0:01

Good morning, afternoon, or evening,

0:04

and welcome to the bloody

0:06

disgusting network. The

0:09

passage of time will now bring you to

0:11

something strange, unique, and

0:14

idiosyncratic. Have

0:17

a good time. My

0:21

friendship to all of you precludes my

0:23

involvement with any one of you, but

0:26

if you wanna make a life that

0:28

I do too, I'll be right there

0:30

behind you. All in

0:33

the name of hope. All

0:36

in the name of hope. All

0:38

in the name of hope. Greetings

0:46

constant listeners and welcome yet

0:49

again to The Losers Club,

0:51

a Stephen King podcast. My

0:53

name is Reverend Randall. He

0:55

is rockin' Copeland, and

0:58

I can feel the devil under

1:00

my feet. Amen and hallelujah. Today

1:03

we are gathered

1:05

here to give praise and

1:07

perhaps a rebuke or two

1:09

to revival, which struck

1:11

like lightning from heaven on

1:13

November 11th, 2014. It

1:17

is King's 58th novel. So

1:21

that means this is what, the 58th episode of

1:23

the podcast? Definitely. Mm. Excellently.

1:26

Well, we have probably even more book episodes, because we've

1:29

gone in the future too, when you think about that, which

1:31

is pretty wild. It's true. Like

1:33

the novella collections or short story collections? I

1:35

don't know. That was my Jared Leto impression.

1:38

What if we only did 58 episodes in

1:41

seven years? Hey, niche. Just

1:43

the most like fuckin'... What are we,

1:45

cereal? Just, yeah. God.

1:48

Okay, before we begin, I have a bit

1:50

of confession to make. It

1:53

seems relevant with this book. So

1:57

in probably 2015 or so, I listened to

1:59

this novel. via David Morse's

2:01

audiobook, Narration, home of

2:03

the iconic Sweater Nubbins,

2:06

which I'm sure we'll be discussing later.

2:08

Lo, these many years, I've told all

2:10

of you that I finished it. I

2:13

may have even bullshitted about it on this

2:15

very podcast. Well, it's

2:17

time to fess up. The truth is, I

2:20

listened to about 60% of

2:23

it, and then my Audible trial

2:25

ended. I never finished it

2:27

until now. I

2:30

apologize for my deception, but

2:32

it just seemed easier. I've made

2:34

amends with the worm, and I

2:36

hope you can all forgive me. On

2:39

that note, let's meet our panel. My

2:42

brother in Christ, Justin, say hello and

2:45

tell me, do you forgive me? This

2:48

is Justin White Lies Kerber,

2:51

and this is

2:54

the most bizarre thing

2:56

I've ever... This is like a weird Kerber... I

2:58

know it gets used... This is like a Kerber

3:01

enthusiasm situation. I don't

3:04

understand why you say, oh yeah, I

3:06

never finished it. But I'm

3:08

looking forward to getting to it on the podcast

3:10

eventually. That's all you have to say. Who cares?

3:12

That felt like too many words. But

3:17

we've talked about it too much, so you've

3:19

used more words than that over the last,

3:22

what, 10 years that we know each other? Look,

3:24

I would have kept up the lie longer.

3:27

I would have just kept it going if

3:29

the ending of this didn't hit me like

3:31

a hammer in the head. Because I lied

3:33

and was like, oh yeah, the ending's fucked

3:35

up. But I didn't know

3:37

how fucked up it was. I

3:40

don't lie about this kind of shit. I swear to God.

3:43

This is why it's such a bizarre decision that you made.

3:46

I am an open book. Like

3:48

a Stephen King book. You guys know this about me. If

3:52

you tell me anything from now on, I'm going to be like,

3:54

wait, you, 60% right? A

3:56

revival situation. 60% done. Justin,

4:00

tell me, when did you first read this book? I

4:02

promise you this is the truth. I read this book

4:04

in its entirety in

4:06

November of 2014. So it's

4:09

been about, yeah, it's been about 10 years. And

4:13

I thought, not to spoil too

4:15

much about my feelings, but I think

4:17

the reread of this went

4:20

very well. There's a lot that's

4:23

foreshadowed in interesting and disturbing

4:25

ways that obviously didn't pick up

4:27

on when you're reading it for the first time 10 years

4:29

ago. Yeah, that's,

4:31

everything's that much more, I

4:33

was having my own prismatics reading

4:36

this book again. So, yes, I

4:38

read it when it came out for sure. I

4:41

hear another voice in the congregation shouting

4:43

from the pews, her name

4:46

is Mad Mel, say hello and tell

4:49

me, do you forgive me? Hi,

4:52

this is Tagalong Mel. I

4:57

wasn't even aware of the lie. So like

4:59

Justin, I'm a little confused that, it's

5:01

like I've learned two things at once and they cancel

5:04

each other out and I feel perfectly neutral

5:06

towards you, Rock and Randall. But

5:10

I like using the

5:12

podcast as a venue for some kind of

5:14

spiritual confession. Let's keep that energy going. I

5:19

feel like this is a Morgan Spurlock situation

5:22

where in coming out ahead of, RIP by

5:24

the way, in coming

5:26

out ahead of me

5:28

too allegations and just like posting about it

5:30

on his blog, he ended up just sort

5:32

of canceling himself and like he

5:34

didn't really need to confess to these things. And

5:37

so I feel like I've done the same today.

5:39

I guess I have a confession to make, Randall, you know

5:41

this already. I texted Randall being

5:43

like, am I gonna have to fight with

5:46

Justin on this podcast? Because I misinterpreted

5:49

the meme that

5:51

you posted on the socials that's like

5:53

Justin starting revival and Justin ending revival.

5:56

I thought that the face that Justin

5:58

is making at the end. and

6:00

was like a face of disgust and distaste.

6:02

Oh no. And I was looking forward to

6:04

like a tear. I was like, I'm gonna

6:06

be so let down by this ending. And

6:09

then, you know, not to give too much away about how

6:11

it seems like we all feel about the ending, but that

6:13

wasn't how I felt. And I was prepared to come in

6:16

swinging, being like, Justin, what the fuck is

6:18

your problem? That was me

6:21

looking for answers that maybe aren't there.

6:23

That was the look at my face of just

6:25

being. Just sheer horror. Dulled. Which

6:28

is a long way of also saying this is the first time I've read

6:30

this book for this very episode. I

6:33

got it from the library. I

6:35

got a big honking hardback. And

6:38

I had so much fun

6:40

with it. I had such a good time

6:42

with it. I was told ahead of time

6:44

that it was, you know, a standout of

6:46

his aughts career, but I was hesitant.

6:49

I was skeptical and I'm a believer. I

6:52

love to hear it. We have a convert and

6:54

we have another convert. Well, I have a question. Mel, are you telling

6:56

the truth? Did you finish? She

6:59

read 60% Half of the time I saw the truth

7:01

and half of the time I lie. Or at least 40%. Okay.

7:06

We have another conversion here in

7:08

this house of God. His name

7:10

is Mike. Say hello, Mike. Hello,

7:13

this is Michael Monroe of Illinois, Rothman.

7:16

You know, this isn't really so much of a

7:18

curb enthusiasm situation as it's like, you

7:20

kind of reverted back to like going to

7:22

summer camp and you just make dumb lies.

7:24

Like, I would just

7:26

lie about the dumbest things. Like, oh

7:29

yeah, I know how to surf because I

7:31

knew that we weren't close to the ocean. So I'd feel

7:33

like, all right, I can surf. But that makes you sound

7:35

cool. Yeah, I disagree. That's a really

7:37

good lie. But like, but then it would

7:39

kick, you know, go into other things like, yeah,

7:41

I can like cook this or, you know, or

7:43

like I've watched this type of show or these

7:45

little small things like, oh, I've seen this show

7:47

but I haven't seen the third season. Or like,

7:49

I remember like real world would come up and

7:51

be like, oh, I, you know, I've seen most

7:53

of it but I haven't seen like

7:56

Seattle or something like that, which is ridiculous

7:59

because I had seen. Seattle and I hadn't seen

8:01

a lot of the other ones, but it would just

8:03

be like weird backstories that I would create. So that's

8:05

what this reminds me of. It reminds me of like

8:07

when you're kind of just trying to

8:09

create a new identity for

8:12

yourself. So in this one, I guess

8:15

reading revival was really imperative.

8:19

It was for your survival here.

8:21

I caught a guy on my tennis team lying about

8:23

him having seen face off once upon a time. He

8:25

would lie. He lied about it for months and then

8:28

he like told someone else when I was around, he

8:30

hadn't seen it. And I said, he told me you

8:32

saw it like four times. And then he goes, no,

8:34

I didn't. Yeah. So like that, that's

8:36

what is that gain? I said, so the surfing thing,

8:38

I agree. It does actually gain some things there, but

8:40

like, yeah, anyway, I

8:43

think it's because you're a night, you're a

8:45

validator. You like like to see people happy. And

8:47

so you're, you're just like someone who nods

8:50

and is like, Oh, I like that thing.

8:52

And, and then you're like, wait a second.

8:55

By then you can't backtrack and it's sort

8:57

of a beautiful personality trait. But

8:59

one that I guess you're, you're trying to reign

9:02

in. We've come full circle here. I have a

9:04

more cynical theory. I have the theory that this

9:06

is a, this is a book steeped

9:09

in faith and religion. And

9:11

if there's anyone that's more coded to

9:14

talk about these themes, it's Rockin' Randall.

9:16

And for him not to have read

9:18

this book means that, wait a

9:20

second, this is, you know, this is kind of like

9:22

the ending of this book. When you, you, you peel

9:24

back and you reveal nothing's there. No, I'm just joking.

9:26

But I, the thing is the truth is not what

9:29

you expected. The truth is out there though. And now

9:31

it's, it's here. But so I

9:33

have been anticipating this book since literally weeks

9:36

before this podcast started because Justin

9:39

had lent me the book and said,

9:41

you have to read this. This is a great Stephen

9:43

King book. And then three

9:46

weeks later, we decided to go back to the beginning

9:48

to carry. I've told this story a million times on

9:51

this podcast. So I was anticipating this. Yeah, full circle

9:53

for me. I'm really anticipating

9:55

this one. Let's just

9:57

say I'm, I'm a, I'm a little normal.

10:00

I know we're Efron circa 1994, a little

10:02

mixed nuts on this one.

10:04

So I'm very interested to talk about it. But

10:08

yeah. Co-starring Adam of

10:10

Sammar. I

10:12

like the image of Justin coming up to you

10:14

like stiff armed like this is a good Stephen

10:16

King book. I'm sure he

10:19

said something like this is one of his best. There's no

10:21

way he said it like a fucking Sims character. There's no

10:23

way I said it's one of his best. I

10:26

did say it's really good. You should check it

10:28

out. I definitely... We really started this

10:30

off on a note of mistrust,

10:32

but hopefully we can win everyone back.

10:35

I think that's relevant to some degree to this

10:37

book. So

10:40

on that note, let's talk about the history of

10:42

this book in a little section we call the

10:44

Dairy Public Library. Mike Allen, if you see... Excuse

10:46

me, sir. Do you have Prince Albert in a can? You do? Well,

10:49

you better let the poor guy out. Mike Allen, you gotta have

10:51

your gold. You gotta have your gold. You gotta have your gold.

10:53

You gotta have your gold. You gotta have your gold. You gotta

10:55

have your gold. You gotta have your gold. Mike

10:58

Allen, should I have your gold? Should I have

11:00

your gold? Should I have your gold? Should I

11:02

have your gold? Should I have your gold? Tell

11:05

him. Tell him. Tell him I'll see him tonight.

11:07

Get out. Let's do this, Tusha. Get out. Get

11:09

out. Excuse me, sir. Excuse me,

11:11

sir. So

11:14

here in the Dairy Public Library, we talk

11:16

about the history. We talk about the history.

11:19

So Revival was published by Scribner on

11:22

November 11th, 2014. And

11:25

that's around that same time I want to give some context

11:27

of the era. Joyland and

11:29

Dr. Sleep were released in 2013,

11:31

followed by Mr. Mercedes in early

11:34

2014. So this

11:36

was an extremely fruitful time in King's

11:38

career. And this is an interesting book,

11:40

I think, to come amid right

11:44

in the smack dab middle of the Mr.

11:46

Mercedes trilogy, because the next two books are

11:48

Finders Keepers and End of Watch. Obviously

11:51

there's some Joyland connective tissue. But

11:55

otherwise, this is an

11:57

interesting book to emerge from this

11:59

period. Like if I had

12:01

to guess when this book came out, like

12:03

after I first read it, I don't

12:05

think I would have guessed 2014. So

12:09

I will say this was a

12:11

big dry area in terms of

12:13

Stephen King film adaptations. In

12:16

terms of film in 2014, we got

12:18

Big Driver and A Good Marriage, both

12:21

adaptations of Full Dark, No Stars,

12:23

Good Marriage, very maligned. Justin, you've seen

12:26

it. I have not seen Good Marriage, but

12:28

I have seen the next movie you're going to mention, and it

12:30

is awful. Mercy?

12:32

Have mercy. Yelling Mercy during that

12:34

movie? Yes, many times. Or

12:38

was I? Maybe only 60% of the time. That's

12:42

an adaptation of Grandma? Yeah. Okay,

12:45

I've not seen it. We

12:47

should probably do an episode about it. Maybe three hours,

12:50

that'd be great. Yeah, we could do three hours on

12:52

that. Then that Shitty Carry remake came out the year

12:54

before in 2013. So yeah, not

12:56

the best era of King adaptations. I

12:58

would say that probably in

13:01

terms of adaptations, 11-22-63,

13:04

the TV series came out in 2015? 2016. 2016.

13:10

So then I feel like that was

13:13

what kicked off in some ways, the Stephen King

13:15

Renaissance, because that was a

13:17

pretty well-regarded and well-done miniseries. So yeah,

13:19

this was not a fertile era. There

13:21

was a lot of dollar babies being

13:23

made around this time. And then in

13:25

terms of current events, Republicans

13:28

took control of the Senate in midterm

13:30

elections. One World Trade Center

13:34

opens, Shades of 9-11.

13:37

And then I'm curious

13:39

what you guys think were the movies that were topping

13:41

the box office in November of 2014. And I will

13:44

say two people on this episode have a special

13:52

relationship with at least one of them. So

13:55

any guesses? Am

14:00

I one of the people? Tell us who the people are. Yeah.

14:03

It's Justin and Mike. Mel, you probably

14:06

didn't watch movies back then. Wow. Just

14:08

remember that. What? Back then. It

14:11

was 10 years ago, no. They were probably reading books

14:13

or something. What? They've got the talkies over there? So

14:15

they spin the first. I

14:17

will say, it is a movie that Justin and

14:19

Mike saw together. Oh, 20. And

14:22

you didn't have a great time, Matt. Oh, no. I know what this

14:24

is. What is this? Fucking

14:26

Dumb and Dumber 2? No. That's it. That's it.

14:29

Was that 2014? Dumb and Dumber 2. That was... I

14:31

could have sworn that was like 20. I thought that was later.

14:34

That was a rough night. Rough,

14:37

rough night. You wouldn't let me leave. Mike

14:39

was trying to pull a rando listening to

14:41

the audio version of Revival. 60% of theory

14:44

you wanted to go. Great call. Yeah. I

14:47

remember saying, Mike tried to leave and I said,

14:50

you can't go. You're writing the review.

14:52

I said I knew I have enough. I

14:54

said I have enough. That's right. We're about an hour

14:56

and 20 minutes into the movie. There's no way it

14:58

gets better from there. I would never have

15:01

guessed that Mike would be the one to want to

15:03

walk out and Justin would be the one to say, no,

15:05

you must stay. We certainly must stay. And I've got this

15:07

great new Stephen King book. I have this good

15:09

Stephen King book. You must read it. You

15:11

must read it. Simply must read it. You must read it. Yeah.

15:15

It was the fourth highest grossing movie of

15:17

November 2014. And

15:19

I will say it co-stars an actress

15:21

who was in the number one movie of this

15:24

month, which is the third in a trilogy. I've

15:26

given you a lot of clues. Oh,

15:29

Randy's Mad Lib. Jennifer Lawrence. Jennifer

15:31

Lawrence. What is the movie? Hunger

15:34

Games. You could just say

15:36

part three. Yeah. It's Mockingjay. That was the number one movie

15:38

at the time. I never saw it. I did see the

15:40

first two. And then

15:42

you're probably not gonna. Yeah,

15:45

seriously. Well, I guess that makes sense if

15:47

I've only seen the first two, but that

15:49

because then the third one was two parts.

15:52

So I've seen 50% of them. I haven't seen

15:54

the other. I haven't seen part two of Mockingjay, although

15:56

I think I did because I thought that maybe Sammy

15:58

put it on and then she fell asleep. then I just

16:00

watched the rest of it, but can't confirm or

16:02

deny that. I just- Wait, so

16:04

this means that between Mike and you, that's about 62.5% of

16:06

the film for once. Yeah, I think

16:08

that's accurate. Is that the one with Philip Seymour Hoffman and

16:10

it's still in there? I think it's his last role, isn't

16:13

it? Okay, yeah. That's tough. That's

16:15

the summary of life. I will

16:17

say the one that nobody here would probably guess is

16:19

the is Big Hero 6. Hey,

16:22

I like that one. I saw that. It's a good one. I

16:24

never saw it. I'm gonna let you guess the third

16:26

one. Let's just say it's by a famous director who

16:29

had a huge movie come out last summer. And

16:32

this is a pretty, I'd say a divisive

16:34

movie, at least amongst this

16:36

contingent. What do you guys

16:38

think? Last summer, what were the big

16:40

movies? Oh, was it

16:43

a, oh,

16:45

Interstellar from Skruger and Yeah,

16:56

Justin. Every time

16:58

I have a crop of interns

17:00

at work or I'm tutoring, Interstellar

17:02

is their favorite movie. I

17:05

need to rewatch it. I only saw it once. I saw it once

17:07

and it was just, I feel

17:09

like I get into this somehow in every

17:11

episode of this fucking show, Interstellar. I think

17:13

it's my brother's favorite knowledge film. But

17:15

then again, he also loves Tenet. And that's

17:17

like our, we get arguments about that one. Yeah,

17:20

Tenet also is worst movie in my opinion, but that's a whole

17:22

other story. Do you know what was the highest grossing movie that

17:24

year? What? Dumb

17:27

and Dumber 2? No, it's my current obsession. Chris

17:30

Bratt. Clint Eastwood? Uh-huh.

17:33

Which, that was number one

17:35

movie 2014. Grand Torino? American Sniper. And

17:38

Grand Torino. American Sniper with

17:40

the baby. With the baby. The

17:42

baby. I've not seen that

17:45

movie. I love it. I love that he got

17:47

number one over like filth, like

17:49

Hunger Games, Mockingjay part one and

17:52

Captain America, the Winter Soldier and. Oh,

17:54

Winter Soldier, Spare the American Sniper. I

17:58

never saw that movie. I don't like American Sniper. Hard to, hard to. to

18:00

compare across genre like that. It's,

18:03

yeah, the Lego movie. There's better baby work in

18:05

Witcher Soldier. Look at these top 10.

18:08

Justin Demands top tier baby work. How

18:11

many movies, do you think Transformers Age of Extinction,

18:13

like, yes or no, that

18:15

Caffrey, what's the over under actually on him actually have

18:17

seen that opening weekend? I think that he might have

18:19

seen this with with Randall Colburn in theaters. Is this

18:22

the one you saw with him? Caffrey doesn't lie. We

18:25

saw the one with Merlin the Wizard. My

18:28

fellow, I'm looking at you. I'm looking to watch

18:30

one of these past the first one. So this

18:32

could have been any of the eight that have

18:34

come out since. It was the one with Anthony

18:37

Hopkins. It's not. This isn't the Merlin one. This

18:39

isn't the Merlin one. This is what you need

18:41

to know in terms of history regarding Stephen King's

18:43

revival. Okay. It's was

18:45

the Merlin in Age of, what's

18:48

it called? Age of Renaissance. Is that

18:50

Mike wanted to walk out of Tommen Tommen

18:52

too? Transformers Merlin's

18:55

Adventure. I would like

18:57

to see that film. The Market Ones. That's

18:59

what it was. No, that's the Paramount. That's

19:01

the Paramount activity. The Market Ones. Yeah. When

19:04

did when did Edge of Tomorrow come out? That movie's always on

19:06

my mind. Oh, that's 2014 also. That's

19:09

a good movie. Yeah. That's good. Tom Cruise.

19:11

Let's see. I'm the Transformers to Age of

19:14

Innocence. I think now we're kind of crossing

19:16

over the Marty Scorsese. Scorsese. Transformers Atonement. Okay.

19:20

So Revival first landed on People's

19:22

Radars in June of 2013 when

19:25

King teased it during a video chat with fans

19:27

while promoting the Under the Dome TV series. We

19:30

have an episode on that. Scroll back a bit.

19:33

It was officially announced in February of 2014

19:36

and an excerpt was published at the end of the

19:38

paperback edition of Dr. Sleep, which was published in June

19:40

of 2014. So,

19:44

Like Under the Dome and 11-22-63, this

19:46

book comes from an idea King had

19:48

as a child when he found himself

19:50

terrified by stories like Arthur Machen or

19:52

Machen Machen. I'm not sure. Don't yell

19:55

at me. The Great God Pan, which

19:58

also influenced which famous? Night

20:00

Shift Story. Oh, great

20:03

god, sometimes they come back. No,

20:05

Green Pukes. Oh, yes.

20:07

The, um, the Lomar Man. Lomar

20:10

Man. Yeah. And

20:12

Mary Shelley's Frankenstein. Do

20:14

you know what, what movie that inspired? Mary

20:17

Shelley's Frankenstein. Yeah, that's correct. Mm

20:19

hmm. Okay. Uh, so it

20:21

debuted at number one on the New York Times

20:23

bestseller list, obviously, but sold poorly in

20:25

comparison to books like 11, 22, 63 and Dr. Sleep. It

20:29

was out of the top 10 after only nine weeks

20:31

and out of the top 20 after only 11. For

20:35

King, that's not great. So uh. I have

20:37

a theory about why that is. Do you want to talk about it

20:39

now or do you want to save it? I'll just, it'll be easy

20:41

to say. Look at the books

20:43

that are coming around around this time. He's coming off

20:45

of Dr. Sleep. Mm hmm. Which wasn't really that well

20:48

received. Mr. Mercedes was also not that

20:50

well received. But they sold well.

20:52

They sold well. Yeah, but I think that

20:54

people were probably like, you know, this is what always

20:56

happens. If something doesn't do good, the next thing isn't

20:58

going to do as good. I have a different theory

21:00

and my theory is that it's quite meandering. It's bordering

21:02

on literary fiction for King. Mm

21:04

hmm. Yeah, we'll talk about that. I think

21:07

that's. I see what you're saying. Yeah. Yeah.

21:10

I mean, it's definitely we're buying like Jonathan Fransens

21:12

Freedom Land or some shit like that in 2014.

21:14

You know, it's still Obama. So like everyone's, you

21:16

know, It

21:19

wasn't like a Hillary Swank movie. No,

21:21

they were writing that that Obama hugs

21:23

people book. Yeah. I'm

21:26

gonna get canceled. Justin's favorite book.

21:28

I know it's called hugs for Obama. Is

21:31

that a real book? That's a real book. Not

21:33

even hugs from Obama. No, it's hugs for Obama.

21:35

He needs the hugs. He needs the hugs. I

21:37

don't know. It was a very tough time. So

21:40

what he tried to do in

21:42

his second year of office is hug everyone on

21:44

both sides of the party. Anyway, Okay.

21:49

Okay. February 2nd, 2016, it was

21:51

announced that an adaptation of revival was

21:54

written by. This is a

21:56

blast from the past. Oh, my lord.

21:58

Josh Boone. That is a.

22:00

man we used to talk about on this podcast all the

22:02

time. We do not talk about

22:04

him anymore. He

22:07

was for a while going to be the

22:09

guy who brought King

22:11

back to the cinema. He had

22:14

success with

22:17

the Fault in Earth Stars adaptation. Then

22:19

all he talked about was adapting King.

22:21

He wanted to do the stand, he

22:23

wanted to do revival, and

22:25

there was one other that I'm blanking on.

22:27

But anyways, those were very buzzy

22:30

sort of announcements. So yeah, he

22:32

claimed that

22:35

he had written an adaptation of revival and he

22:38

was working on adapting the stand around this time.

22:40

The script was being looked at by Universal Pictures

22:42

and would be shopped around if the producers refused

22:44

it. In December of 2016, Boone

22:46

announced that Russell Crowe was attached to star

22:49

in the film, which I think is cool

22:52

casting. Exorcist. And then

22:54

Pope's Exorcist. Oh

22:57

yeah, and then he has another one called like

22:59

Exorcist. Okay. Why would you put your

23:01

movie back? Oh, it's Exorcism, yeah. Mel,

23:04

you were a big Pope, Pope Ecker Exorcism fan.

23:06

Love it. So we can't wait for the next

23:08

one. It's true. It was just

23:11

someone who never liked Russell Crowe until that movie.

23:13

My mom's obsessed How could

23:15

you not like Russell Crowe? Come on. It's fine.

23:17

Until the Pope's Exorcist. I

23:21

have seen the insider, Randall. You know who I'm looking at throughout the

23:23

iteration of that film? Oh yeah. Christopher

23:25

Plummer? Who? I can't get you to

23:27

interview. It's

23:30

cigarettes. You can't beat big. You

23:32

can't beat big cigarettes, big tobacco.

23:36

There's a bullet in this man's mailbox.

23:41

You're selling lies here. He's

23:44

on the beach. I'm talking to each of my phone. Do

23:46

you think Russell Crowe would have been Jamie? Little

23:50

Jamie, but they like they CGI. Yeah.

23:53

Really? His adult head on the. Like a

23:55

bowl, like a bowl cut. Just

23:57

gross. He's playing with air on him. of

24:00

the sand and his army men. He

24:02

said he would only do it if they put his band in the

24:04

movie, because he has a band, right? Oh yeah,

24:06

what's it called again? Like the rolling thunder review or something

24:08

like that? Okay,

24:10

on May 8th, 2020, deadline

24:13

confirmed that, ba-ba-ba, Mike Flanagan

24:15

would adapt revival for film

24:17

in partnership with Intrepid Pictures.

24:20

That July, Flanagan confirmed that he had

24:22

completed the first draft of the screenplay,

24:24

which was met with King's approval. However,

24:27

he expressed doubt as to the likelihood of

24:30

Warner Brothers greenlighting the project. On

24:32

December 23rd of 2020, Flanagan

24:34

confirmed that the adaptation was no

24:37

longer in development, saying in conversation

24:39

with Boone on the

24:41

podcast, the company of the mad, never

24:44

heard of this. Well, it would make

24:46

sense considering that Josh Boone went mad

24:49

that year. Well, after the mad mutants

24:51

or whatever that was called, I can

24:53

understand. The mad mutants. The mad mutants.

24:57

Flanagan said, I stepped on the exact same

24:59

landmine and ended up in the exact same

25:01

place. We should get together someday and share

25:03

boards and drafts and scars. I kind of

25:05

hit the same wall with it where it

25:07

was just so expensive. Man, did

25:10

I love it though? Now

25:12

don't adapt this book. Like this is not

25:14

meant to be a movie at all. I agree,

25:16

I agree. I mean, I

25:18

rarely say that. I usually think there's a way through.

25:21

You know that like the

25:24

coup d'etat, the creme de la

25:26

creme of that script for him was like the

25:28

fucking monologue where... Oh yeah. Jacobs is

25:30

going over to the sermon. Oh, he just wants to

25:33

do the sermon, yes. Oh yeah. He wants it

25:35

so bad. He's like, oh, Hamish, I

25:37

got you a part again. But when was Midnight Mass?

25:39

Was that 2021? 2021, I think.

25:41

I wonder if he incorporated some of those ideas into that. Oh, 100%.

25:44

100%, yeah, yeah. Okay,

25:48

so I have some quotes from King on Revival.

25:50

He did a good chunk of interviews around this.

25:52

And I also have one tweet, which I think

25:54

you just like retweeted, Mike, on

25:57

the social. I confused a little bit of the listeners. I just

25:59

had... stumbled upon it and I was like, oh, this would be

26:01

a fun way to tease the episode. And everyone's like, what does this

26:03

mean? I was like, just a book episode. He's

26:06

written a new book called Revival. You're

26:08

making a movie on Revival. Yeah. OK,

26:11

so the earliest quote I found was in

26:14

June of 2014 from BuzzFeed. It

26:16

said, as it turns out, King retains

26:18

the narrator. King retains the power to

26:20

not only scare his readers, but also

26:22

himself. He was cagey about Revival, noting

26:24

ominously that it's too scary. I don't

26:26

even want to think about that book

26:28

anymore. When pressed, he continued, it's a

26:30

nasty, dark piece of work. That's all

26:32

I can tell you. So

26:34

I want to keep that quote in mind as we keep

26:36

going. This is the rare truth. Because I feel like we've

26:39

heard variations of this type of a quote for

26:41

many of his projects or the people's projects. So

26:43

good at self promotion. This is it

26:45

all. It really works for him. But I

26:47

will say in this instance, like, oh, yeah,

26:49

I he was being maybe truthful

26:52

for once. I do buy it in this

26:54

instance. Yeah. Because, yeah,

26:56

cycle analyzing him through this

26:58

book. I can see what

27:00

this quote means because it reminds me of Pet

27:02

Sematary, which I also believe him when he said

27:04

he didn't want to publish that because he was

27:07

writing about like dead children when his children were

27:09

at that age. So I

27:11

do believe him when he says that book freaked his ass

27:13

out. And then on Twitter,

27:15

that freaked my ass out. It

27:18

freaked my ass out. Sorry,

27:21

I was doing Lynch for some reason. OK, on

27:23

Twitter, he wrote, if you're going to buy it,

27:25

better tone up your nerves. See you break it.

27:27

You buy. Tone

27:29

up your nerves. It's also funny, too,

27:31

because it like really doesn't, you

27:34

know, go off the rails until very

27:36

late in the game. And I imagine I imagine

27:38

people being like, what the shit is he talking

27:40

about? My nerves are not turned up. I guess

27:42

heroin's bad. Yeah. Rock and roll. All right. Mike,

27:47

why don't you read this next quote? This is

27:49

from an interview he did with Goodreads. Goodreads,

27:53

the inspiration was Arthur Mashen's The Great

27:55

God Pan, which is a terrifying story

27:58

about the world that might. exist beyond

28:00

this one. Other influences were Lovecraft, Mary

28:02

Shelley's Frankenstein, and my own religious upbringing.

28:04

And I've been wanting to write about

28:06

tent show healings for a long time.

28:08

I wish it was just, and I've

28:10

been wanting to write about tent show

28:12

for a long time instead of healings,

28:15

which I thought it was for a second. Makes

28:18

sense. It looks like he got it all in there.

28:21

That's literally what I thought. I was like,

28:23

yep, that tracks Justin. I'll read the interviewer

28:26

and then you want to read the responses

28:28

in this Rolling Stone interview? I shall. Okay.

28:31

So this is with Rolling Stone. This was kind of

28:33

a huge career spanning interview. We've quoted from it a

28:35

million times because he talks about a lot of his

28:37

books. This is the book where, or this is the

28:39

interview where he said like Tommy Knocker sucks because I

28:42

was so coked out and

28:44

other famous quotes. But yeah, so this is

28:46

him talking about revival. When

28:48

did you first get the idea for revival? I've

28:51

had it since I was a kid, really. I read the

28:53

story called The Great God Pan in high school and there

28:55

were these two characters waiting to see if this woman could

28:58

come back from the dead and tell them what was over

29:00

there. It just creeped me out. The

29:02

more I thought about, the more I thought about this Mary

29:04

Shelley Frankenstein thing. How long did

29:06

it take you to write it? Am

29:09

I speaking to like 1942? Look, I

29:11

have a character. I'm playing a character.

29:14

I like this character. I started it

29:16

in Maine and finished it in Florida. An actual book

29:18

takes at least a year. First draft can be tough.

29:21

Excuse me. First draft can be rough. Then you

29:23

polish it, take out the bad stuff. Elmore

29:26

Leonard, someone asked him, how do you write a book

29:28

someone wants to read? And he said, you leave out

29:31

the boring shit. Do

29:33

you put some of yourself into the character

29:35

of Jamie? Yeah, sure. Jamie's

29:37

a guy who gets addicted to drugs after

29:39

motorcycle action. And that's

29:41

the end. I took a screenshot of this from

29:45

the actual thing, so I don't have the rest of

29:47

the quote, but you get the gist. Okay,

29:49

Mel, you're going to help me with this next one. This

29:52

is from a lecture he

29:54

did at George Washington University. People

29:57

who are at our live show in

29:59

Chicago, which is probably a very. small

30:01

fraction of this listenership. We'll know this

30:03

reference, but Justin, the clip

30:05

where I put your face on

30:07

King Clapping, the gif, is

30:10

from this lecture. So it's very famous.

30:12

I have so much context now. Wow. Yes.

30:16

So King's wearing

30:18

a red shirt, a little too big for

30:20

him, some jeans, and I

30:22

put Justin's face on him. Or at

30:24

least I don't remember who did it. It might not have been

30:26

me. It might have been me, actually. That was when we were

30:28

doing the whole face swap. The re-face. Still use those images. Okay.

30:32

So I had

30:34

to transcribe this shit, so I didn't

30:36

write all of them. But he talked

30:39

about watching the lightning hitting the castle

30:41

in old Frankenstein movies, and he wanted

30:43

that kind of moment in

30:45

the story. So I didn't write that whole quote

30:48

out, but that was kind of the sentiment. And

30:51

then this next quote, why don't you read that one,

30:53

Mel? I've always been

30:55

fascinated by revival meetings, tense shows, come to

30:57

Jesus kind of things. With faith healings as

30:59

a kid, Oral Roberts, he'd put his hand

31:01

on people's foreheads and say, heal in the

31:04

name of Jesus, and they'd throw their crutches

31:06

away. And I was fascinated by that. Have

31:10

any of you guys ever been to a tent healing? You

31:12

know anything like that? I haven't found the occasion to, no.

31:14

I know what it is. I've seen it in media. Media.

31:18

Mike, how about you? The media.

31:21

Yeah. There's a place called Calver

31:23

Lee Chapel down in South

31:25

Florida, and it's a very terrifying place. No

31:28

shots fired there. But yeah, it's

31:31

exactly what you think. It's one of those giant tents

31:33

that's in the middle of the field, cars

31:35

surrounding it on Sunday mornings. Everyone

31:39

gets flapjacks nearby. It seemed

31:42

pretty harmless, but I was

31:44

only there once, so God knows what happened on

31:46

the other millions of times they've had

31:48

it. Literally. God knows. God knows.

31:50

Maybe he doesn't. Yeah,

31:52

they're interesting. We'll

31:54

talk more about this later, but yeah, it's like

31:56

I've been to a few myself and I've also

31:58

stood. You know, when I was

32:00

in college, there was one kind of in the town square

32:03

and I wasn't sitting inside, but

32:05

I kind of watched it from afar. And I

32:07

remember there's always these awkward moments where, you know,

32:09

most people get caught up in the emotion of

32:11

it all, I think. And they

32:13

do sort of react like, even if they don't

32:15

claim I'm healed, they'll like pass out or something

32:17

or they'll, they'll scream. But I remember

32:19

this one time it was super awkward because the guy like did

32:21

his whole spiel and he put his hand on this person's forehead

32:23

and he was like, and he's like, how do you feel

32:25

now? How do you feel now? And the person was

32:27

like just completely stone face and they're like, um,

32:31

I, and then like the pressure clearly was on them

32:33

and they just go, I guess I feel a little

32:35

bit better. And the preacher just goes, he's a

32:37

little bit better. You

32:39

know, the first thought I had when

32:42

going in there was that there's way

32:44

too many people here for participation. Like

32:47

I get the clapping, but like the idea of like, all right, we're

32:49

all going to come up like you

32:51

can't have more than like a hundred people for communion. I'm

32:53

sorry. Like it's just going to take way too fucking long.

32:56

They had like millions of people

32:58

everywhere just passing out certain things, but it took like

33:00

two hours. I remember thinking that

33:02

it's just like God, like, cause usually the

33:04

communion aspect, at least from growing up was

33:07

like a kind of, I can't believe that whatever. Sure.

33:10

My parents love this was 20, 20 minutes. It was like 20 minutes

33:12

tops. And then we'd all joke around and be like, are you going

33:14

to get the wine? Are you going to drink the wine? And

33:17

it was done in 20 minutes, but yeah, the, the

33:19

shot, we're just gone forever. And I

33:21

can't believe people do this every fucking weekend. And

33:23

it's just like, God, it's like a, it is a whole day

33:26

affair. It's like, yeah, it's too much,

33:28

too much. Yeah. Um,

33:30

okay. And then this next quote, uh, Justin, do you

33:32

want to read that? This is from the

33:34

same, the same lecture. Okay. Gotcha. The

33:37

last quote there. I also wanted to write about rock and roll.

33:39

I'd never found a way to write about it. There are some

33:42

things that are impossible to write about unless you come at them

33:44

from the side. And we'll

33:46

talk more about that later when we talk about Jamie

33:48

specifically, cause King talks more about, um,

33:50

writing about how this book was an excuse

33:52

for him to write about rock. And

33:54

I'm genuinely very excited to hear some of your takes on

33:57

that. Uh, especially since we come

33:59

from music, writing. backgrounds. Mike,

34:01

you did the Last Good Reads interview. Why

34:03

don't you read this one as well? Sure.

34:06

Revival gave me a way to write about rock

34:08

and roll without being preachy or boring. Through Jamie,

34:10

I had a chance to talk about how important

34:12

rock is to me and how it lifted my

34:14

life. All right. I'll

34:16

be interested to hear if anybody thinks it was preachy

34:18

or boring later. So

34:21

Bangor Daily News did a big interview with

34:23

him and he talked about his use of

34:25

carnivals because he had just written

34:27

Joyland. He talks about that here. He says, I just

34:30

like carnivals. I like that

34:32

whole atmosphere. People selling stuff that's a little

34:34

bit on the sketchy side. Then I wrote

34:36

Joyland, which was about carnivals. And I started

34:38

to think about the relationship between carnies and

34:40

the revival circuit. And I'd always wanted to

34:43

write the story about the revival circuit and

34:45

about somebody who was a healer on that

34:47

circuit. Back to Good

34:49

Reads. Mike, read this one. He says

34:51

like a wanted a lot.

34:54

His entrance into this book,

34:57

pretty all over the place. Oh, yeah. There's

34:59

a lot of it. I feel like every

35:01

interview is talking about different stuff. Well, I

35:04

wanted to write a balls to the wall

35:06

supernatural horror story, something I haven't done in

35:08

a long time. I also wanted to use

35:10

Lovecraft's Cthulhu mythos, but in a new fashion,

35:12

if I could, stripping away Lovecraft's high flown

35:14

language, which I appreciated. Yeah.

35:17

He all these things he set out

35:19

to do, he did. Yeah. His credit,

35:22

you know, so. But

35:24

in the Bangor Daily News, Mel, will you read

35:26

this first quote from the Bangor Daily News? When

35:29

I started Salem's a lot, I thought to myself, well,

35:31

this will be the opposite of Dracula, where the good

35:34

guys win. In this book, the good guys are going

35:36

to lose and everybody's going to become a vampire at

35:38

the end of the book. And that didn't happen because

35:41

you go where the book leads you. And this

35:43

one just led me into a very dark place. I

35:45

don't even want to go there. I want people to

35:47

find it out for themselves. Justin,

35:50

will you read the second Bangor Daily News quote

35:52

here? I think that one of the things

35:54

behind revival was for people who really like books like

35:56

Pet Cemetery and The Shining. I really wanted to

35:58

see if I could still bring a real scare the people

36:00

and write the sort of book that people would say,

36:02

it's a great story, but it scared the

36:05

hell out of me and I had to keep the lights on. I was

36:07

sort of aiming for that in particular. Yeah,

36:10

so I like this. I wanted to put

36:12

all these quotes in this way and break

36:14

them up because when you go through them,

36:16

he's basically saying, with revival, I wanted to

36:18

write about tent show healings,

36:20

my religious upbringing, Cthulhu,

36:24

the great god Pan, Mary Shelley's Frankenstein,

36:26

all these books that inspired him when

36:28

he was young. He also wanted to

36:30

write about rock and roll and he

36:32

also wanted to write about carnivals

36:35

and he also wanted to write

36:38

something that was scary in the same

36:40

way as his old stuff. Oh,

36:43

and then also Lovecraft's Cthulhu mythos,

36:46

which he's done before notably in

36:48

stories like Crouch End. I

36:50

think it's maybe most successful in this book, but we can

36:53

talk about that later. And then one

36:55

last quote here, good reads, Mike, why don't you read

36:57

this? His publisher, Nan Graham, what

36:59

a great name, said that upon reading it,

37:01

I asked Steve whether it really had

37:03

to be this dark knowing before he had

37:05

answered that. Yes, it does. Then

37:08

why'd you ask him? I know. You

37:11

know, that's not true. This would have to be this dark.

37:13

Don't answer. All this

37:15

stuff's bullshit. Yes, man. I'm

37:17

doing my last time then if

37:20

I could do a Cartman voice, I would say

37:22

it in the way. This is about bullshit. Okay.

37:25

Critics on revival. I want to read some

37:27

reviews here. A lot of very positive ones,

37:29

but the negative one I

37:32

think that I pulled, I think has some

37:35

good points in it. And so I'm

37:37

saving that for last. I'll start with

37:39

this quote from The Independent. They said,

37:41

revival, which practically screams return to form,

37:44

opens strongly. The first part in

37:46

which Jamie recalls his childhood is

37:48

simply superb. His portrait of the

37:50

close-knit Mortons is classic King. Intimate,

37:53

readable, and convincing. As with 1122-63, nostalgia

37:55

vies with hints. of

38:00

evil. These

38:02

next two quotes are from The Guardian. Justin, will you

38:04

read the first one? Justin L of

38:30

a book this promised to be? I

38:33

think that's an interesting thing to keep in mind. Mike,

38:36

will you read this quote from The New

38:38

York Times as Danielle Chersoni? Reading

38:42

a revival is experiencing a master storyteller having

38:44

the time of his life. All of his

38:46

favorite fictional elements are at play. Small Town

38:48

Main, the supernatural, the evil genius, the obsessive

38:50

addict, power of belief to transform a life.

38:53

King even plays games with his

38:55

characters names, calling one character Shelly,

38:57

another Victor, and another Mary, recasting

38:59

his inspirations. Mary Shelley, Victor Frankenstein,

39:01

into his own fictional universe. Of

39:03

course, if you've read If You

39:05

Like It Darker, his new

39:08

book, he still does this. Oh,

39:10

really? Yeah. It's probably his most

39:13

blunt version that, you

39:15

know, anyway. Sure. Yeah. Did you

39:17

guys catch that? Those names? Yes.

39:20

I don't think I did. I did not. Oh, I

39:22

do that. Yeah, I've got for the Room

39:24

237 later on here. Oh,

39:27

hey, spoiler. Okay. Janet Maslin,

39:29

old friend of Stephen King,

39:31

I remember reading her very

39:36

enthusiastic review of Under the Dome around the same

39:38

time of that book's release. She did a big

39:40

event with him and they still retweet each other

39:43

on the old social media. So,

39:45

yeah. So, she's

39:47

a big king supporter and she said this about this

39:49

book. Mr. King has

39:51

the wind at his back again. He hit

39:54

the doldrums with Dr. Sleep, his sequel to

39:56

The Shining, and Dumacy seemed to have more

39:58

to do with his spending time. in

40:00

the part of Florida the book describes than with

40:02

any burning need to tell a story. Shontz

40:05

fired. But the trifecta of Joyland, Mr.

40:07

Mercedes, and now Revival, the best of

40:09

the bunch, finds him writing with the

40:11

infectious glee that has always been at

40:13

the heart of his popular success. Revival

40:16

winds up with the idea that to be

40:19

human, you must know what it is to

40:21

be inhuman, and to know that only this

40:23

thin partition separates that horror from ordinary life.

40:26

So it's not just a book that delivers its share of

40:28

jolts and then lets the reader walk away unscathed. Older

40:31

and wiser each time he writes, Mr. King has

40:33

moved on from the physical fear that haunted him

40:35

after he was struck by a van while out

40:38

walking to a more metaphysical

40:40

universal terror. He writes about

40:42

things so inevitable that he

40:44

speaks to us all. It's

40:46

a little spoilery there. I don't know, why did she have

40:48

to mention that about what separates us

40:51

from the horror? Anyway.

40:53

It might only be a spoiler because you've read the book.

40:55

You know what I mean? Because you know what that means.

40:58

So yeah, I

41:01

don't know. I think her writing about this

41:03

book is actually pretty interesting. I have another

41:05

quote from her later. We're going to talk about

41:07

characters. Okay.

41:09

These last ones are all from this negative

41:12

review from the AV Club. Mel,

41:14

will you read this for us? And these

41:16

are three separate quotes that I've separated, so

41:18

that are throughout the review. So why don't

41:20

you read the first one and then I'll

41:23

assign the rest. For

41:26

much of its length, Revival doesn't feel like

41:28

a novel as much as it does a

41:30

narrative experiment written as a character who's novel

41:32

adjacent, as if the entire Harry Potter saga

41:34

was told from the point of Neville Longbottom

41:36

who occasionally gets dragged into the story for

41:39

a scene or two, but mostly stands around

41:41

in the background wondering where everyone's running off

41:43

to this time. Justin,

41:46

read the next one. Virtually all of Revival

41:48

is a slow build that sometimes feels suspiciously like

41:50

a shaggy dog story, one which may not have

41:52

a punchline. And Mike, read this third one.

41:55

Beyond that, Revival's primary issue is one

41:57

that's plagued King recently, particularly in a shining

41:59

sequel. Dr. Sleep. He skims across many of

42:01

the biggest events in Jamie's life, robbing them

42:03

of their impact. The accident

42:06

that led him to addiction or the tragic

42:08

death of one of his siblings aren't part

42:10

of King's agenda for Revival's final plot developments,

42:13

but they're among the most significant events in

42:15

the protagonist's life. And it weakens the story

42:17

to have Jamie bring them up only after

42:19

the fact and a few bare sentences apiece,

42:21

especially since the book focuses so much time

42:23

on comparative trivia and loose plot threads. Similarly,

42:25

there's a sense throughout the novel that the

42:28

really important action is almost always happening elsewhere,

42:30

and that's much more interesting than Jamie's skimmed

42:32

over adventures in the music trade. I'll

42:35

read this last part. King constructed the

42:38

book as a calculated tease, though mostly

42:40

dangling a taste of what's going on

42:42

in the main story over

42:44

readers' heads. The structure

42:46

has a powerful effect as a withholding

42:48

technique, but it also results in a

42:50

book where not much happens for hundreds

42:52

of pages, suggesting in the end that

42:55

Revival could have trimmed all the buildup

42:57

and instead been an extremely unnerving short

42:59

story. Man, I feel like

43:01

this really misses the point. I

43:04

want to talk about this. I think there's some good

43:06

points in this, but

43:09

I want to talk about it more broadly, and I think we

43:11

can kick off the hook by discussing that.

43:13

But first, I want to read the synopsis. So

43:15

Mel, will you read the synopsis for us? And

43:18

then we're going to move into the hook. The

43:21

new minister came to Harlow Maine when

43:23

Jamie Morton was a boy doing battle

43:25

with his toy army men on the front

43:27

lawn. The young Reverend Charles Jacobs and

43:29

his beautiful wife brought new life to

43:31

the local church and captivated their congregation.

43:34

But with Jamie, he shares a secret

43:36

obsession, a draw so powerful it would

43:39

have profound consequences five decades after the

43:41

shattering tragedy that turned the preacher against

43:43

God, and long after his final scathing

43:45

sermon. Now Jamie, a

43:48

nomadic rock guitarist hooked on heroin,

43:50

meets Charles Jacobs again. And when

43:52

their bond becomes a pact beyond even

43:54

the devil's devising, Jamie discovers that the

43:57

word revival has many meanings. I

44:00

think that's a pretty good synopsis. Some

44:02

of these synopsis suck ass. The

44:04

secret obsession bit is a little like,

44:08

I don't know, it's just electricity. I

44:10

guess that's true, but it's secret

44:13

electricity. Oh yeah, you're right. Okay,

44:15

let's move into the hook. Ah,

44:20

yes. Don't

44:22

you see? Don't you see

44:24

how clear it all is? Not

44:26

only can you see the future, you

44:29

can... I can change it. You

44:32

can change it exactly. Here in the

44:34

hook we talk about the themes, the ideas, what is

44:36

this thing saying? And I do want to

44:38

kind of just start out with a reaction to

44:40

that last review because I do think that could

44:42

in some way sum up our general feelings about

44:44

the book. Mel, you seem to

44:46

have some. Why don't you kick us off? Well,

44:49

I feel that skimming

44:53

over, quote unquote, important and tragic

44:55

events like the death of Claire

44:57

or the motorcycle accident feel

45:01

so of a piece with the

45:03

book's entire being in

45:06

that we are

45:08

built to absorb truths

45:11

that are sort of unabsorbable.

45:14

It's something about resilience,

45:16

but it's also something about what

45:18

other choices there than to keep going.

45:20

But it

45:23

seems more tragically inflected than that to me

45:25

too. It seems very much just like nothing

45:28

is important. Everything is on an equal level of importance

45:30

or like heroin is important. So of course he's not

45:32

going to talk about the accident. And

45:36

I don't know, this book revolves

45:38

so much around senselessness and

45:41

the senselessness of how

45:44

we lose people and ultimately the

45:46

senselessness of maybe everything. So

45:48

it totally makes sense to me that I'm

45:51

not trying to pun there, but it totally attracts

45:53

to me that we just

45:55

wouldn't get these moments

45:59

in a tradition. narrative

46:01

way because the whole book is regarding

46:05

senselessness from

46:09

the outside the whole time. Yeah. And

46:12

I want to talk about senselessness more about

46:14

a lot later. I agree with you. That's

46:16

the part of the review I take issue

46:19

with as well because in addition

46:21

to everything you just said, I think

46:23

a big part of this book is about

46:26

what Jamie missed when he was on drugs.

46:28

It's like, he

46:30

doesn't really remember or

46:33

can talk or wants to talk elaborately

46:36

about things like his sister's death or his

46:38

motorcycle accident because these things happened when he

46:40

was so blown out on drugs that he

46:42

wasn't really there, especially for the Claire situation.

46:44

He wasn't there in the way I think

46:46

he would have hoped to be because that's

46:48

a lot of the regret that we see

46:50

later in the book when he goes back

46:52

home and has this lovely time and

46:54

is like, why wasn't I taking

46:56

more advantage of this earlier? Because I think this book

46:59

is very much about looking back on a

47:01

life. You bring up a good

47:03

point too, and less about the

47:05

drugs for me, but more about the repression of

47:07

we just don't talk about these things,

47:09

which happens both privately with him as

47:11

a narrator when he's like, I just don't want to

47:13

think about this. And of course,

47:15

it tracks with the ending, things you just can't

47:17

think about, but also his siblings say it, I

47:20

think, to him too, where they're like, we can't

47:22

talk about Claire. And that

47:24

also tracks with the sermon where it's daring

47:27

to talk about what you don't talk

47:29

about, like the grand lie of life.

47:32

Yeah. And I love that. And

47:34

I want to talk more about that. But I guess

47:37

what I'm curious about is how you

47:39

guys feel about Jamie being

47:42

sort of the driver of this story. She says

47:44

that he is more or less

47:46

the Neville Longbottom here that we are

47:49

like a side character who we are

47:51

following as this larger

47:53

story plays out. Mike, how do you feel about

47:55

that? Yeah, I don't disagree. And I think that

47:59

the point of the senseless is absolutely apt.

48:01

I think it's exactly

48:03

what he's aiming for here. I think

48:06

my problem is the medium. You

48:08

know, I think when we were doing

48:10

11-22-63, Flieger

48:13

made the funny joke that the assassination is

48:15

a lot like the Pucci thing in Sumpsons

48:17

when they're like, oh, the fireworks factory. And

48:19

we kept referencing that throughout all the episodes.

48:21

It's like, oh, well, you've already told us

48:23

about the assassination. So, you

48:26

know, we got to get there. And what was

48:28

so astounding about 11-22-63 is that I don't really

48:30

care about it. I

48:33

don't. I don't. I mean, throughout all those episodes,

48:35

you all talked about how, yeah, I kind of

48:38

just love the love story here. I kind of

48:40

love what's happening here. I love the life that

48:42

he's actually created here in Jodi

48:45

and what have you. And I'm not really

48:47

that anticipating the fireworks factory. I'd

48:49

say the opposite happens here. And I

48:51

think that's a detriment to this book. I think

48:54

for me, you start this

48:56

off with such an incredible bookend. I mean, the

48:58

bookends of this book are just absolutely some of

49:00

the most powerful writing he's ever written and

49:03

most terrifying writing is ever written. The issue

49:06

I have is the journey getting between those

49:08

two. And unlike 11-22-63, I am

49:10

still thinking about the fireworks factory because, you

49:13

know, there are some

49:15

interesting journeys that

49:18

he goes through in this, but they're

49:20

largely tied to the greater mystery at

49:22

hand. And most of my misery

49:24

happens to do with a lot of the kind

49:27

of side quests in here. And I

49:29

think what I ultimately landed on is where she gets at

49:31

at the end of this review, where she says

49:33

that I think this does work better as a short story

49:35

because I do think you can do that. And I think

49:37

he has done that. I mean, he's done that countless times

49:39

and I have a number of short stories that come to

49:41

mind from this. But I think that

49:44

bridge between those two bookends,

49:46

between his classic foreshadowing, which

49:48

this may be the greatest

49:50

king foreshadowing of all time. Like we've talked

49:52

about it from day one on this podcast,

49:55

this story might be the best. The

49:57

issue is that it goes back to

49:59

that joke that... figure made. It's just like, I am

50:01

constantly thinking like, all right, when is, where's Jacob's? I

50:03

need to get, what's going on with the myth. Like,

50:05

I don't really care about. Well, that is like, poochy,

50:07

right? It's like, when Jacob's isn't on screen, people should

50:09

be asking, where's Jacob's? Yeah. Where's Jacob's? That is

50:11

so, I feel like that is a style

50:13

clash. Like, I really do think this is

50:16

king at his

50:18

most concerned with the mundane emotional

50:20

realities of like a dude. And

50:22

like, that's not, it

50:24

does read very literary to me, for

50:26

lack of a better word. I do

50:29

feel like you need a life, like

50:31

the span of a life to get to the

50:33

end of this story. I

50:36

agree with that. I do. I agree

50:38

with Mike in a lot of ways though,

50:40

where I'm like, is this the life I

50:43

wanted to follow? But I agree completely because

50:45

it's the accumulation that I think is where

50:47

the impact lands. But yeah, Justin,

50:49

what were you going to say? There's another version

50:51

of the story that is not as successful for

50:53

me, and that is spending time with

50:56

Charlie apart from Jamie. It's

50:59

a problem I've run into with the stand, with

51:01

it. When we start to spend too much time

51:03

with the antagonist of the story, I

51:05

only want to see the antagonist through the eyes

51:07

of the protagonists. I want to

51:09

be left in the dark as much as the people

51:11

who were following. So for me, the

51:14

most, because like I said, I read 10 years

51:16

ago, I promised you that's the truth. And

51:19

for me, I was afraid to go back

51:21

and reread it in a couple of ways, because I

51:23

was thinking about when I reread The Talisman, for instance,

51:26

and there was some long stretch to The Talisman I don't

51:29

like at all now. The book is not as good as

51:31

I remember being, you know, 25 years ago. Yeah,

51:33

top five disappointing rereads. So

51:38

look, Jamie is not one

51:42

of the great memorable leads of a

51:44

Stephen King novel, right? But it's

51:48

the story itself that makes it

51:50

rewarding. And with the reread, making

51:53

it a successful reread for me, I

51:57

do love the dynamic between this relatively insignificant

51:59

guide, Jamie Morton and this

52:02

pastor who stumbled or stumbled upon him 50 years

52:05

earlier and like his

52:08

normie nature hashtag normie nature and

52:11

the relationships that he develops, they may seem aimless

52:14

in that middle section of the book. But

52:18

for me, like when we find out what happens to Hugh, we

52:21

find out what happens to Astrid. Those

52:23

really hit me hard. I realize

52:27

it's the there's a certain stretches where you're just like,

52:29

like, I'm like, I'm like, everything with Bree, like, get

52:31

me get out of here. Oh,

52:33

agree. I agree with that. Oh, yeah,

52:35

sure. Yeah. I mean, like, and

52:37

then there's anyway, but I do think I do think like,

52:40

it is almost for me a question of genre

52:42

because I do think that there are Stephen King

52:48

trends or like, like he the

52:50

foreshadowing and and

52:52

the idea that this novel like

52:54

Frankenstein might be very concerned with

52:57

a question of hubris. And I think Jamie throughout

52:59

is is is always really a voice for that

53:01

message of like, we should not be

53:03

so conceited that we

53:06

think this is for us to know. He

53:08

dips into like, oh, I'm a little curious to a

53:10

couple times like anyone would. But I do think there

53:12

is this flattening to him

53:15

sometimes when the book wants to be like,

53:17

this is Frankenstein. We're examining how science

53:20

brings us into places we weren't meant

53:22

to tread. But at the same

53:24

time, that really butts up against what I love

53:26

most about the book, which is its total

53:28

ambiguity on that subject. Like I think by the

53:31

end of the book, it's not a story about hubris.

53:33

Like it's almost it's it's

53:35

almost as though the

53:37

book is arguing with itself about how

53:39

we're supposed to think about the the

53:42

Reverend and maybe King doesn't know how

53:44

Jamie is supposed to think about all

53:46

of this. But like, yes, I agree

53:48

completely to the reader's interpretation.

53:50

There's so much ambiguity and

53:53

the hubris messaging that like

53:55

very flattened Frankenstein genre messaging

53:57

like doesn't jive with the

53:59

real is. of

54:01

Jamie. And I think there's just like

54:03

this tension there that can be really

54:05

disruptive when I read. JS There is

54:07

a bit where near the end

54:09

where Jamie like yells at him like, you can't

54:11

do this, you know? And I remember being like,

54:13

why does he feel that way? Like,

54:16

I don't understand that felt like the moral

54:18

authority of the author creeping in. Because I'm

54:20

like, well, I think at that point, he's

54:22

been doing all this investigation on what all

54:25

of these quote unquote cures are

54:27

doing to people. And I think that it's tying

54:29

into what's happening here. And I think that at

54:31

this point, he's like, please don't. There's

54:33

something on the door. But I

54:35

just think that's a valid point though, I

54:38

think that's it wasn't just it's all of a sudden, don't

54:40

do it. I don't think it's as simplistic as that. JS

54:43

But there's so many moments like that. Yeah.

54:45

When Jamie is like, I know that he

54:47

shouldn't be doing this. And I don't, I'm

54:49

convinced by that. Like, I feel like most

54:51

readers are like, not convinced by

54:54

that. JS Yeah. Like, no, keep going. You know,

54:56

Mike, Mike, what are you gonna say? Mike I

54:58

think this is for me, it feels too much

55:00

of a potpourri of who

55:02

he is as a writer, you know, I've, look,

55:04

I'm probably the loudest supporter on

55:06

this podcast of him being more of a literary

55:09

dramatic writer. I've said it multiple

55:11

times. I say that's the big

55:13

revelation I've had on this podcast is

55:16

realizing that I think I like his,

55:18

his more dramatic writing that I

55:20

do sometimes is scarce, because I think that he knows

55:22

how to punch you and pummel you in ways that

55:24

I have never been, you know, from, you

55:26

know, from any other writer. But what

55:29

I took on bridge with this story is that,

55:32

and it's, it's pretty much where he is at right now.

55:34

And this point in 2014, it's very crossroads

55:37

ish, you know, you get some writing that's very literary,

55:39

that's kind of lean more on to some of those

55:42

passages that would be in 1122 or even stuff that

55:44

would be in full dark

55:46

no stars, which is not too long before this.

55:48

And then you get a lot of pulpy

55:50

genre beats that are, you know,

55:52

very much of his own style. I mean,

55:55

look, look, like they're, they're flourishes

55:57

of, you know, I was a teenage grave robber

55:59

in this. that are from his

56:01

original early days that pop up here

56:03

that he's certainly flexing in that. There's

56:05

touches of Jerusalem's lot. There's bits and

56:07

pieces of a lot of the world

56:09

building that's in Dr. Sleep and a

56:11

lot of his recent stuff. And much

56:13

to my chagrin, there's hints of where

56:15

it's gonna go with like

56:17

the Mr. Mercedes and the true crime elements

56:20

of it all and how you need a

56:22

character that's playing basically the Oracle from Batman.

56:24

Like I just, there's

56:26

a lot going on. And I

56:28

think that's why, the

56:31

longer the space he gets, and

56:33

especially maybe in this era, because

56:35

Dr. Sleep is guilty of this too, the

56:38

more room or runway he

56:40

gets, the more he's gonna start scrapbooking.

56:43

He's gonna start leaning into other genres.

56:45

He's gonna start reading into other tones

56:47

and voices. And I think that's maybe

56:49

one of the reasons why I, I

56:52

wouldn't say struggle, because I did enjoy this book, but there were definitely

56:54

aspects of where I was like, man,

56:56

it almost feels like I'm listening to

56:58

like, now that's what I call music.

57:00

Sometimes. It's extremely, I

57:02

think the stylistic blend is extremely interesting and you

57:04

can pull it off. And I wanna clarify too,

57:06

that when I say literary, I don't mean like,

57:09

it's not a moral or a value judgment.

57:11

I just mean as publishers define it, like,

57:13

we know, yeah, I know you

57:16

know. I

57:18

also know King listens to this and he hates it when

57:20

people are like literary, blah, blah, blah. I hate

57:22

it too. I usually am, I just, but I

57:24

know you're, yeah, that's what I'm starting. Like

57:26

it's just the styles are, it

57:28

really is a collage. Like there are times where I'd be

57:30

reading like a beautiful passage. And then of course it ends

57:32

with like this Kingism. That's just like, and then we laugh

57:34

till the sun went down and I'm like, that

57:36

doesn't quite fit with what we were just. And

57:39

then she pulled out her boobs and said, bang

57:41

me. And we did. Yeah. Okay.

57:44

I mean, that's, King's been doing that his

57:46

entire career. Even the best books. This isn't

57:48

like some, oh my God, it's going

57:50

in the revival. No, but this is so, this is so

57:52

meandering in other places, pleasureably so. Like

57:54

the styles are so contrasting for me

57:56

here more than in other, in other works.

58:00

Okay. Everything you guys

58:02

are saying dovetails really nicely with the next question I want to

58:04

ask, which is I personally saw,

58:06

like Mike mentioned this too, there's so much DNA

58:09

of a lot of like previous King stories, I

58:11

think throughout this book. And I'm

58:13

curious what ones came to mind for

58:15

you. I have a bunch, but Justin,

58:18

what do you think? I think we talked a

58:20

little bit about this, Mike, on you

58:22

like a darker episode where I made a comp when

58:24

we were reading The Dreamers. Yep. A hundred percent. And

58:26

I don't want to spoil that because it's relatively new.

58:29

But there's something that struck me

58:31

this time was thinking about an alternate

58:33

universe. And it's kind of like, what if Larry

58:35

Underwood never had a hit single? Yeah. And

58:38

fell right into drugs. That's kind of

58:40

Jamie's alternate path right there. The

58:43

jaunt. Definitely.

58:46

Yeah. The jaunt's a good one. I didn't even think of that. And,

58:49

you know, I mean, look, the Dark Tower, the

58:52

IT finale, there's a

58:54

lot of other worlds, basically,

58:57

that it calls to mind. Mike,

58:59

how about you? So, you know, Carpenter,

59:01

John Carpenter, I should say, Carpenter, like

59:04

her pals, like the John

59:06

Carpenter has like the apocalyptic trilogy. This,

59:09

I feel like he has this sort of, I

59:12

don't know, I want to call him the null

59:14

accounts. And it's stuff like 1408 and revivals, this

59:18

book, that feeling you can only say what is

59:20

in French. And as Justin said, the

59:22

dreamers. And it's a lot of these stories that

59:25

contend with what lies beyond

59:28

and the maddening effects of being stuck

59:30

in like a sort of infinite

59:33

cyclical inescapable

59:36

situation. And I think that's ultimately what

59:38

gets under his skin is the idea

59:40

that he could be in that imperpetuity,

59:43

for lack of a better word. And all those

59:45

stories deal with that. And they deal with those

59:47

traps. And they all come down to the end

59:49

of like, you know, can I get

59:51

away from this thing that I opened? Is

59:54

my mind going to let me get away

59:56

from this thing I open? And I think

59:58

that's when he really scratch at the

1:00:00

scariest parts of his works. I mean, like I've

1:00:03

said it on both of those, 1408 and the end, I think it

1:00:05

was some of the scariest works he's ever written. And

1:00:08

they all deal with the same type of thing of just that, you

1:00:11

know, it's like what Dr. Zayas said, don't look

1:00:13

for it, Taylor. You may not like what you

1:00:15

find. And I swear, Mike, I was going to

1:00:17

mention that quote later. Oh, really? Are you kidding

1:00:19

me? Because that's what I thought about the entire

1:00:21

book was I've just been in Apesville lately. So

1:00:23

it's yeah, we're in Apes season starring Oh, and

1:00:25

Teague, the new movie of the stand. So

1:00:29

no, I actually I love those comps like

1:00:31

N1408. And

1:00:33

then I haven't read the Dreamers, but like what

1:00:36

you're saying, though, really resonates with me because the

1:00:38

word I kept coming back to was like a

1:00:41

creeping distrust of what we're told about

1:00:43

what's beyond the veil, you know, because

1:00:45

nobody knows what we're told that within

1:00:48

certain faith structures, this is what to expect.

1:00:51

And, and he's basically saying, and what I love about this,

1:00:53

and I want to talk with this more in a little

1:00:55

bit. So I don't want to go down

1:00:57

here just yet. But, you know, I feel like

1:00:59

especially around this time, or at

1:01:01

least in, you know, post 9 11 and everything, a

1:01:04

lot of people were kind of, you

1:01:06

know, I think there was a lot of backlash to sort

1:01:08

of the evangelical movement. And there was a lot of discussion

1:01:10

and talk about like, well, what if we're alone in the

1:01:12

universe? And I mean, I know, obviously, these are old philosophical

1:01:15

questions, but just through the, the modern

1:01:17

lens, like, what if there

1:01:19

is no heaven or hell? What if we're just

1:01:22

rotten a box when we die? And I just

1:01:24

love this sort of cheekiness of King just saying

1:01:26

like, but what if there is an afterlife, but

1:01:28

it's just hell, you know,

1:01:30

for everyone, like that to me is so

1:01:34

fucking like, impish and

1:01:36

malevolent that I just have to

1:01:39

fucking admire it. And yeah,

1:01:41

there are shades of this in 1408 and,

1:01:44

and N two, which is this basically like,

1:01:46

what's beyond the veil is something you do

1:01:49

not want to fucking know about. So stop

1:01:51

asking. But I want to talk more

1:01:53

about that in a little bit. What

1:01:55

came to mind for me was obviously pet cemetery, because

1:01:57

it's the obsession with death and it goes to such

1:01:59

dark, places. I

1:02:02

was so convinced that he's just about to try

1:02:04

and bring his like dead wife

1:02:06

and son back to life. I was so surprised

1:02:08

that that was not actually. Yeah, it was a

1:02:10

good switch. I

1:02:13

thought about the Tommy knockers a lot because there

1:02:16

is it feels like Jacobs

1:02:18

is building these like

1:02:20

magical instruments with common

1:02:23

household items. I'll

1:02:25

blow a 237 here, but there's literally a

1:02:27

shed that he works out of that has like

1:02:29

a green light battery or whatever. And that reminds

1:02:32

me of the shed from the Bobby's shed and

1:02:34

Tommy knockers. Yeah, I wrote that in my King's

1:02:36

dominion as well because like there's the mention of

1:02:38

the green and then they'll talk about batteries and

1:02:40

stuff like that. And I was like, Oh, this

1:02:43

is the fucking it's he's riffing on Tommy. I

1:02:45

was like, it's time for my reread. It's been

1:02:47

six years. You will not re welcome back. I've

1:02:49

read Tommy knockers three times. I've read it three times.

1:02:51

I swear to God, I've

1:02:54

read that upper in middle school. I read it when I went

1:02:56

like in 2000 and I'll read it again. I

1:02:59

read it again. Eight years ago.

1:03:01

I swear that's the magic about King is

1:03:04

I will sooner reread a bad King book than a

1:03:06

great book by somebody else. All the ones I missed

1:03:08

are just the ones that you would never want to

1:03:10

go. I still need to read roadwork. I still need

1:03:12

to read the talisman. I still need to read Tommy

1:03:15

knockers. You gotta get on that

1:03:17

roadwork. I mean, I got it. Roadwork is like

1:03:19

one like

1:03:23

like one tenth of the size

1:03:25

of of Tommy knockers, but I do

1:03:28

feel like roadwork would hit different and

1:03:30

perhaps harder now as like, you

1:03:32

know, just a boomer ass screed.

1:03:35

Like I think it's relevant. Yeah,

1:03:37

I reread it unintentionally almost.

1:03:40

I reread it when we were doing the Bachman. We

1:03:42

did a bunch of episodes about Bachman when we did

1:03:44

blaze and and I hated

1:03:47

it, but I definitely

1:03:49

got it. But

1:03:52

Mel, what were you thinking of? I have a few more, but I want

1:03:54

those. I really honestly was mostly thinking of pet

1:03:57

cemetery. I think I also thought about needful things

1:03:59

a little bit in terms of like, you

1:04:02

can get what you want through magic, but like,

1:04:04

do you really want it? So there's also a

1:04:06

point at which the book is like, he

1:04:08

had become God and I was like,

1:04:10

yes. I caught that

1:04:12

too. I

1:04:14

was thinking about Green Mile too,

1:04:17

because the idea of healing. And I

1:04:20

even have a question we can discuss later if we want

1:04:22

if you know, I don't want to overdo it. But it's

1:04:24

like, just the the comparison of

1:04:26

like, John coffee, who has this

1:04:28

supernatural healing power and someone like

1:04:31

Jacobs who his healing power is

1:04:33

supernatural, but it's not innate. It's

1:04:35

through science, you know, and, and,

1:04:37

and John coffee is very much portrayed as

1:04:39

like a Christ figure. And Jacobs

1:04:42

is very much like a devil figure masquerading

1:04:44

as a Christ figure. And so I don't

1:04:46

know, I find I found that really compelling.

1:04:49

And of course, yeah, the group at some

1:04:51

point, like, where do we

1:04:53

fall on the on the ethics of what

1:04:56

Jacobs is doing? I

1:04:58

have a question about that. So we

1:05:00

put a pin in it. I have,

1:05:02

I have a lot of thoughts on that. And

1:05:05

then lastly, I'm gonna talk about this

1:05:07

a lot shortly, but from a Buick

1:05:09

8. I thought more

1:05:11

about Buick 8 during this than I

1:05:13

did anything else. And I went

1:05:15

into my notes from when we did the episode.

1:05:17

And I can see why. Because a lot

1:05:20

of the quotes that I pulled from the book,

1:05:22

I think dovetail really nicely with

1:05:24

revival. And I'll get to that. But when

1:05:26

the camp goes into the trunk and sees

1:05:29

what's on the other side. No, you're afraid

1:05:31

you're afraid of something else. Yeah, it's more

1:05:33

the existential qualities of the books. But, but

1:05:36

we'll talk about that. Okay,

1:05:38

I want to talk about the ending a little bit.

1:05:41

And what feelings we were left with. This

1:05:44

doesn't need to be long or anything. But

1:05:46

did you find it edifying or nihilistic? Because

1:05:48

not everybody loved the ending. Some

1:05:50

of the critics said, revival may be

1:05:52

light on horrific detail, but the glimpse its author

1:05:55

gives of the darkness behind the veil is

1:05:57

black indeed. And that's from the Guardian. The

1:05:59

critic A critical review I read of it though

1:06:01

is from The Independent, and this was a positive

1:06:04

review, but they said, Where

1:06:06

Revival Falls Down, if not quite apart,

1:06:08

is in its climax. The problem isn't

1:06:10

entirely the genre familiarity. King

1:06:12

riffs deftly on pulp fiction's great

1:06:14

set pieces, but after Revival is

1:06:17

finally judged for a first five

1:06:19

six, the conclusion feels rushed and

1:06:21

unbalanced. More space is devoted

1:06:23

to the best way to dry dishes than

1:06:25

explaining the murder-suicide of two of Jamie's close

1:06:27

friends. This may reflect our

1:06:30

narrator's understandable trauma, but hints at

1:06:32

a novelist in impatient or brusque

1:06:34

mood. Revival is fine,

1:06:37

if not vintage King, but that still makes

1:06:39

it tastier than most best sellers out there.

1:06:41

So yeah, they, not everybody loved the ending,

1:06:43

and I will say there is an abruptness

1:06:45

to it. I found

1:06:47

that appealing, but I'm curious how

1:06:49

you all feel. Justin,

1:06:52

you went, mm-hmm. I

1:06:55

could cheat and say it's a push, whether it's edifying or nihilistic, and

1:06:57

I'm going to do that because it's a podcast, we can do that.

1:07:02

I've read and loved a lot of Stephen King stories over

1:07:04

the years, and I've forgotten certain

1:07:06

parts of the ending of many of those books

1:07:08

I love a lot. I

1:07:11

have never forgotten the description of

1:07:13

this other world that Jamie talks

1:07:15

about seeing. Like this ending to

1:07:17

me. Which is why I had to own up to my lie. Exactly.

1:07:20

Because the full G is like, it's a hockey

1:07:22

arena. No. I

1:07:25

mean, this is one of the greatest endings of his entire book.

1:07:27

Not just the climax, but

1:07:29

then, like Mike, were you talking about the bookend? We

1:07:32

find out even more about what these cures

1:07:35

have done and that ending of the book. I

1:07:38

don't know. I love the ending. I

1:07:40

love it. I love it for its nihilism. I love it for,

1:07:43

it's just blunt force trauma that you get

1:07:45

from it. Guy said trauma. I

1:07:47

wrote Jesus Christ in all capitals like 10 times

1:07:49

in my notes because I had no clue how

1:07:53

hard it was going to go. You know, now

1:07:55

look, it's not for his novel endings, but I

1:07:59

have no notes about the ending. this book. I don't have

1:08:01

any notes. Mal, thoughts?

1:08:04

I think it's

1:08:07

utterly nihilistic. Yeah,

1:08:10

it doesn't get much bleaker. I

1:08:13

think it does give you the requisite

1:08:16

amount of you can look

1:08:18

at it through a lens of almost Buddhist nihilism,

1:08:20

right? Like Jamie does, I

1:08:22

think by the end. He's going to

1:08:25

therapy. He's really

1:08:27

staking a lot of worth

1:08:29

on the little things like

1:08:32

getting a smile from his institutionalized brother.

1:08:34

Like because he actually

1:08:36

does a hundred percent or not a hundred

1:08:38

percent, but mostly a hundred percent know that that

1:08:40

is all there is. Like what

1:08:42

else is there but the little moments throughout the day,

1:08:45

especially if you're condemned to this other

1:08:47

world when you die and like, yeah,

1:08:50

I don't, you don't get more nihilist than that.

1:08:52

I mean, we can also argue a little bit

1:08:54

over whether

1:08:56

or not we do believe that the world

1:08:59

is true or if we think that mother lied, but I take it as

1:09:01

I take it at face value. I do too. Yeah. And

1:09:04

this is yeah, mother lied

1:09:06

is such a revealing moment because I

1:09:08

wrote down the Bible verse. It's

1:09:11

in the book of John. They say,

1:09:13

let me see if I can

1:09:15

bring it up here. You are, you are of your

1:09:18

father, the devil and the desires of your father. You want to do.

1:09:20

He was a murderer from the beginning

1:09:23

and does not stand in the truth because there is

1:09:26

no truth in him. When he speaks a lie, he

1:09:28

speaks from his own resources for he is a liar

1:09:30

and the father of it. But because I tell the

1:09:32

truth, you do not believe me. And that's from John

1:09:34

8 44 45. And that's, you know, the devil is

1:09:39

the father of lies is very

1:09:41

much a, you know, oft repeated

1:09:43

line within the Christian mythos. And

1:09:45

so it's, you know, essentially any

1:09:47

lie you're told about or any doubt you

1:09:49

have, at least, you know, in the fundamental

1:09:52

fundamentalist world that I came from, you know,

1:09:54

it was very much the devil's lying to

1:09:56

you. And so the repetition of mother lied,

1:09:58

mother lied, mother lied, reminded me a lot

1:10:01

of, I think, a mantra that I think a lot

1:10:03

of Christians tell whenever they have doubts. But

1:10:05

I'll talk about that more in a moment. Mike, how

1:10:08

about you? How did this ending land with you? Oh,

1:10:10

it's great. I mean, it's, I love

1:10:12

a nihilistic ending. I love the

1:10:15

abandon all hope ye who enter here.

1:10:17

And we do mean all who enter

1:10:19

here, which means everyone. Yeah.

1:10:21

The fact that you see like, Maury, like

1:10:23

the most innocent characters are being tortured by

1:10:25

the aunts, you know? You could make the

1:10:27

argument that it's like, you know, you look

1:10:29

at, you stare in the abyss and the

1:10:31

bister's back at you and it's just, you

1:10:33

know, building up on who you are, your

1:10:35

own personalities are, are what's going to hurt

1:10:37

you the most. But I like, like

1:10:39

Mel, I take this all at face value. And I think

1:10:42

the thing that's when

1:10:45

you look at it based on the,

1:10:47

the, the previous bookend, you

1:10:49

know, the beginning, his sermon, it

1:10:52

just ties so neatly with

1:10:54

that foreshadowing of there's a line here.

1:10:56

Let me find it real quick. I have in my notes. It's

1:10:59

when he says, believe what you want. But

1:11:01

I tell you that this behind St. Paul's

1:11:03

dark and glass, there is nothing but a

1:11:06

lie. And even before that, with just the,

1:11:09

the idea of him being like, there's

1:11:11

no proof of these afterlife destinations and

1:11:13

how he's basically talking about how

1:11:15

the role of the church has manipulated

1:11:18

and capitalized on societies for thousands

1:11:20

of years. And then you equate

1:11:22

that with other institutions. And

1:11:24

it's, it's kind of like, you

1:11:27

know, it, not only does it just

1:11:30

dovetail so well with that, that, that beginning

1:11:32

opening salvo, but

1:11:35

it just makes sense. Like,

1:11:37

I mean, you're talking to the most cynical person

1:11:40

on this podcast, probably. I, I'm

1:11:42

an atheist. I don't believe there's anything out there.

1:11:44

I, but I

1:11:47

think the, the idea that we

1:11:49

could expect anything to be out

1:11:51

there just kind of fills the,

1:11:53

the kind of

1:11:55

toes, the line and mirrors everything out the human

1:11:57

condition is we are built, we're, we're a human.

1:12:00

beast built on quid pro quos. We think that if

1:12:02

we're going to give, we're going to receive. And

1:12:05

that's just, I think the

1:12:08

more, the older you get, you

1:12:11

realize that's just not true. Well,

1:12:13

think of the end of the book when Jamie's

1:12:15

talking to his brother and he goes, you

1:12:17

remember the horrible sermon or whatever? And

1:12:20

it horrified us then, but he's like, seems pretty

1:12:22

true to me now. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, it's

1:12:24

almost, it's worse than nihilism

1:12:27

because A, like it's

1:12:29

been, it's pretty much like life is nihilism.

1:12:31

Life is senseless. Death is worse. And

1:12:34

also it's going to be especially worse for

1:12:36

Jamie because now he's got a

1:12:39

vendetta against these

1:12:41

forces. So like, yeah, more,

1:12:44

more than nihilism, it's just like

1:12:46

utter, utter devastation.

1:12:49

Yeah. And I want to talk about

1:12:52

that because I want to square this

1:12:54

vision and these ideas about faith

1:12:56

and religion, organized religion that you guys are touching

1:12:58

on with the way King

1:13:00

talks about God in the afterlife in

1:13:03

interviews, because I think that

1:13:05

there's something interesting to be revealed here.

1:13:07

So this is from Rolling Stone, that

1:13:10

same interview. And this

1:13:12

is him talking about his

1:13:15

faith and stuff. So the interviewer says, switching gears,

1:13:17

your new book revival talks a lot

1:13:19

about religion. Specifically, one of the two main characters

1:13:21

is a Reverend that turns on God when

1:13:24

his family dies, but also delivers a sermon about why religion

1:13:26

is a complete fraud. How much of

1:13:29

that sermon mirrors your own beliefs? King

1:13:31

said, my view is that organized religion is a very dangerous

1:13:33

tool that's been misused by a lot of people. I grew up in

1:13:36

a Methodist church and we went to service every Sunday. And I went

1:13:38

to Bible school in the summer. We didn't have a choice. We didn't

1:13:41

have a choice. We just did. So

1:13:44

all that stuff about childhood, religion, and revival

1:13:46

is basically autobiographical. But as a kid, I

1:13:48

had doubts. When I went to Methodist youth

1:13:51

fellowship, we are taught that the Catholics were

1:13:53

all going to hell because they worship idols.

1:13:55

So right there, I'm saying to myself, Catholics

1:13:57

are going to go to hell. But my

1:14:00

aunt Molly, married a Catholic and she converted

1:14:02

and she's got 11 kids and

1:14:04

they're all pretty nice. And one of them

1:14:06

is my good friend. They're all going to

1:14:08

hell. I'm thinking to myself, this is bullshit.

1:14:10

And if that's bullshit, how much of the

1:14:13

rest of it is bullshit? And

1:14:15

that quote I really want to put a pin in. And

1:14:18

then the interviewer said, did you

1:14:20

relay any of that to your mother? And he goes,

1:14:22

Jesus, I loved her. I never would have done that.

1:14:24

Once I got through high school, that was it for

1:14:26

me. When you

1:14:28

see somebody like Jimmy Swagger, and he's supposed

1:14:30

to be this great minister touched by God

1:14:33

and he's paying horrors because he wants to

1:14:35

look up their dresses, it's just all hypocrisy.

1:14:37

And the interviewer says, all that said, you've made

1:14:39

it clear over the years that you still believe

1:14:41

in God. He goes, yeah, I choose to believe

1:14:43

in God because it makes things better. You have

1:14:45

a meditation point, a source of strength. I don't

1:14:47

ask myself, well, does God exist or does God

1:14:49

not exist? I choose to believe that God exists

1:14:51

and therefore I can say, God, I can't do

1:14:53

this by myself. Help me not to take a

1:14:55

drink today. Help me not to take a drug

1:14:57

today. And that works fine for me. And

1:15:00

then they say, do you believe in the afterlife?

1:15:02

And he goes, I don't know. I'm totally agnostic

1:15:04

on that one. Let's put it this way. I

1:15:06

would like to believe that there is some sort

1:15:08

of an afterlife. I do believe that when we're

1:15:10

in the process of dying, that all these emergency

1:15:12

circuits in the brain take over. I base what

1:15:14

I'm saying not on any empirical evidence. I think

1:15:16

it's very possible that when you're dying, these circuits

1:15:18

open up, which would explain the whole white light

1:15:20

phenomenon. When people clinically die and they see their

1:15:22

relatives and stuff and say, hello, it's great to

1:15:24

see you. And the interviewer says, do

1:15:27

you hope to go to heaven? And he goes,

1:15:29

I don't want to go to the heaven that I learned about

1:15:31

when I was a kid. To me, it seems boring. The idea

1:15:33

that you're going to lounge around in a cloud all day and

1:15:35

listen to guys play harps. I don't want to listen to harps.

1:15:37

I want to listen to Jerry Lee Lewis, a

1:15:39

classic king. But anyways, he's not in heaven. He's

1:15:44

still alive. He's toast. Oh, no, he died in 2022.

1:15:47

Three days before Halloween seems fitting for the monster.

1:16:02

Anyways, I find it interesting that his

1:16:04

thoughts about God and religion in the afterlife

1:16:07

aren't particularly complicated. And I know a lot

1:16:09

of that comes from AA. We talked about

1:16:11

that a lot in our desperation episode. A

1:16:14

lot of his views of God

1:16:16

are centered around his sobriety, which is

1:16:18

a huge thing in AA.

1:16:21

But I think one thing

1:16:23

that really stands out to me

1:16:25

is that line, if that's bullshit,

1:16:28

then how much of the rest

1:16:30

of it is bullshit. Because

1:16:32

I think what that captures, and many times in the book,

1:16:35

there's that moment when we see chinks in

1:16:37

one of the load-bearing walls of our lives.

1:16:40

And that can have a domino effect. When

1:16:42

one thing doesn't make sense and we allow

1:16:44

ourselves to think about that, then

1:16:47

you start to realize that what foundation is

1:16:49

all of this built on. And

1:16:52

Mike mentioned this, that it's not just

1:16:54

organized religion. It's institutional. So you can

1:16:57

subject any institution to scrutiny, and you're likely

1:16:59

to start to see the flaws and the

1:17:01

contradictions. The question is whether you

1:17:03

can live with them. Because if you keep peeling

1:17:05

back layers,

1:17:08

you may find yourself drawn to

1:17:10

despair or nihilism.

1:17:13

Because I think

1:17:16

that is the whole thing about faith as somebody who

1:17:18

used to be very Christian. These things

1:17:20

are built upon the suspension

1:17:23

of disbelief in many ways. You're

1:17:25

not meant to grapple with the

1:17:28

contradictions. Some people do. There's thousands

1:17:30

and thousands and thousands of scholarly

1:17:32

books written about Christianity and

1:17:35

trying to reckon with the contradictions and

1:17:37

with the flaws and with the chinks

1:17:39

in the wall. And I

1:17:41

think King is essentially saying, why

1:17:44

do that if that's just

1:17:46

going to lead to despair? He's saying, I

1:17:48

choose to believe in God. I don't

1:17:51

know if there's an afterlife, but I do

1:17:53

the thing that makes sense to me. And

1:17:55

I think that this book is

1:17:57

a cheeky way of saying, you know,

1:18:00

you can chase those

1:18:02

answerless philosophical questions,

1:18:05

but you really just might not like

1:18:07

what's on the other side. And I

1:18:09

think that's something that we've already

1:18:11

touched on here. But

1:18:15

yeah, I'm really drawn to

1:18:17

it. And I'm drawn to this quote too.

1:18:19

This is from near

1:18:22

the end of revival. And he

1:18:24

talks about Jacob's being someone who

1:18:27

isn't interested in the mystery of faith,

1:18:30

but it's someone who would rather violate

1:18:32

it. This is what I had.

1:18:34

Yes. And I love this quote. So

1:18:36

he says, his exhalation stank of age

1:18:39

and infirmity. It occurred to me

1:18:41

that he could have waited a few months and

1:18:43

investigated what lay on the other side of the

1:18:45

door personally, but that of course wasn't what he

1:18:47

wanted. At the heart of

1:18:49

every established religion is one sacred mystery that supports

1:18:51

belief and induces fidelity, even to the point of

1:18:54

martyrdom. Did he

1:18:56

want to know what lay beyond death's door?

1:18:58

Yes. But what he wanted more, I believe

1:19:00

this with all of my heart, was to

1:19:02

violate that mystery, to drag it into the

1:19:04

light and hold it up screaming, here it

1:19:06

is. What all your crusades

1:19:08

and murder in the name of God were for?

1:19:10

Here it is, and how do you like it?

1:19:13

And so I'm really

1:19:16

just taken by this idea

1:19:18

of do we really

1:19:21

want these answers? And

1:19:23

if so, why do we want them? And

1:19:26

Jacob's who feels betrayed by God,

1:19:29

he is someone who judges those who are content

1:19:32

to believe in what he considers to be the

1:19:34

lie. They've chosen fairy tale stories

1:19:36

of heaven and hell, and

1:19:38

we do it all the time in life. We

1:19:40

choose simple narratives for our own comfort. And

1:19:43

this is where I wanted to just talk about

1:19:45

the Buick 8 connections. And Mike, you were on

1:19:47

Buick 8 with me, right? Oh, yeah. So

1:19:50

I'm sure you might have an idea. And Mel,

1:19:52

have you read Buick 8? I have not. Justin,

1:19:55

have you read it? I've read it, yeah. Okay. That

1:19:57

book, I think is interesting. And I think one of

1:19:59

the... reasons it hasn't been adapted

1:20:02

is because there's not really

1:20:04

much of a story. And

1:20:06

that's kind of the point

1:20:09

in a way where it's like, and

1:20:11

Mel, you had talked about this, the senselessness. And

1:20:13

this is where I want to circle back to

1:20:15

that because that book is all about senselessness

1:20:18

and not being able to connect

1:20:21

one string to the other string. And

1:20:23

I just have a couple of quotes here because

1:20:26

you have to get through first

1:20:28

one night and then another, and then a year of nights, and

1:20:35

then 10. You have to be able to turn

1:20:37

off the lights and lie there in the dark. You

1:20:39

have to believe you only did what would have

1:20:41

been done to you. You have to

1:20:43

arrange your thoughts because you know you can only

1:20:45

live with the lights on so much of the

1:20:47

time. And then

1:20:49

later, you don't know where you

1:20:52

came from or where you're going, do you?

1:20:54

I asked him. But you live with

1:20:56

it just the same. Don't rail

1:20:58

against it too much. Don't spend more than

1:21:00

an hour a day shaking your fists at

1:21:03

the sky and cursing God. And

1:21:06

I think this book is what

1:21:08

happens when you spend your whole life shaking your

1:21:10

fist and cursing God. And

1:21:12

then the author's note on Buick, he

1:21:14

says, the story became, I suppose, a

1:21:16

meditation on the essentially indecipherable quality of

1:21:19

life's events and how impossible it is

1:21:21

to find a coherent meaning in them.

1:21:24

And so I just wrote down, Buick was about

1:21:26

the unknowables of life and revival is in many

1:21:28

ways about the unknowables of death. So

1:21:31

I've been talking a while. So that

1:21:34

to me is, I think,

1:21:36

some of the things that really landed with

1:21:39

me. And I have some more to say, but I'm

1:21:41

curious, how do you guys react to all of that? Mike,

1:21:44

go ahead. Yeah, the Buick thing's

1:21:46

great because one of the reasons why I dug deep

1:21:48

into that was when we did the Colorado Kid, he

1:21:51

had tweeted that, yo, there's a connection

1:21:54

to Buick on the surface. Everyone's like,

1:21:57

what, dark tower? What? No. But like... is

1:22:00

rolling in it. But no, the idea

1:22:02

is, and I think it actually, my

1:22:05

theory about that was that it did have to do

1:22:07

somewhat with the Dark Tower in the sense that, this

1:22:10

idea of the expectation of ending and

1:22:12

the expectation of meeting and the

1:22:14

idea that, because you go on any

1:22:16

journey or you hear about some sort

1:22:19

of thing or you stumble

1:22:21

upon some sort of plot or

1:22:23

story, there's this expectation of

1:22:25

there being an end or

1:22:27

somebody to explain something to you

1:22:29

or someone to basically say, oh,

1:22:33

actually X, Y equals Z. But

1:22:36

that's not life and life doesn't work that

1:22:38

way. And that's largely what Beulgate is about.

1:22:40

And that's largely what Colorado kid is about,

1:22:42

is that much of the chagrin of some

1:22:44

listeners on here is, there is no, yes,

1:22:46

which is, the mystery doesn't get

1:22:48

solved because that's sometimes it's just not supposed to

1:22:50

be solved. And I think that's what life is

1:22:52

like sometimes it reminds. So when you

1:22:54

consider that, the

1:22:57

life and death of it all as you just

1:22:59

compared the two, there's two quotes

1:23:01

that I think that I pulled, I

1:23:03

don't know how I've remembered this, but

1:23:05

they're from crime and punishment and they're

1:23:07

at Dostoyevsky. And he has one

1:23:09

quote that says, your worst sin is that you

1:23:12

have destroyed and betrayed yourself for nothing. And the

1:23:14

other quote is, you sense that you should be

1:23:16

following a different path, a more ambitious one. You

1:23:18

felt that you were destined for other things, but

1:23:20

you had no idea how to achieve them. And

1:23:22

in your misery, you began

1:23:24

to hate everything around you.

1:23:26

And I think that mentality

1:23:28

explains somebody like Charles Jacobs,

1:23:31

who wants this idea to have this meaning. And

1:23:33

if, because if there is no meaning, then what

1:23:35

is the point of the people that he lost?

1:23:38

What is the point of his own life? And

1:23:40

because of that, he turns venomous,

1:23:42

he turns vitriolic. And as you were saying before,

1:23:44

it's not so much that he wants to take

1:23:46

this mystery into the light. He wants to prove

1:23:48

that none of this means shit because

1:23:51

his life means nothing. And

1:23:53

I think that's kind of one of the biggest criticisms of

1:23:55

nihilism is, oh, you know, you're just

1:23:57

miserable. And it's like, well, I don't know. Yeah,

1:23:59

maybe that is the case. a lot of the

1:24:01

times for a lot of nihilists, and certainly for

1:24:03

me, but also, I don't know, I think sometimes

1:24:05

you can just see the larger picture of things

1:24:07

and go, well, maybe it doesn't make sense, but

1:24:10

whether, are you good or bad to draw out

1:24:12

these things? And I don't know, be self-righteous about

1:24:14

it as Jacob's kind of is in the end

1:24:16

of this. I don't know, but that's,

1:24:19

anyway, that's a lot of word vomit, but that's

1:24:21

kind of what I've been seeing

1:24:24

with all of these, you know, all these. I

1:24:26

almost feel like he is vindicated,

1:24:28

man. I feel like the book, again,

1:24:30

it's trying to do, its

1:24:32

positioning is very clear, and I also highlighted

1:24:35

that line about violating the mystery because it's

1:24:37

so good, and you can tell that the

1:24:39

book, right then, wants you

1:24:41

to take the side of the voice

1:24:43

that's saying, don't violate the mystery, right?

1:24:45

You're supposed to follow it, you're like,

1:24:47

yeah, don't do that, that's the Frankenstein

1:24:49

message, the hubris message, but

1:24:53

he does violate the mystery. He gets his answer, and it just

1:24:55

is. I

1:24:59

don't think that

1:25:02

we're left with a clear, like, oh,

1:25:04

he shouldn't have done that because we're

1:25:06

all going there anyway. It's just a matter of time.

1:25:09

Like, don't be honest answer. Yeah, but he also drove

1:25:11

countless people to kill themselves and other people, though, in

1:25:13

like, awful ways, you know? But in the large scheme

1:25:15

of things, what does it matter? I mean, that's- Yeah,

1:25:17

it doesn't matter. That's the bluntness of the ending line.

1:25:19

Yeah, but the whole point is, like, you

1:25:22

live your life, even what Jamie's trying to do in

1:25:24

this book, is you're trying to at least, you know,

1:25:26

stay sane and live your life in some, as opposed

1:25:28

to, like, dying or throwing sand

1:25:30

in your eyes or killing your

1:25:33

lover or something like that. I think- The

1:25:35

book is trying to say that, but I

1:25:37

think its own ending overpowers the

1:25:40

morality of its supposed premise. Like, I

1:25:42

just feel like it's so nihilist that

1:25:44

you're like, okay. Well, because there's

1:25:46

no Schrödinger's cat at the end, right? Right.

1:25:49

Like, we know what it is. We know

1:25:51

what it is. We know what it is.

1:25:53

We're like, it's- If you kept it vague,

1:25:55

then you, I think there could be some

1:25:57

sort of more morality aspect

1:25:59

to this. if you needed that, but I

1:26:01

think the

1:26:03

idea that he does prove this, and of

1:26:05

course, you could still make the argument that,

1:26:08

maybe it's in his head, and then what

1:26:10

they saw is what they saw, and maybe

1:26:12

it's not as face value as what

1:26:14

King pretends it to be, but I don't think it

1:26:16

is, and I think the ending is supposed to be

1:26:19

as blunt as it is, and in

1:26:21

that way, that's what makes it so nihilistic, even

1:26:24

beyond the characters, is that, what

1:26:26

would matter, does it matter? Is

1:26:29

the knowledge bad? No, it's just

1:26:32

knowledge. But the

1:26:34

thing is, once you have that knowledge, then

1:26:36

there's this other line from Buickay that I

1:26:38

highlighted, which is, we knew nothing about it,

1:26:40

not really. Telling ourselves we did was just

1:26:42

a strategy we used so we could continue

1:26:45

living next door to it without too many

1:26:47

bad dreams, and that's when talking about the

1:26:49

Buickay, which is this unknowable thing that they

1:26:51

can't figure out that they just know is,

1:26:53

in some ways, evil, and I

1:26:56

think that what Jamie lives

1:26:59

with at the end, he has to tell himself that

1:27:01

maybe mother lied because how else is he gonna keep

1:27:03

going through his life? And then,

1:27:05

what's the flip side of that, religion? Yeah,

1:27:07

well, exactly. I need to

1:27:09

tell these things to keep going, or to believe

1:27:12

things, or to cope, to get over death, to

1:27:14

get over any of my things. And

1:27:16

that's what I love about King's quote about God,

1:27:18

where he's basically saying, I am one of those

1:27:21

people who just tells myself there is a God

1:27:23

because he says it's easier. It's

1:27:25

nice because I don't wanna

1:27:27

live without that hope. And I

1:27:29

don't know, I find that to be

1:27:31

a simplification, a

1:27:36

beautiful simplification of an extremely

1:27:38

thorny and complex subject, and

1:27:41

that's what I think King is very good at sometimes.

1:27:43

So I don't know, those

1:27:45

are big ideas. We can circle back around to him. I

1:27:48

got one question. Oh, yeah, go ahead. So one

1:27:51

thing that I thought about here is that, there

1:27:54

is that quote, Jen brings it up all the time from Pet

1:27:56

Sematary. It's like, oh, I think we go on when Louis is

1:27:58

talking to Ellie. And

1:28:01

so the concept of going on, let's

1:28:03

say, here are two examples.

1:28:06

One, it's over, that's it.

1:28:09

That's one scenario. That's it, it's

1:28:11

done. You don't exist, the soul is gone,

1:28:13

that's it. Boom, pitch black. Or

1:28:16

you go to Knoll

1:28:18

and you get to hang out

1:28:20

with all the old past souls of yourself, but you're getting

1:28:22

tortured. What's, which one of

1:28:25

you rather have? Well, the first

1:28:27

one, obviously. You never existed or you

1:28:29

still exist, but you are everyone else. You

1:28:31

get to be tortured with your friends. The

1:28:34

first one. It's very unclear, like, you know, are

1:28:37

we conscious in Knoll? Can we talk

1:28:39

to people? Probably not. It

1:28:41

seems like a lot of torment. How

1:28:43

can we talk to people? Yeah, it seems tough.

1:28:46

Well, because even him's like, well, he doesn't know a

1:28:48

kiddie. Yeah, can we have a revolution against the ants?

1:28:50

Like, it seems like no. Yeah,

1:28:53

well, what's the quote, the Lovecraft quote from

1:28:55

the beginning? And what he says is that

1:28:57

is not dead, which can turn a lie

1:28:59

with strange aeons. Even death may die. And

1:29:02

even as a moment that he suggests, well, maybe

1:29:04

even after this next reality we go to, when

1:29:07

you do die somehow, you

1:29:10

move on to maybe the heaven or whatever,

1:29:12

or the final hell. But I still think

1:29:14

this is it. I think that ant place

1:29:16

is the end

1:29:18

of the line. Well, along those lines,

1:29:20

I'm curious how you guys like the

1:29:22

Lovecraft codes, because it is pretty explicit.

1:29:26

And I was thinking a

1:29:28

lot about Dark Tower, where he

1:29:30

made his influences so explicit in

1:29:33

the final books. Like, he

1:29:35

brings like the Harry Potter fucking world to

1:29:37

the Dark Tower. And

1:29:39

I almost had a shade of that here

1:29:42

with the Lovecraft mythos. Like, I'm like, just

1:29:44

invent your own thing, dude. But at the

1:29:46

same time, I did kind of like it.

1:29:49

And I will say he's done this before,

1:29:51

this idea of de Vermas mysterious, or mysteries

1:29:53

of the worm. It's

1:29:56

a fictional grimoire created by Robert

1:29:59

Block, of Psycho and

1:30:01

incorporated by H. P. Lovecraft into the

1:30:03

lore of Cthulhu. So this is the

1:30:05

same book that was mentioned in Jerusalem's

1:30:07

Lot, which you mentioned earlier, Mike. So

1:30:09

that was the very first story in

1:30:11

Night Shift. And then also it was

1:30:13

mentioned on Chapel Way, the TV adaptation

1:30:15

of it. So yeah, it's like King

1:30:17

is sort of this fictional grimoire that

1:30:20

Lovecraft and Robert Block wrote about was mentioned

1:30:23

in a couple of different stories from both

1:30:25

of them. So King, I feel like this

1:30:27

was his way of paying homage to them is kind

1:30:29

of incorporating it into this book. Do

1:30:32

you guys like that approach? Are you

1:30:34

Lovecraft fans? Mel, are you a Lovecraft

1:30:36

fan? I read a lot of Lovecraft

1:30:38

in college and sort of

1:30:40

branded myself a Lovecraft fan for a

1:30:42

while, but I feel like people act like

1:30:45

he has this monopoly on cosmic horror when

1:30:47

really he's just the name

1:30:49

that people know. I mean,

1:30:51

is it really that it

1:30:54

reminds me of just like stand up comedy and

1:30:56

people accusing other people of plagiarizing

1:30:58

jokes when it's just like, no, that's just

1:31:00

like a popular type of joke. I don't

1:31:02

think H. P. Lovecraft has a

1:31:04

copyright on the concept of old insane

1:31:07

gods. He's just like the name we

1:31:09

associate with them. So fine,

1:31:12

Lovecraftian can be that descriptor. I just

1:31:14

don't think we need to give him

1:31:16

that much credit when King does something

1:31:19

like this. It feels also

1:31:21

Kingian at this point. He's so fond of

1:31:23

it and he puts his own spin on

1:31:25

it. I just feel like the

1:31:28

unknowable is just horror and we don't

1:31:30

always need to give the nod to H. P. Well,

1:31:35

like I said, this was

1:31:37

Robert Bloch's invention was the

1:31:39

book and then King, Lovecraft

1:31:41

used it. I just never

1:31:43

would have paired Robert Bloch and H. P. Lovecraft

1:31:45

together based on what I know about Lovecraft. I

1:31:49

really like Psycho and the Psycho II

1:31:51

book is actually quite good, but man,

1:31:53

I never would have paired them together at all.

1:31:55

It's so wild. Apparently when Robert Bloch was a

1:31:57

teenager, they had like a pen pen. kind

1:32:00

of correspondence. And that's really crazy to me.

1:32:02

I know. Because Lovecraft is held in such

1:32:04

high regard, and Block is kind of held

1:32:07

up as this kind of, you

1:32:09

know, honestly, like a hard crime novelist.

1:32:11

Yeah. But it's like, we should be talking

1:32:13

about Freud all the time. I mean, he's the one who has

1:32:15

a whole essay on the uncanny. But we don't do that. We

1:32:18

just talk about H.P. Lovecraft. We

1:32:20

just talk about Freud enough. Haven't

1:32:23

you seen Lovecraft function? We cut hours of

1:32:25

Freud content, and I demand we add it

1:32:27

back in. Mike, what

1:32:29

were you going to say? Well, I mean, if you

1:32:31

have this mention in here, does this mean that, I

1:32:33

mean, especially when you consider the context of Jerusalem's lot,

1:32:36

that King's Dominion exists in

1:32:39

Lovecraft Dominion, that there is a

1:32:41

cathedral. Adrian Brody's there. Adrian

1:32:43

Brody's there. I mean, it's. Stars Network is there.

1:32:45

It just seems to get these texts. I'll go

1:32:48

to Noliv, Adrian Brody's there. Well,

1:32:50

then you could be next to him when

1:32:53

the ant thing is whipping or whatever

1:32:55

it's doing. Yeah. It's

1:32:57

not nihilistic anymore. It's not

1:32:59

much better at luck. Isn't that better

1:33:01

than, you know, not existing? That

1:33:04

would be like the equivalent to me of having

1:33:07

a hell with Adrian Brody better than not existing.

1:33:09

It's a nice, nice deep sleep that you

1:33:11

wake up the next morning. If you just never wake up, you're just

1:33:13

in a permanent sleep. I'll take it. I'll take that. Over being tortured

1:33:16

by ants forever. Do you think

1:33:18

like if you were in hell with Adrian Brody,

1:33:20

he might give you like some insights in what

1:33:22

Chapelweight season two might have been like? Because there

1:33:24

was. Hell is a turtle. So like by

1:33:26

the law of probability, like, yes, 100%. Absolutely.

1:33:29

He's like off the streaming networks to know what they were

1:33:31

up against with Netflix. Oh, my

1:33:33

God. I wonder if

1:33:36

you mentioned that there were pen pals, Robert Block

1:33:38

and Lovecraft. Can't imagine what atrocities

1:33:40

are in those letters. You

1:33:43

know, it's like during the civil rights

1:33:45

movement. I don't know about Robert Block's

1:33:47

personal politics. But maybe he was admonishing

1:33:49

or getting upset at HP. Anyway, I

1:33:52

like the Lovecraft stuff. I like it.

1:33:54

He likes it. Put it

1:33:56

in there. That's fine. I just feel like Lovecraft gets

1:33:58

too much credit all this. for like

1:34:00

a very broad horror concept. No, I

1:34:03

like that take. So, okay, let's move

1:34:05

on. King was in his early to

1:34:07

mid 60s when he wrote this

1:34:09

book. Jamie Morton is around the same age

1:34:11

in the books present. How would you say

1:34:13

we see his age reflected in the text?

1:34:15

I think we've talked about the existential components

1:34:17

of it, but I also

1:34:20

think that King is reckoning with

1:34:22

being an old man in this a little bit.

1:34:24

You know what I mean? Like, I have this

1:34:26

quote. I found this kind of sad. He

1:34:30

goes, I didn't exactly consider myself retired, but I

1:34:32

hadn't played in front of a live audience in

1:34:34

over a year and had only sat in on

1:34:36

three or four recording sessions, all cases of dire

1:34:38

emergency. I did not equip myself well in any

1:34:40

of them. During the playback of one, I caught

1:34:43

the drummer grimacing as if he'd bitten onto something

1:34:45

sour. He saw me looking at him and said

1:34:47

the bass had fallen out of tune. It hadn't

1:34:49

and we both knew it. If it's ridiculous for

1:34:51

a man in his 50s to be playing bedroom

1:34:53

games with a woman young enough to be his

1:34:56

daughter, it's just as ridiculous for him to be

1:34:58

playing a Stratton high-stepping to dirty water. Still,

1:35:00

I watched those guys kick out the jams

1:35:02

with some longing and quite a lot of

1:35:04

nostalgia. And then on the next

1:35:06

page, because I still dated the occasional lady, I still

1:35:08

played tennis twice a week and rode my bike at

1:35:11

least six miles a day, which kept my stomach flat

1:35:13

and my endorphins flowing. Sure, I saw a few more

1:35:15

lines around my mouth and eyes when I shaved, but

1:35:17

on the whole, I thought I looked about the same

1:35:19

as ever. That, of course, is the benign illusion of

1:35:21

one's later years. It took going back to Harlow in

1:35:23

the summer of 2013 for me to

1:35:25

understand the truth. I was just another frog in

1:35:28

a pot. The good news was that so far,

1:35:30

the temperature had only been turned up to medium.

1:35:32

The bad was that the process wouldn't be stopping

1:35:34

anytime soon. The three true ages of man are

1:35:36

youth, middle age, and how the fuck did I

1:35:38

get old so soon? And

1:35:40

I think there's a lot of moments like this.

1:35:43

And I think I can even... I

1:35:45

don't think I can defend it, but his affair with

1:35:47

Brie, which is just really awkward

1:35:49

and misery-laden. And

1:35:52

I do think it's kind of like... He has

1:35:54

a line where he's basically like, yeah, that was

1:35:56

the last young chick I ever made. Yeah.

1:36:00

And I think that there is a certain amount of, as

1:36:02

you get older, you're just like, oh, well, I'm

1:36:04

never gonna do that again. This

1:36:10

is where I get like armchair psychiatrists with this, where it's

1:36:12

like, all right, we

1:36:15

know how he writes, right? So he's got ideas, but

1:36:17

he just kind of hits the page and just sprints.

1:36:20

So like, if you consider the two bookends of like, all

1:36:22

right, I know where we started and I know where kind

1:36:25

of we have to get to, we got to get to,

1:36:27

as I said before, the fireworks factory. Everything

1:36:30

in between is like, his

1:36:32

like fucking rock and roll fantasy. He's just like, I'm

1:36:34

gonna go and be, I

1:36:36

wanna be a musician. I've got my booze,

1:36:38

I've got my babes, and

1:36:40

I've got my bikes. And these

1:36:43

are all things that he likes. Like

1:36:45

he is a motorcyclist. Like he rides

1:36:47

hogs all the time across Maine. He

1:36:51

loves music, he loves it. Like

1:36:53

so I do think- Rock bottom remainders. You know,

1:36:55

I don't try to be too king-site here and

1:36:58

king point of view, but this is absolutely

1:37:00

something that I think he relishes being.

1:37:03

Like that sort of autonomy that Jamie

1:37:05

has. Like there's no family commitments. There's

1:37:08

no real job commitments. He kind of just gets to

1:37:10

kind of, you know, relish in

1:37:12

the extremities of life. And I do wonder if

1:37:14

there's a part of him, again,

1:37:16

armchair psychiatrist, that's like, yeah, this is kind of fun

1:37:18

for a while. Although he's still content with the dangers

1:37:20

of it all. You know, that shows that like- Yeah,

1:37:22

that's the thing. There's so many consequences. But there is

1:37:25

a part of it where he's like, I'm having fun

1:37:27

with this. It seems one to one, like

1:37:29

not even aspirational, but just like real. Like

1:37:31

this is almost his life already.

1:37:33

Like he gets to play with his band. I

1:37:36

do the focus on aging in this book.

1:37:40

I feel like my main problem with Stephen

1:37:43

King works is

1:37:45

always the texts

1:37:47

insistence on physical ability and

1:37:50

physical appearance reflecting something

1:37:52

deeper. And

1:37:57

like the aging is where we see this here. There's

1:38:00

there's a really refreshing kind of honesty,

1:38:03

I think present with it when he sees Astrid. He's

1:38:05

like, I wish I could tell you that she was

1:38:07

a looker still, but honestly, she was

1:38:09

awful. And like, there

1:38:12

that is again, like, that's that can be

1:38:14

refreshing in the sense that like, that's

1:38:16

a thought we all have that's tapped into the

1:38:18

gut of the human, but the book takes

1:38:21

it one step further and is and is

1:38:23

usually just like, and that means she's just

1:38:25

like bad now, like she actually is worthless.

1:38:27

It is only when she gets healed that

1:38:29

we get the kiss. It is

1:38:32

like, you know, like the book really does

1:38:34

believe and I think, you know, I don't

1:38:36

want to do too much armchair, whatever. But

1:38:38

I think I think this is one of

1:38:40

King's biggest problems as a writer is he

1:38:43

really, really believes that we lose innate dignity

1:38:46

with our bodies

1:38:48

failing or not to a certain standard

1:38:50

of attractiveness. Like he really equates those

1:38:52

two things. And that's very present in

1:38:55

this book with aging in particular. And

1:38:57

he's reckoning with it himself. Yeah. I

1:39:00

mean, he told us that himself with the dreamcatcher stuff when

1:39:02

you guys were all talking about him, you know, shit in

1:39:04

his pants and stuff and that being like the biggest fucking

1:39:06

fear. I mean, it's true. I

1:39:08

mean, I can't. I

1:39:11

agree in the sense that like there is

1:39:13

so much more to aging than that. Having

1:39:16

said that is probably the most

1:39:18

vain person in this podcast. Also it is

1:39:21

my greatest fear. Like I go

1:39:23

and see like who's the guy from

1:39:25

Mary Mary Poppin Dick Van Dyke. Yeah.

1:39:27

I'm in a video of him. He's like 98 years

1:39:30

old. Granted, he's always grinning, but he

1:39:32

looks great. I'm like, holy shit. He looks great at

1:39:34

98 and he's still fucking dancing. I hope I can

1:39:37

do that. You know, 70, 70. He's

1:39:40

probably doing a bazook knowing him. Dick Van Dyke. No

1:39:42

way. No way. I

1:39:44

just did. I just took my shot.

1:39:46

But that's it is the first thing I think of, you

1:39:48

know, like I've been obsessed with Clint Eastwood. I'm

1:39:51

obsessed with his mortality. I want him to live another 40 years. I

1:39:53

see him hunching a little bit. I'm like, all right, Clint, maybe

1:39:56

there's something we can do where you can, you're not hunching

1:39:58

so much anymore. Oh, zem pic. First thing I

1:40:00

think, so it is the visual of it all and

1:40:04

the agency or the lack of agency you have

1:40:06

for the body, it is something

1:40:08

that does come to mind. Like my mother is bedridden

1:40:11

and oh my God, that's all

1:40:13

she talks about. Like, and

1:40:15

like, you know, and just like she still wants to make up, she

1:40:18

still wants all these things. So the vanity of that, again,

1:40:20

I come from a very vain family. So this is, she's

1:40:22

probably an exception to the rule here, but it's

1:40:24

like, she'll be like, all right, I need

1:40:26

to get some new products. I'm like, okay, so what food

1:40:29

do you want? Well, no, I

1:40:31

need some blush and I need some, I'm like, mom, what do

1:40:33

you need all this fucking stuff for? You're in a bed. Like,

1:40:36

what are you gonna do? And that's her priority.

1:40:38

So it's like, and she's 69, seven

1:40:40

years old. So there is that, I

1:40:42

do think that it does stick with us. Like it

1:40:44

is, you know, but there is more