Why Does Stephen King Hate the Wheel of Time?

i had not read any of the game of thrones books and i had kind of a uh a thing where i said to myself you know probably don't want to read these things because you know i tried to read robert jordan and i couldn't read any of those books and uh so i thought probably these are just terrible stephen king hates the wheel of time apparently we can't have it all you know we were getting greedy we were getting i don't know where i'm going with that i watched this conversation between george rr martin and stephen king a long time ago and you know what this clip always uh stuck with me this video is going to be a kind of um exploration of what exactly this comment means and my own speculation about what it means because it caused me a lot more distress than i would like to admit why because i feel like all of my my favorite writers need to like each other that's weird i'm currently reading both of these writers most popular fantasy series the dark tower right and um the other the that one why does stephen king hate the wheel of time point one let's look at the first book of both of these series first book of the wheel of time is a very grounded realistic take on a kind of traditional fantasy epic so we have that and then let's look at the first book of the dark tower series i don't know what tradition it's coming from except it's a mashup of western sergio leone science fiction acid trip book one may be a a western acid trip but book 2 is like an 80s james cameron action flick book 3 is a talking train these are really totally different series point number two i don't want to speculate too much about this because it is just speculation but i think there is a type of battle between writers especially since stephen king was writing the dark tower series throughout the 90s well throughout the 80s the 90s and the early 2000s i think stephen king's just standalone horror novels probably sold better but his his dark tower books from my understanding didn't reach the kind of popularity that uh the wheel of time did and again this is just speculation who knows maybe stephen king had a piece of uh crappy moldy bread before he picked up with the eye of the world and was like oh man my stomach hurts and i don't i'm just not vibing with these characters i'm gonna put it down and never read it again that could be the case who knows now point number three and the final point from what i understand about robert jordan's writing process is that he was a serious plotter and planned out each book had notes substantial notes especially for brandon sanderson when he took over this at the end of the series i think that's just fundamentally different to how a writer like stephen king or george rr martin crafts a story just flying through seeing what happens you get that sense from the dark tower series it can go here it can go there it can go literally anywhere you wouldn't see fourth wall breaks in the wheel of time that's what i'm trying to say in conclusion while stephen king's comments were kind of like uh huh i wonder why he hates the wheel of time now that i think about it more it it does make a lot of sense they do seem like very different writers in terms of their approach to storytelling their interests and their personal takes on fantasy you know because these are two writers who really put two massive epics out one is super self-referential unplanned and one is meticulously planned uh very self-contained it's it's just an interesting case study you know in a lot of ways between how to how-to writers uh in their prime approached the idea of like rewriting tolkien writing the epic fantasy uh for their time what do you all think huh is it just is it just me do i think am i the only kind of person who thinks this is interesting i've been i've been reading too much of the dark tower in the wheel of time honestly because this is starting to and naturally as a person who thinks in binaries i want to side with one over the other but no i can't do that i can't do that it's wrong i like them both for very different reasons thanks for [Music] watching

Channel: Man Carrying Thing

Views: 421,182

Keywords: stephen king, the dark tower, the wheel of time, the eye of the world, the gunslinger, the way of kings, the stormlight archive, brandon sanderson, george r r martin, game of thrones

Id: Md7qFEREVmc

Length: 4min 41sec (281 seconds)

Published: Wed Aug 04 2021