Introduction: On Writing Popular Philosophy 1 Jacob M. Held 1 There Is No God in Desperation: Tak and the Problem of Evil 13 C. Taylor Sutton and Jacob Held 2 Female Subjectivity in Carrie 35 Kellye Byal 3 “Sometimes Dead Is Better”: King, Daedalus, Dragon- Tyrants, and Deathism 47 Katherine Allen 4 “Gan Is Dead”: Nietzsche and Roland’s Eternal Recurrence 71 Garret Merriam 5 Rāma of Gilead: Hindu Philosophy in The Dark Tower 83 Matthew A. Butkus 6 What’s Wrong with Roland?: Utilitarianism and the Dark Tower 97 Greg Littmann 7 Stephen King and Aristotelian Friendship: An Analysis of The Body and Rita Hayworth and the Shawshank Redemption 113 Bertha Alvarez Manninen 8 Propaganda and Pedagogy for Apt Pupils 131 Michael K. Potter and Cam Cobb 9 The Shining’s Overlook Hotel as Heterotopia 147 Elizabeth Hornbeck 10 Broadcast Dystopia: Power and Violence in The Running Man and The Long Walk 161 Joseph J. Foy and Timothy M. Dale 11 Stephen King and the Art of Horror 173 Greg Littmann 12 “You Weren’t Hired to Philosophize, Torrance”: The Death of the Author in The Shining 195 Charles Bane 13 What Happens to the Present When It Becomes the Past: Time Travel and the Nature of Time in The Langoliers 207 Paul R. Daniels 14 Notes on Foreknowledge, Truthmaking, and Counterfactuals from The Dead Zone 219 Tuomas W. Manninen 15 Time Belongs to the Tower 231 Randall Auxier 16 Ur 88,416 253 Randall Auxier 17 From Desperation to Haven: Horror, Compassion, and Arthur Schopenhauer 277 Jacob M. Held Ka-tet: Author Biographies 299

Author Stephen King, despite his popularity, is largely derided in academic circles, typecast as a genre-fiction horror novelist. In this collection of essays concerning different philosophical views as they relate to King’s work, Held argues that horror is the perfect category in which philosophy can thrive because it forces readers to be aware of things hidden deep and dark within our basest selves. What we fear goes a long way toward defining us as people, and King has always been well known for tapping into these anxieties and exploiting them in his writing. It is refreshing to see King finally viewed through a scholarly lens, with pieces on topics such as reading The Dark Tower as a nihilistic text, using Carrie to discuss the definition of womanhood as 'Other' in a male-centric society, and Aristotelian friendship in The Body and Rita Hayworth and Shawshank Redemption. VERDICT King’s 'Constant Readers' will rejoice in this appreciation of their academically misaligned hero; students of philosophy, collegiate or casual, will also enjoy this text, giving them a familiar context to a field that can confuse the best of us.

Contributions by Katherine Allen, Randall E. Auxier, Charles Bane, Matthew Butkus, Kellye Byal, Cam Cobb, Timothy Dale, Paul R. Daniels, Joseph J. Foy, Bertha Alvarez Manninen, Tuomas W. Manninen, Garret Merriam, Michael K. Potter, and C. Taylor Sutton