Blind Willie (Gobless us every one)

**JackTheRipper** · June 26th, 2009

Wonderful. I sometimes wonder what the original (the version in this collection is "very different" according to Steve) looked like. Maybe there weren't as many connections to Low Men as there are in this one. Speaking of, I enjoyed Willie writing in his ledger, attempting to redeem for what he, Harry, and Richie did to Carol

What are your thoughts on this story?

**Mr Nobody** · June 29th, 2009

First time I read HIA, I got to 'gobless' and got stuck with laughing like a drain. It's a British slang thing. 'Gobless' would be 'without a gob (mouth)' and I had this mental image of people running round 'gobless'. Though obviously I got what it actually meant, too.

**wally wonder** · December 11th, 2009

i'm going thru this book again. saw a hc copy of it on a customer's bookshelf yesterday, wanted to go over the look at titles, but didn't. sk's new story, udt, has some kind of allusion to armies of the night, something from alexander pope, something from mailer's armies of the night, about the '67 occupation of the pentagon. this collection is a different take on the same time period and i'm curious to see how it connects to udt.

but in this one, blind willie, i like the use of "bewildered" to describe bill who "sits up in bed to the sound of music...and i like the use of "werewolfy" to describe the final transformation, from willie shearman to blind willie garfield.

pennants. to do w/the book as a whole, as well, and maybe pennants describes what others do throughout the book, same goes for the '67 pentagon march, pennants, all that existential guilt working through the mind, creating swiss cheese of memory, of what is and what was and what should be...

**wally wonder** · December 14th, 2009

this

…. has stuff about under the dome, connections between hearts in atlantis (blind willie) and udt...

**jackson992** · September 29th, 2010

I did not understand the ending at all. It seemed to just stop and I never understood what happened to Willie and the cop

**bobledrew** · September 29th, 2010

I think Blind Willie is one of King's most cryptic works. I don't feel I have a good handle on everything happening in it yet, but here's what I think:

HIA as a book is not a novel so much as stories that are related. I also think that each story (with the exception of Twilight Time) deals with the end of a stage of life: Low Men with childhood, Hearts with adolescence, Blind Willie with adulthood, Why We're In Vietnam with death, and Twilight Time is almost a summing up. And I think that it's a collection full of failure and despair. Bobby Garfield fails in his test of courage; Ted fails in his escape; Liz fails as a mother and as a woman; Carol fails to escape RF; the boys of the dorm fail as men in various ways; and Willie has failed both as a child (when he witnesses but lacks the courage to stop Carol's beating) and as a man in Vietnam and later.

His metaphorical / real blindness symbolizes his wilful blindness to the cruelties that he's witnessed in the past, to me, and the fact that it keeps happening suggests to me that his penance is not real, that he continues to be selfish and not genuinely sorry, notwithstanding the thousands of repetitions. His days are in effect the same as him writing those lines in his books, but his use of the money he collects for his own purposes undermines his commitment to repentance.

In some ways he's not unlike Roland, doomed to repeat a cycle until he changes something.
Bilnd Willie

**nate_watkins** · September 29th, 2010

Originally Posted by jackson992

I did not understand the ending at all. It seemed to just stop and I never understood what happened to Willie and the cop

Yeah, I thought the whole story was a little weird. But it was an interesting tie in to the rest of Hearts in Atlantis.

**Cthulhu** · November 21st, 2010

Hello everyone. Hope all is well with you folks since my last visit. Apologies in advance for the lengthy post.

I am bumping this thread because I need some advice concerning this story.

My wife and I are King readers/collectors, but we don't have the type of change to drop on all the exotic limited editions. Instead, we try to collect 1st edition trade hardbacks, uncollected and unpublished stories, anthologies containing King, and various other knick-knacks that are within our meager budget.

One site we refer to for advice on uncollected stories is Bev Vincent's page. Here is what his site says about the story 'Blind Willie':

"Blind Willie" appeared in an anthology, not widely available, entitled Antaeus: The Final Volume. (Ecco Press). Revised substantially to be included in Hearts in Atlantis. Also included in the U.K. paperback of Bag of Bones.

OK, here is my question as it relates to this particular short story - Is the version of Blind Willie that appears in Hearts in Atlantis the same text that appears in the UK version of Bag of Bones? Or, is the story that appears in the UK Bag of Bones the non-revised version of the story that was originally published in the Antaeus anthology?

Basically, I want the non-revised of the story and I need to know which way would be less expensive.

Thanks to any and all who read/reply.

Happy reading!

**CaptainBaccarat** · January 13th, 2011

Yeah.....maybe Stephen will revisit Blind Willie and tie up those loose ends............

**kesh** · June 23rd, 2011

yes you're correct about the under the dome references. i dont know exactly what your talking about, but here's what i noticed since i finished this book a half hour ago. in "why we're in vietnam" (page 614) andy hackermeyer is running next to john sullivan during the ambush when they witness Ronnie malenfant kill mamasan. king uses the name hackermeyer for the officer that tortured the arab in felluja in front of barbie (pg 1061). "HACKERMEYER THE HACKERMONSTER"