The Outsider

A lot of fun over there.

Speaking of the works of Stephen King, I am currently reading The Outsider, the first, uh, Holly Gibney novel-

Excellent

... uh, as a solo character anyway.

More than probably, yes.

I will say this.

I was, I was listening to The Outsider today, and I was reminded of the fact that Stephen King uses the word fat liberally in his novels.

Mm.

Two full paragraph.

One paragraph is about how good The Outsider was.

And the ne- the following paragraph is like, "This is a Castle Rock book.

Yeah, there was a last Castle Rock story.

All the time.

Or maybe you've stared at a massive brick-sized novel on your nightstand and just thought, "I honestly do not have the time to commit to this."

Yeah, that guilt of the unread book pile, it is real.

It is so real.

Like really dive in.

Yeah, exactly.

Whether it's a huge doorstopper novel or, I don't know, a new binge watch on streaming, there's this underlying expectation of precision.

We wanna know what we are getting into.

Exactly.

How do communities, and specifically the justice system, process impossible world-breaking facts? Let's look at King as a master of the procedural, starting with The Outsider.

The Outsider requires another substantial commitment, running about 18 and a half hours, once again narrated by Will Patton.

The narrative structure here is fascinating because it does not start as a horror novel.

Not at all.

But as the forensics start aggressively contradicting common sense, you can hear that rigid cadence slowly begin to fray.

That vocal fraying is the emotional core of the performance, and it raises a critical question about why audio is the perfect medium for this specific story.

The Outsider is fundamentally a novel about the concept of testimony.

I don't know why I said that.

I reread The Outsider when I was working on this book as well.

And that was like a really useful, also very, very good.

But I would love to watch the show.

This is...

I kind of thought about comps as to vibe, like, where are we from a vibe perspective? And the best I can do is Mare of Easttown, but mix it with Stephen King's The Outsider, and then pour in a heavy amount of the movie Weapons.

That's kind of the neighborhood that, that we're living in here.

There's a couple of reader know thyself notes before you dive in.