrive, they find a semi-abandoned maintenance complex full of partially disassembled wolves and gray horses. Roland is troubled by excruciating pain in his right hip that slows him when he walks and affects his ability to shoot. He limps through the station at Thunderclap when they encounter two men who hide them before they can be discovered by the Low Men who patrol the area.

One of those two men is our old friend from Hearts In Atlantis, Ted Brautigan. The other is a guy by the name of Dinky Earnshaw. Both are breakers who are currently AWOL from an area known as Devar Toi, the campus upon which the Breakers live, eat, sleep, and do their work to break the remaining beams that support the Dark Tower.

Ted and Dinky see them safely to a cave properly stocked with weapons they have procured from various places over time. There, Roland meets a figure from his distant past. Sheemie, the sweet and dimwitted bar back who carried messages between Roland and his beloved Susan in Mejis. Sheemie, although slow on the uptake, has the mental capacity to be a breaker. He also has the ability to open doors between worlds – a power that will come in handy because Roland knows that once he’s saved the beams, he’ll have to go to 1999 and save the writer, King.

Mordred has also passed into the world of Fedic and Thunderclap and listens outside the cave as Roland and his group make their plans. He cares not for breakers or even the Dark Tower. He is fixated on Roland whom he has come to hate for wanting to kill him and his red father. Mordred begins hatching a plan of his own.

Ted sneaks Roland and his group into Devar Toi which closely resembles a liberal arts college. It has the charm of a small New England village – not unlike ‘Salem’s Lot. It has dormitories, libraries, restaurants, and movie theaters. It is also where the Breakers – most of whom enjoy what they do – do their work. Most of them enjoy what they do because, like all of us, they enjoy doing what they do best. Most know not or care not what the ramifications are of what they do.

Roland gets the lay of the land and develops his plan.

The plan is set and Ted and his friends put things into motion by creating the diversion (just like in the old westerns) that diverts the attention of the guards and allows Roland and the Gunslingers to get the drop on them. They systematically gun down all of those who are running the Breakers’ station and destroy the facility. As they stand among the bodies of the slain, one last shot is fired by the head of security, who lays in the street dying, but determined to take one final shot. The bullet takes Eddie in the head.

The wound is mortal. They carry him back to a dormitory and try to make him comfortable as he slowly succumbs to his wound. Susannah is emotionally stricken. Roland is burdened by guilt for he is certain, had his body not been wracked with pain, his shot would have been true and the man who shot Eddie Dean would have died when Roland’s bullet hit him.

Roland explains to Susannah that, with the beams now safe, he and Jake must move on to 1999 to save Stephen King. As Roland bids Eddie farewell, Eddie, who has donated a large portion of his brain to the cause, warns Roland to beware Dandelo. Nobody has any idea who or what Dandelo is. Eddie Dean, introduced in book two of the story, leaves our tale.

Roland tells Susannah to bury her dead, then head back to Fedic. When Jake and Roland have finished their business with the writer, they will meet her there and then head west to complete their quest.

Sheemie opens the door for them and Jake and Roland return to Maine circa 1999. They have less than an hour to find King and save his life. They arrive at the same convenience store where he and Eddie shot it out back in 1977. There, they secure the aid of Irene Tassenbaum, An exceptionally wealthy woman whose husband helped pioneer the Internet. She volunteers to drive Jake and Roland to the King residence on Turtleback Lane. Meanwhile the minivan – the instrument of King’s death – is getting underway from the campground where its driver is staying. They get to the King residence and find out Stephen King has already set out on his walk.

Here the novel reverts to some of the reality of what happened to King that June day in 1999 as he walked along County Road 5 near his home. A man by the name of Bryan Smith was driving with a cooler full of meet in his minivan, accompanied by two hungry dogs that kept trying to get into the cooler. Bryan Smith, who did not have an exceptionally good driving record, continually took his eyes from the road to keep the dogs from the meat. Two women, walking approximately half a mile from King, noticed his reckless driving. This is reality.

Roland and Jake, riding in Irene’s Mercedes, spy King and they stop. They are just about to warn him when the minivan crests the hill. In desperation to save the writer, Jake kneels in the road and prepares to open fire on the van. The van hits Jake, then careens into King, crushing his pelvis and peeling back his scalp.

Roland is instantly devastated and torn. To save his life and his quest, he must save the writer that has a minivan parked on his pelvis. Yet, Jake lies dying in the middle of the road. This is the boy who calls him father and to whom he has sworn an oath never to let die again.

It is immediately apparent by the concavity in Jake’s chest that his wounds are going to be his end. He asks Irene to stay with Jake and he goes to see to King. He entrances Bryan Smith and tells him to travel to the nearest place and summon help. He tries to tend to King’s wounds and notices that the pain that has so hampered him is now gone. He has passed it along to Stephen King.

He hypnotizes Stephen King who recognizes him. He tells King that he must live and that he must finish the tale. When he recovers, he is to finish the tale. King promises that he will.

Roland goes back to Jake to find the boy has died. He asks Irene if she will leave, then come back in a few hours after the emergency crews have seen to the writer, and pick him up. Irene leaves and King takes Jake into the woods to bury him. Irene returns and Roland asks for ride to New York where Roland must see to the doings of the Tet Corporation. Jake Chambers, introduced in the first book of the series and brought back in the third, has left our tale.

King arrives at the Tet Corporation offices to find Odetta’s Daddy Moses, now ancient and infirm, but with his mental faculties intact, firmly in charge, aided by Moses’s daugther. They know Roland as soon as he walks in and congratulate him on making it back to New York.

Roland learns that besides all of the investing in Microsoft and other directions provided by the preternaturally prescient Eddie, the Tet Corporation has dedicated a staff of researchers, writers, and readers dedicated to studying the works of Stephen King, searching for links between his works and clues. These researchers believe that the key to Roland’s tale lies in one of King’s works known as Insomnia. The chief antagonist in the novel, Ed Deepneau, is a distant cousin of Aaron Deepneau, Calvin Tower’s lawyer friend and the architect of the foundation of the Tet Corporation. In that book, Ed Deepneau is trying to kill, among others, a precociously talented artistic young boy named Patrick Danville.

They hand Roland a copy of Insomnia with its half red, half white dust jacket and urge him to read it to learn more of this Patrick Danville and how he might fit into Roland’s story. Finally, before Roland can take his leave of them, they present him with a gold pocket watch, engraved with a rose and a gun.

Roland returns to the lobby of the black tower that sits upon the once vacant lot that held the rose that entranced young Jake of 1977. He finds Irene Tassenbaum entranced by the rose that grows in the planter in the lobby. He asks two final favors of her. He asks her to take him to the Dixie Pig where he will travel the underground tunnels back to Castle Discordia and on to Fedic where he’ll meet Susannah, their ka tet reduced to just her, Roland, and Oy who once so talkative, has lapsed into silence upon Jake’s death. He also asks her to return to Jake’s grave and to plant a red rose there.

Roland arrives back at the Dixie Pig and Oy is able to lead him through the passages beneath New York to the door that passes into Castle Discordia. He enters Fedic to find that Ted and all of the Breakers have moved on to what other lives they can find.

Susannah and Roland head south to the Dark Tower. To get there, they must pass through frozen lands. They are followed by Mordred, who now has the strength and mental capacity of a teenager and the hate of an ancient devil.

They travel across that flat plains and eventually enter a strange and deserted town. A banner welcomes Roland and Susannah to the realm of the Crimson King. They encounter three guards there. They claim to be the ego, super ego, and id of the Crimson King. After questioning, taunting, and banter, between Roland and Susannah and the three, they go for weapons. Roland and Susannah are two quick for them and they gun down two. The illusion is shattered and all that remains is one old, feeble man. He once served as the Crimson King’s minister of state. He tells them that the Crimson King poisoned his people and fled for the Dark Tower where he now resides.

Susannah and Roland move on. Not long after their departure, Mordred shows up to eat the old man before continuing his pursuit of Roland, Susannah, and Oy.

The continue on and soon find a small, ruined town that sits at the intersection of Odd’s Lane and Tower Road. An old man name Joe Collins lives in a small house in the abandoned town whose roads are neatly plowed by an ancient robot tasked with the job eons before. Roland and Susannah stop to visit with Collins who, as it turns out, is also from New York. Once upon a time, he was a teacher, but turned to stand up comedy as a way of life.

Tired and depressed from the death all around them, they ask Collins to cheer them up with a bit of his humor. Collins starts his act which both find uproariously funny. Susannah, who has seldom heard Roland laugh, is struck by how deeply funny he finds the comedian. She herself has trouble catching her breath for laughing so hard. She finally decides she must go to the bathroom lest she pee her pants. When she gets in there, away from Collins and his comedy, she gets the feeling that Collins and his act are more than just A-material from a B-comedian gone todash.

When she gets to the bathroom, she finds a hand written note repeating the name of the street, Odd’s Lane and instructs her to think about it. Finally, she finds the note from Stephen King that tells her that Joe Collins is Dandelo. King also informs her that he has saved their lives and he considers his debt to Roland repaid.

Dandelo, who has maintained the illusion of a human living in a tidy little cottage is instead a vampire that feeds on emotions. Fear is tasty, but so is humor. Roland is laughing so hard, he can’t breath. Susannah sees Joe Collins – Dandelo – for what he really is: an evil clown, quite similar to the one that inhabits the sewers beneath Derry, Maine. Susannah, quick on the draw, puts a bullet in Dandelo’s head and saves Roland. He recovers and they explore the cottage, now not so quaint, undergoing the change from homey little abode to rickety old shack with the death of its master.

In the basement, they find a teenage boy locked in a cell. Roland instantly knows that this is Patrick Danville, also late of Derry, Maine. A boy who barely escaped a catastrophic plane crash into that city’s civic center – a plane aimed at him.

Patrick has no tongue for Dandelo took it out long ago. Through his pantomime, Roland and Susannah are able to discern that Joe Collins tortured the boy by making him laugh and inflicting pain, and sucking on the emotions that came forth.

After a respite in the Collins cottage to wait out a blizzard, they set out again on Tower Road, just miles now from the end of Roland’s life quest. They encounter the robot who cleans the roads. His name is Bill. A malfunction in his circuitry has led him to stutter, and before they moved on, the locals took to calling him Stuttering Bill – just like the leader of another ka tet who descended into the sewers of Derry and defeated It. Stuttering Bill clears Tower Road for them and they head off to meet their destiny with the forever silent Patrick Danville accompanying them.

As they travel, with Mordred in pursuit, Danville reveals his gift for quickly sketching items that predict the future and come true. One thing that Susannah figures out from Patrick is that she is not meant to see the Dark Tower and that Roland must enter alone.

Patrick draws for her a door, much like the one through which Roland brought her into his world and his tale. The door appears on the frozen plain, and after she bids adieu to the Gunslinger, she passes through and out of the tale. Susannah Dean, introduced in the second book of the series, has moved on from our narrative.

Of the original ka-tet, only Roland and Oy come within sight of the Dark Tower, spiraling into the sky on the horizon, surrounded by fields of roses. Patrick has drawn Roland a picture that shows the Dark Tower, with a white face with red eyes looking out one of the windows in the middle of the tower. The Crimson King has not yet reached the top. Roland, Patrick, and Oy push on.

Roland, finally exhausted, decides he must sleep and leaves Patrick to stand watch. Meanwhile, Mordred, now a young man, but afflicted with fever and his own exhaustion, decides to make his move. He advances on Roland, knowing that the meek and weak Patrick Danville is no threat. In his spider form, he’s just about to pounce when Oy, silent and morose since Jake’s death, makes his final stand. Oy screeches to awake the Gunslinger and attacks Mordred, deflecting him from Roland. With a few quick bullets, Roland disposes of his only biological son – a demon born of the seed of man and woman.

The fight with Mordred has left Oy impaled on a sharp tree branch. Roland goes to Oy and strokes his fur and stays with him until he dies. Oy of Mid World, who came to us in the third book, has passed from our tale.

Roland is now in the home stretch. He advances on the tower. He hears a familiar humming in the air and knows that a Sneetch – Harry Potter model – has been launched at him. He and Patrick take shelter behind a rock. From the mid-point of the Dark Tower, the Crimson King attacks. More sneetches are launched and Roland aptly shoots them from the air. But the draw of the Tower goes to work on Roland’s psyche. Soon, he will not be able to resist its call, or the siren song the Crimson King sings, and will move into the open where he will be easy prey.

Roland, who as we’ve noted, is not the most imaginative of creatures, comes up with an idea that he is sure will eliminate his adversary. He asks Patrick to draw the Crimson King in the Dark Tower, then erase the King, eliminating him from the picture and reality.

Patrick completes the drawing quickly but both he and Roland realize that it is incomplete. Some crucial element is missing. It is the crimson. Patrick and Roland concoct a crimson ink out of Patrick’s blood and rose petals. Just as Roland feels his resolve about to crumble, Patrick puts the red into the Crimson King’s eyes and begins to erase. Little by little, the Crimson King begins to disappear, screaming and howling into the end. Eventually, all that remains is the eyes which can not be erased from the paper.

Roland approaches the door to the Dark Tower and proclaims himself Roland Deschain, last of the line of Arthur Eld. He demands entry in the name of Eddie Dean, of Susannah Dean, of Jake Chambers, and of Oy. The door opens and Roland steps in.

The story then takes us to Central Park where Susannah finds herself with no idea of how she got there. It is 1986 and it is Christmas time. A children’s choir sings Christmas carols to a crowd. A man approaches her with a cup of hot chocolate and offers it to her. He says his name is Eddie and he knows somehow that he was to meet her here – he and his brother. Susannah, who has just the sketchiest notion of who Eddie is, immediately fears that Eddie’s brother’s name is Henry and is a junkie. No, Eddie tells her. His brother’s name is Jake. Jake is there with his dog, Oy. With what little memory Susannah has left fading, she asks Eddie if Ronald Reagan is President. He looks at her funny, then says no. Gary Hart is president and all is right with the world. They proclaim their love for each other even though they are not quite sure how they know each other and turn to watch the carolers.

King stops here to tell us this is where his tale ends. Where it should end. But he knows that some readers will demand to know what Roland finds in the Tower. Readers will want to know what was there that drove Roland through many worlds and drove him to shed so much blood to achieve. King warns us we won’t like it and cautions us to stop now. However, he feels duty bound to tell the final stanza of his version of Childe Roland to the Dark Tower Came. . .

Roland begins to ascend the Dark Tower. At each floor there is an artifact of his life. His umbilical cord is the first. Chapters of his life unfold in each of the chambers as he ascends levels. He relives his battle with his teacher, Cort, and his dalliance with the whore afterward. He relives his time in Mejis and the death of the only woman he loved. He relives the Battle of Jericho Hill (an account of which we, the readers, were never made privy) where his first ka tet met its end. He relives the various encounters of life told in Stephen King’s tale.

Finally, he reaches the top floor and he enters. The door closes behind him. With horror, Roland realizes his folly. He realizes what he has forgotten. When he gets there he finds. . .

The Man in Black fled across the desert and the Gunslinger followed. . .

First my thoughts on the book as it stands alone.

For the climax of such an incredible tale, the book was not one of King’s finest, standing alone. King fell into the trap that captures so many writers of fantasy: the long foot journey across some barren land. The trek across Empathitica was entirely too long and seemed to be there only to pad the narrative. The interlude at the Castle of the Crimson King seemed rather foolish and unnecessary. I would have liked it better had they found their clues through some exploration of the castle than what amounted to something resembling a Lewis Carroll encounter.

I was unhappy with which the ease Randall Flagg was dispatched. This supernatural being laid wastes to worlds, but was undone by an angry infant. I thought Flagg deserved a more important demise. Randall Flagg is a King fan favorite. His demise was entirely to anticlimactic.

King attached some importance to the character Dandelo. But it was just another encounter on the journey. The book really took on the feel of the literary version of the Wizard of Oz as the characters kept meeting people along the Yellow Brick Road.

Eddie, Jake, and Oy were given fitting ends and rebirths. They were heroes and died heroes deaths. As per the mythos of Roland’s world, each promised to await the other at the clearing at the end of the path when their lives ended. They did and were there to meet Susannah. With the Dark Tower still in existence and the beams that supported it intact, the infinite number of worlds that existed within it went on. The clearing for the ka tet was 1986 New York and each found the other at the clearing. It was touching, for I came to love these characters more than I’ve ever loved any character in anything I’ve ever read – including Tolkien’s Hobbits.

Many did not like the end. I loved it. The pressure on Stephen King to come up with the endings to end all endings must have been immense. Instead, he made it simple and took it back to the beginning. Back to the beginning of Roland’s tale, and if you believe in metaphors, back to the beginning of his writing career. King went full circle. The tale began at the beginning of his writing career, brought in elements from every stage of his writing career, and ended the story ended his career as a full time writer.

Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings still stands for me as the best told tale in the history of tales. But King’s Dark Tower ranks a close second. More knowledgeable people will correct me if I’m wrong, but never before has any writer undertaken such an expansive tale, weaving in bits and pieces of many stand alone tales into such an epic fantasy.

Reading King’s magnum opus in the manner in which I have just read it has been a special journey for me and undoubtedly the most profound reading experience of my life. Revisiting works such as ‘Salem’s Lot, The Stand, Eyes of the Dragon, etc. and reading them in a much, much larger context transformed those novels that I had read several times before and created a new reading experience in these tales I’ve enjoyed several times since I first read them more than 20 years ago. No other writer has ever done this for their entire body of work. When you consider how large King’s body of work is, the accomplishment becomes even more immense.

Reading just the seven novels of the Dark Tower is a daunting task by itself. Consider that the first book is by far the weakest and it is remarkable that the series ever got completed. King, who weaves simple tales and complex tales, was intimidated by what he started – nearly so intimidated that he did not finish. He put it off for many years. One must conclude that his near death experience gave him the nudge he needed to see Roland to his Tower and his friends to the clearing at the end of the path.

The most casual fans of reading know of the breadth of King’s work and how extensive body of work is. Unfortunately, few too many have delved into the Dark Tower and taken ALL of it in to appreciate what a genius this man really is. Yes, he has written some clunkers and has written at least one book that is so bad as to be nearly unreadable. If he published nothing else BUT the Dark Tower, he’d still be my favorite author.

Like Roland, I have journeyed through this odyssey to find the Tower. I’d put forth my journey was longer because I lived the lives of Father Callahan, of Randall Flagg, of Ted Brautigan, and Patrick Danville. I consumed more than 10,000 pages of text in getting there. Every single word on each of those pages is a treasure.

I am sure sometime in the coming years, I’ll revisit the Dark Tower series. But never again in the manner that includes the WHOLE story. That was a once in a lifetime experience and rather than try to repeat it, I’ll let it stand alone and let the writings in this blog be my journal of that wonderful experience.