The Dark Tower 4: Wizard and Glass by Stephen King

 

1016 + 10 = 1026 pages this time around. Unfortunately this version doesn't include Dave McKean's awesome illustrations. You can't always get what you want. But enough about....

DTD14 (10/20/26): At church for Jacqueline's choir practice, so 90 minutes of reading time--with organ and choir. Unless Joe calls, of course.

Read to page 78.

DTD15 (10/21/26): I've got to say...I thought the whole Riddle Battle bit was very lame. It reminded me of the old Star Trek bit where Kirk told the robot dude, "Everything Harry says is a lie," then Harry says, "I'm lying," and smoke shoots out of the robot's head. Dopey as hell. And there were hundreds of ways that the problem could have been solved without resort to riddles. Sigh.

On with the show.

And...intersection with The Stand. That's kind of exciting. What King is doing here is comparable to the way Asimiv combined his Foundation, Robits, and Gakactic Empire series. Which us cool.

Read to page 113.

DTD16 (10/22/26): Read to page 141. 

DTD17 (10/23/26): Read to page 152.  Lack of time, not love.

DTD18 (10/24/26): Read to page

170.

DTD19 (10/25/26): Read to page...oops...didn't read at all today. Fell into finishing In the Spirit of Crazy Horse. Sorry, Stephen.

DTD20 (10/26/26): Read to page 207. Have to confess that Susan's story...which started on page 171, and doesn't end until 506 (that's 335 pages, for fuck's sake... a digression worthy of Cervantes)...is not catching my interest at all. Of course I'll keep grinding, but...this ain't no party.

DTD21 (10/27/26): Read to page 213. Six measley grapes. And that only at the tail end of the day. 😳

DTD22 (10/28/26): Read to page 259. Getting better.

DTD23 (10/29/26): Read to page 290.

DTD24 (10/30/26): Read to page 330. Read most of that at a Halloween party for "the kids."

DTD25 (👻 🧙‍♀️ 🎃 10/31/26🎃🧙‍♀️ 👻): Read to page 407. The story has shifted its attention to young Roland which is much more interesting to me than the Susan stuff, hence the greater page count for today.

DTD26 (11/1/26): Read to page 430.

DTD27 (11/2/26): Read to page 451.

DTD28 (11/3/26): Read to page 496.

DTD29 (11/4/26): Read to page 598.

The "Susan" section was 338 pages long. And I have the feeling that after the 6 page "Interlude " chapter we'll be going back to it for another 416 pages. That's a whole lot of flashback. I'm wondering about the viability of that in terms of structure. Hell, I've already kind of forgotten about "present day" Roland.

DTD30 (11/5/26): Read to page 643.

DTD31 (11/6/26): Read to page 715. I'm definitely feeling that Susan should have been a separate book. I've pretty much forgotten the "current" story.

DTD32 (11/7/26): Read to page 748. 

DTD33 (11/8/26): Read to page 853. You know, Wizard and Glass doesn't seem like the best title for this book. There's been no wizard...and not much glass.

DTD34 (11/9/26): Read to page 914. So less than 100 pages to go. Maybe even finish able today.  Tik-tok.

BTW, I asked AI how many copies of The Dark Tower series have been sold and got this answer: "Stephen King's The Dark Tower series has sold over 30 million copies worldwide."

Wish I could ask how many of those books have actually been read.

Addendum 1: Oh...THAT Wizard.

Addendum 2: Got sucked in. Finished it. Over 150 pages today. 

320 + 515 + 708 + 1026 = 2569 pages so far. 

DDR: Seiobo There Below by László Krasznahorkai

Day 3 (DDRD 3,289) November 6, 2026

Read to page 90.  And no strain at all. In fact, I could read quite a few more pages, but I'm going to do a little side work first. Finished the restoration of the Buddha statue section, which I found very spiritually significant.

Day 4 (DDRD 3,299) November 7, 2026

Well fuck...I somehow managed to delete the first couple of entries here.

Sigh.

"...one single thing he had traveled here to see; the visitation of which was more important to him than his entire mediocre, senseless, barren, and superfluous life." (100)

And what is IT?

Read to page 126...which was the end of Chapter 5, which included a powerful story about a man visiting an art museum in Venice and seeing a picture of Christ. As he examines the picture he sees the eyelids of Christ flickering. The story then jumps ahead a decade or so and the man goes back to revisit the painting. He has a hard time finding it at first, and when he finally locates it and sits down to stare at it he sees the eyes fully open and look at him. 

Oh. I guess the picture of Christ was IT, then.

Day 5 (DDRD 3,300) November 8, 2026

Read to 156.

Day 6 (DDRD 3,301) November 9, 2026

Read to 183.

Had coffee with a friend the other day. He grew up Catholic, but is now a Catholicism hater. At one point while we talking he said that Catholicism has saints so that they can have multiple Gods while claiming one. There's a point there, of course. Veneration of saints could become worship of saints. But I don't agree with that perspective. I think saints are there for two reasons: first, to inspire us. They all started out as regular oeople. Some of them were shitty people. But they became better...and so can we. Second, it can be difficult to talk to / pray to an amorphous God. Being able to give prayers to the saints so that they can be passed on to God (presumably) is a way of making the face of God more accessible. What's wrong with that?

Of course. Mr. Krasznahorkai has a much better explanation than that. In a story centered around a man who is viewing icons, he says "they believed in God, because they saw the icons, because these icons demonstrated to them, and proved definitively to their impressionable souls, that what stood before them on the icon stand or what they could see hanging on the wall before them, the icon, was truly that place where they might glimpse into another world, a world above all else, so that their lives passed in one single prayer...." (176)

The Lutheran church I grew up in didn't give me any of that. My favorite Catholic churches do.

Day 7 (DDRD 3,302) November 10, 2026

Read to 

Here's a painting (icon) much discussed in this chapter. I think it's the one that scares the protagonist because he sees the angels coming after him.

"Trinity" by Andrey Rublev (1360-1430)

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DDR: Nobel Prize 2025 in Literature: László Krasznahorkai and the Power of Art in an Uncertain World by Gary C. Mansfield

 

How's that for an awkward book title? This is a pretty slight (120 pages) thing, and it looks kind of semi-professional, but hopefully a nice little canter.

Day 1 (DDRD 3,285) November 2, 2026

Read to page 30. A quick read...and a good one. In fact, it has me itching to re-read Krasznahorkai.

Early on, Mansfield mentioned that Imre Kertesz was the first Hungarian to win the Nobel Prize in Literature..."for writing that upholds the fragile experience of the individual against the barbaric arbitrariness of history."  The Louisville Free Public Library has several of his books, so I put in a request for one of them. So it continues.

"...Sátántangó becomes a story about faith and deception. It shows how easily people trapped in despair will believe any message of hope, even if it leads them to ruin." (29) Well. That kind of sums up the whole MAGA thing, doesn't it?

And if it doesn't, try this: "This novel [The Melancholy of Resistance] explores how crowds behave when they lose faith in order. Rumors spread, fear grows, and reason disappears. The people look for someone to lead them, but those who rise to power are guided by selfishness and cruelty. The story becomes a study of manipulation, showing how chaos can be used to gain control." (31) O, my prophetic soul! 

ADDENDUM: Here's a pretty intelligent summation of Krasznahorkai's work: "...Krasnahorkai's entire body of work is a long medication on how to stay awake in a world that keeps falling asleep." (40-41)

Also, "Each of his books becomes a meditation on how to live with awareness when chaos surrounds us." (58)

Again an explanation for Trump's rise to power: "When a man named Irimiás returns and claims he can rebuild everything, they cling to his promise. His lies destroy them, but for a moment, they feel alive again. The story shows how easily communities, when desperate, trade truth for illusion." (58-60)

And...read to page 60. Pretty interesting book, actually. I could probably finish today, and might well do that. Meanwhile, I'm thinking maybe Seiobo There Below...which I just happen to have from the library...should be my next DDR book.

Day 2 (DDRD 3,286) November 3, 2026

Read to page 120, The End. This book was actually pretty good. It gave some insights into Krasznahorkai's major works, and gave me a strong desire to get to some re-reading. I might even start on that tomorrow.

DDR: Custer Died For Your Sins: An Indian Manifesto by Vine Deloria, Jr.

 

I'm not sure how long I've had this book--not TOO long--but here's how old it is:

And another clear sign of age:

(Sewn binding. From a time when we gave a shit about quality.)

279 pages. 

Day 1 (DDRD 3,277) October 25, 2026

Read to page 17.

As for that scalping business?

Day 2 (DDRD 3,278) October 26, 2026

Read to page 50. The history of the Indian nations and the U.S. government is pretty straightforward: make a treaty, break a treaty. Rinse and repeat. It is so shameful.

Day 3 (DDRD 3,279) October 27, 2026

Read to page 80.

From page 76

The Truth hurts.

Day 4 (DDRD 3,280) October 28, 2026

Read to page 124. So a little bit extra today. In part due to the fact that I was sitting in the waiting room of my cardiologist's office for a bit, but also because this book is starting to pull me in. Deloria is a good writer...sarcastic and funny and personable. 

"Several years ago an anthropologist stated that over a period of some twenty years he had spent, from all sources, close to ten million dollars studying a tribe of less than a thousand people! Imagine what that amount of money would have meant to that group of people had it been invested in buildings and businesses. There would have been no problems to study!" (93)

And Mr. Deloria really uses the scalpel here:

"Farb's basic assumption is that somehow Indians have risen to civilized heights by being the victims of four centuries a systematic genocide. Under these assumptions the European Jews should be the most civilized people on earth from their graduate course in gas ovens given by Eichmann." (97) 

That's pretty fuckin' intense. Maybe even over the line...and if not, no more than a toenail's width away. Does make the point, though.

And now this:

Public Domain

"Giving, in the modern Christian sense, is simply a method of shearing the sheep, not of tending them." (131)

Addendum: Speaking of Mr. Deloria's writing, whilst perusing a list of his other books I found one which looked extremely interesting: C.G. Jung and the Sioux Traditions: Dreams, Visions, Nature and the Primitive. I've just started going out with a woman who is a big fan of Jung,  so this caused a special little twinge in my heart. The bad news is, however, that it seems to be completely unavailable. I tried all of my usual places and found nothing. I tried World Cat and they showed no listings for it anywhere. In the WORLD. Looks like I won't be reading this next.

Day 5 (DDRD 3,281) October 29, 2026

Read to page 161.

The way things work:

I've been thinking about that Sewn binding. Four white threads with a red one in the middle. It's not common to have different colors of thread in a sewn binding. In fact, I don't think I've ever seen it before. 

So we must be doing a metaphor, right? Which is kinda corny, kinda cool.

"Laughter encompasses the limits of the soul." (146) If I had it in me to write another novel, I think it'd be called The Limits of the Soul.  Mmm-hmmm.

Vine mentioned that Custer Died For Your Sins had been a bumper sticker. I went looking for it and found this instead:

Yep. 💅on🤕.

Couldn't find the Custer bumper sticker, though.

Day 6 (DDRD 3,282) October 30, 2026

Read to page 196. A mere 84 pages to go now. 

Thanks to the internet ninja skills of Brother D., C.G. Jung and the Sioux Traditions: Dreams, Visions, Nature and the Primitive is niw heading my way, and I didnt have to pay the $175 that AbeBooks wanted for it...nor the $225 that Biblio was asking. If it makes it here fast enough, it'll be my next DDR.

Here's a troubling paragraph: "The white man adopted two basic approaches in handling blacks and Indians. He systematically excluded blacks from all programs, policies, social events, and economic schemes. He could not allow blacks to rise from their position because it would mean that the evolutionary scheme had superseded the Christian scheme and that man had perhaps truly descended from the ape." (172) Umm...what? Is Vine equating black people with apes? It's not clear to me, but I find this more than a little disturbing.

Another interpretation, please?

Day 7 (DDRD 3,283) 🎃👻October 31, 2026👻🎃

Read to page 230. 

There has been no mention of Leonard Peltier —  at least so far — but I thought this paragraph explained why he had been relentlessly pursued and railroaded into prison:

"After the war chiefs had been killed or rendered harmless, Indians seemed to drift into a timeless mist. There appeared to be no leaders with which the general public could identify. The status of the Indian became a nebulous question which seemed familiar and important but for which there was apparently no answer." (199)

Leonard could have been that modern-day leader. So he had to be taken off the table.

Waitaminute...Will Rogers was Cherokee??? The things they don't teach you.

Day 8 (DDRD 3,284) November 1, 2026

Read to page 260. Probably going to finish this off today, but first I've got a movie with my #1🌞 (Wildwood), a football game on tv with little sister (Bills vs. Ravens), and a strong hankering for some Delta 9 gummy.

Hmmm...

I read a few issues if this when it came out (in 2007--almost twenty years ago!), and I've thought about it now and then since. Might could happen, as hoopla has the entire run.

P.S. I forgot about the whole falling back for daylight savings time. Read to page 279, The End. 

Off to the movies!