Stephen King and Peter Straub’s ‘Black House’ Is As Funny As It’s Grisly [The Losers’ Club Podcast]

“The King is in his Tower, eating bread and honey. The Breakers in the basement, making all the money…”

Stephen King plays well with others. He’s collaborated with numerous writers, filmmakers, and innovators, but no one’s challenged him quite like Peter Straub, the writer of books like Ghost Story and Julia. Together, the pair wrote 1984’s The Talisman, a fantasy epic about a gifted boy who pivots between two worlds as he crosses the country in search of the story’s magical namesake. It took them 17 years, but in 2001, a sequel followed. Called Black House, it nudged up against King’s Dark Tower mythos in its tale of a serial killer in a small Wisconsin town.

Black House is an odd duck, a behemoth of a sequel that’s as funny as it is grisly. In this episode, Losers Randall Colburn, Jenn Adams, Dan Caffrey, and Dan Pfleegor grapple with the story’s tonal irregularities and celebrate its unbridled nastiness. They also discuss its role as a narrative bridge in King’s Dark Tower saga, and how its portrait of Mid-World dovetails with the fantasy world of The Talisman. Is its stark portrait of good and evil simplistic or subversive?

Stream the three-hour book episode below and return next week when the Losers invite another special guest to the Derry Public Library for a spirited chat within King’s Dominion. For further adventures, join the Losers’ Club over long days and pleasant nights via Apple PodcastsSpotifyRadioPublicAcastGoogle Podcasts, and RSS.

You can also unlock hundreds of hours of exclusive content in The Barrens (Patreon), including their new spinoff series, Talkin’ Hawkins, which sees them dissecting each season of Stranger Things for the next four months.

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The post Stephen King and Peter Straub’s ‘Black House’ Is As Funny As It’s Grisly [The Losers’ Club Podcast] appeared first on Bloody Disgusting!.