Roont

I’m going to go on a bit about Stephen King and the Dark Tower series. I’ll make no attempt to recap what these books are about, so I run a high likelihood of endangering my readership—all two of them (three if I can count Jay.) And Jorge has actually read the series, so it’s just my wife that won’t give a crap.

Let me start by saying I was brought up on Stephen King. Okay—not wholly true. I was brought up on fried bologna and the belief that spaghetti in a can is the real spaghetti, but from a book perspective I was raised on King. Misery, IT, The Shining, Different Seasons—these were the first books I read that weren’t school books, the ones that first made me excited to read. And when I first started to write “seriously” my style was a carbon copy of his (which I’m probably still exorcizing ten years later.) When University arrived, I’d grown, matured, become a book snob, and Stephen King got pushed aside for meatier books. I was an English Lit and Creative Writing major, so it was embarrassing to be caught reading genre fiction. Or anything popular. Or anything actually enjoyable to read. Okay, the snobbery wasn’t quite that strong, but having read some six thousand pages of his, I wasn’t that interested in his books any more. Except the Dark Tower series.

In the words of King—the character—the Dark Tower “was gonna be my Lord of the Rings, my Gormenghast.” In the words of King, the author: “it was time to stop goofing around with a pick and shovel and get behind the controls of one great big God a’mighty steamshovel … time to try and dig something big out of the sand.” In that first book he makes good on all promises. And he does a thing he’s never done before or since: he takes his time. This isn’t a novel dashed down like it was written in a burning house; it was outlined, carefully written, and subject to revision after revision until it was perfect. Unquestionably, it’s the best thing he’s ever written.

Then he picked up the pace. Given, he had to—if he’d finished the series at the same pace as the first book, it would have taken him ninety years. But reading books two and onward you can’t help but feel a little regret. You miss the care that was taken, and the economy of the language. Maybe my patience for large books is waning, but you can’t deny that the Dark Tower books get bloated as they go on. Wolves of the Calla could have been as good a book, or more likely a superior one, if about one hundred pages were shaved off. And I’m only through the first quarter of the last book, but I’m already thinking that it too could use a paring.

The farther into the series I get, the more it seems he’s just winging it. What was printed and bound and eventually sold to me doesn’t seem that far off from his first or second attempt on the page. There are new ideas introduced into the story, and not because it’s the right time, but seemingly because the idea just occurred to King at that time. There are parts of the novels that don’t work, that an editor should have called him on. Two things—a scene and a sub plot—particularly gall me. I hated the Wizard of Oz bit at the end of Wizard and Glass. It was ridiculous and unbelievable and pulled me right out of the story. Second, and definitely more frustrating, is the buying-the-vacant-lot subplot.

Roland and his companions must buy a vacant lot on which sits a single rose. The rose is some kind of key to the Dark Tower (or maybe is the Dark Tower) and if they don’t buy the lot by a certain date the forces of the Crimson King (in the form of the Sombra Corporation) will own the lot and destroy the rose (and probably all worlds everywhere.) King fans: I’m begging you to tell me that plot isn’t as ridiculous as it sounds when summarized. Why does evil have to comply with the law—particularly the law of No Trespassing? It’s a flower. In a vacant lot. Surrounded by a fence. And a second-rate evil henchman can’t hop the fence and lay some big size tens into the rose because—why? Seriously, why? Low on cash and can’t hire henchmen? Rabbits are cheap; sometime free. Pick up three, chuck them over the fence, there’s your problem solved.

And Ka. Or ka-ka, as Eddie Dean would say. As the books go and words pile up, ka becomes a crutch for lack of planning. Things show up just when they’re needed: a handy black thirteen bowling bag, or a hypnotizing turtle. When it happens once it’s neat, but when it happens twice a book it becomes grating. And it means that the theology of the novels has shifted. With these coincidences you get the sense that there is a god figure and a devil figure, each with their typical agenda, and each unable to effect events except in indirect ways. I’ll accept that I suppose, but it was much more interesting when we were told the top of the top was empty; when Eddie quips well kiss my ass and go to heaven, and Blaine the Mono replies: THERE IS NO HEAVEN.

I’ll leave my complaints there as I’ve hit the major ones, but I’ll end with two further notes. First, it could all just be me. I hate having unfinished books on my shelf. I hate reading super-long books, though I love to have read them. And I’ve read these last three books as fast as I can because I owned them all at once and at any time could peak at that last chapter to see how it all turns out. All this is to say that I’ve read these books faster than they should be read, so I might be overly flip in my judgments. Second, complaints aside I’ve enjoyed the hell out of this story. Susan and Roland’s affair, the agonies of the roont children, the suspense of waiting for the wolves, Callahan’s end, Mordred versus Martin—when it’s good, it’s fantastic. I love the mythology of it. The ideas at the core—of gunslingers, ka-tet, and the tower—are engrossed enough for me to lock my disbelief outside the door (though it finds its way back in every so often.) I’m still excited to read it. And if you remember the beginning, how can you not be hopeful about the end?

“If you fell outward to the limit of the universe, would you find a board fence and signs reading DEAD END? No. You might find something hard and rounded, as the chick must see the egg from the inside. And if you should peck through that shell, what great and torrential light might shine through your hole at the end of space? Might you look through and discover our entire universe is but part of one atom on a blade of grass? Might you be forced to think that by burning a twig you incinerate an eternity of eternities? That existence rises not to one infinite but to an infinity of them?”