You see, I woke up, and felt like challenging myself today. The first thing that came to mind was to continue copyediting that highly theoretical MPhil thesis on a subject that I know exactly bugger all about (that would be archaeology). But no, I felt like I needed something bigger. Something more daunting. Something that would take blood, sweat, and tears (even if they’re only metaphorical).

So I decided, today I am going to attempt to have fun.

I texted Roger, God of Weather, and asked him if he could return that favour he owed me and make today’s weather glorious. He was a little reluctant, but eventually gave in.

As luck would have it, my Shakespeare tutor is psychic, and when he was organising the course, he sensed that I would need a day free of any real obligations, so he decided to cancel today’s seminar.

And there seems to be something going around, as my geek friends also divined that today was the perfect day to go watch superheroes blow shit up.

Thanks to this, my day is going to be filled with the following:

• take shower
• buy breakfast and supplies
• ingest breakfast
• slather on vast amounts of sunscreen
• go to the castle (I can’t believe I live round the corner from a bloody castle, it’s fantastic)
• sit in the sun
• read books
• ingest shandy and possibly a croissant
• go to Amsterdam
• have food with friends
• go see Watchmen on a dizzyingly big screen

No, it won’t be easy. No, it won’t be fast. But I think that if I work hard and get a little lucky, I’ll be able to pull it off. Ladies and gentlemen, I think that I might actually enjoy myself today.

Not only do I love how the Anglo-Saxons turned everything into EPIC WAR in their poetry and prose, I also enjoy the fact that Aelfred was all about culturally uplifting his people, not to mention the culture that he was so crazy about.

Christianity was a large part of that culture. I’ve been interested in it since my first year at uni, when I took a Cultural Backgrounds course. We had to read the classics and the King James Bible. I was familiar with the classics, thanks to my gymnasium high school thing. (Here in the Netherlands, that doesn’t mean that you’re good at sports–it means you’re taught Greek and/or Latin, and you’re made familiar with classical culture. For the record, I was dreadful at most sports, unless it involved doing lots of sit-ups, being really flexible, or hockey.)

I can tell you about the odd plumbing reference in Piramus and Thisbe (and how, unfortunately, Shakespeare left this out of Romeo and Juliet), but my knowledge of Christianity still feels lacking. Luckily for me, I’m friends with the awesome Matthew Baugh, a pastor who writes wonderfully pulpy fiction in his spare time. He’s helped me learn a lot about religion and spiritual matters, and has done so in a kind and understanding way. 

Now, the denizens of the Interwebs who are not fortunate enough to have Matthew as a part of their lives can read his musings on this subject in his blog God and Stuff.

It’s readable, interesting, accesible, and just plain good.

So I was stoked as all get-out when I finally found a copy of Needful Things.

I’ve always heard people say that this was only so-so. I didn’t get that at all for the first seven hundred pages. (Seven hundred pages. Mmm.) I was completely into all the storylines, I was having fun exploring the characters, and loving how I was being dragged into Castle Rock.

In fact, up until the bit where the two religious groups started beating the crap out of each other, I was wondering how it was possible that so many people rate It over this. Surely this was much better entertainment, even if it wasn’t as emotionally involving?

Then I read the last thirty-odd pages, and I realised that I’d just seen one of the least satisfying endings I’ve yet encountered. I’m frequently disappointed by endings (I watched Anamorph last night, and an otherwise brilliant movie was tempered by the too-vague, too-open ending, with the non-character villain remaining a total non-character), but this one really irked me.

I was ready to put Needful Things up there as my favourite King novel. (I’m a King ho, so this is no easy feat.) But yeah, then the final thirty-odd pages happened, and I suddenly understood the ‘meh’ that I’ve encountered in other people.

I’ve been thinking about it, and I think these are the reasons that the ending fell flat for me:

First of all, the transition from build-up to actual finale was too gradual. I’m all for slow pacing and intricate detail (anyone who isn’t shouldn’t even be in the same building as Needful Things), but the malicious pranks just kept getting worse, and I didn’t even raise an eyebrow when people started shooting each other. Maybe I should have read the book in less sittings? I’m not sure. But I was surprised when I reached the whole ‘date of writing’ bit at the end. I was waiting for another forty pages.

Also, Leland Gaunt was a bit of a wet blanket when he turned into a monster. I know that a lot of people itch for the Big Reveal, but the power of Leland Gaunt was in what he symbolised for the reader. For me, he was a Lovecraftian thing that fed off of greed and avarice. He had no shape other than that which he chose to project onto the minds of his victims.

When he turned into a demon-thing, I was kinda bummed.

And then, last but not least, there was the way in which Alan beat Gaunt. Sure, the confrontation between the two of them had been set up right from the start, so I knew he was going to be the one who took  him down. But I was expecting more. I was expecting anger and hatred and blood and guts and death and horror and lots of other things. What I got was a few pages of frustrating Dark Tower references and a frankly silly final exit that conjured up images of that one Kaiser Chiefs video.

Now, Dark Tower references aren’t a bad thing. In fact, I love Dark Tower references. I get all happy and warm and fuzzy whenever I spot one. But this just felt like a cop-out. I can’t imagine what it would have been like for a reader who didn’t get the reference–disappointing and confusing? Something like that.

It reminded me a lot of Insomnia. I loved that novel as well, right up to the end. Creepy monsters? Check. Well-realised protagonist? Check. Engrossing storyline? Check. Relatively empty ending due to Dark Tower connection? Very check.

And the end of Insomina even got retconned, to add insult to injury.

I still enjoyed the book, and I’m certain that I’ll return to it some other time when I feel the need to lose myself in a big story. It’s just a huge shame, as seven hundred pages of buildup really deserve a finale that is of appropriate length and mindblowingness.

Oh, and one more thing: We Just Don’t Know. It’s a recurring theme in King’s stuff (this, From A Buick 8, The Dark Tower, The Colorado Kid), and I actually really like it. I would have enjoyed the ending to this a lot more if I hadn’t seen Gaunt ride off into the night in a crazy flying waggon, or whatever it was, and hadn’t seen him set up shop in another town. Not finding out, when done properly (ahem, Anamorph), is satisfying. ‘And it started all over again and almost nothing changed’ isn’t. If there was a horn that had previously been lost, then I didn’t pick up on it on this read. 

Yeah, definitely a book I’m going to have to go back to.

I’ll keep you updated.

I’m sojourning with the fam, and attempting to not spread the lergy while still being gezellig.

For the non-Dutch reading this, that link may not say that much at first. I mean, it’s all Dutch, with a few nice pictures. (I think that that photo of the pigs is the best depiction of gezelligheid I’ve ever seen.) But look down the side. There’s no links to versions of that article in other languages.

But if you go to the Dutch page for cats, you’ll see that there are loads of other language versions of that page. There’s even on in Anglo Saxon, which is wicked awesome.

But yeah, gezelligheid seems to be something uniquely Dutch. Well, the word does. That feeling of happiness that you get when partaking in particularly successful social interactions is not something you feel only when around people who speak Dutch. But the Dutch are the only people who have managed to capture it in a word, related to company (gezelschap in the abstract, whereas one who keeps you company is a gezel). If I had to translate the word literally, it’d turn out to be something like ‘company-y’, which fails at English.

I think the Germans came quite close with their Gemütlichkeit. But if you Google it, the first link that comes up is the Wikipedia article about gezelligheid.

Does this have an actual point? Nope, not really. I just really like gezelligheid, and I like thinking about fairly unique words.

Not the ‘flu, though. That sucks.

I appreciate that others have taken the time to point out my errors. I wish that I hadn’t said anything hurtful, as no personal lesson is worth hurting others.

I’m trying to become aware of the stupidity that my own privilege is resulting in. I hate the idea that my ignorance could lead to other people being offended or hurt.

Also, to clarify, the ‘mess’ that I was referring to was referring to the name-calling, the disrespect, and general flip-flopping and flailing going on. There have been a number of posts that really made me open my eyes and realise how damned ignorant I’ve been, but there have also been plenty of posts that made my mind boggle.

ETA: I realise now how incredibly me-centric my previous post was. Unfortunately, it took someone else pointing it out for me to see that. It just goes to show how bloody ignorant I am, despite my hopes that I had at least  a smidgen of insight. 

I even mentioned people making it about themselves. Big fail on my part.

It was also pointed out that I didn’t make any clear reference to RF for people who haven’t been following it. I use the link list complied by rydra_wong here.

The post that pointed out how egocentric and essentially stupid my post was may well be the most important thing I’ll ever read. I really did think I had a grip on the subject, but I made it about me, and put my foot in my mouth on a massive scale. If I’ve upset or offended anyone, I’m sorry.