Upon finishing Stephen King’s latest book, The Dark Tower, I was reminded of the first time I started reading books for fun. For the latter half of my life I could describe myself as, among other things, a voracious reader; but it wasn’t always like that: I remember in Grade 8 nerd English (English honours or English Advanced, something like that), the teacher would get us to read a passage in a novel (39 Stepsby John Buchan) for a minute. After the minute was done, we would count the number of words that we read. All the other nerds were in the high 300s or low 400s; I had the least of the class at a 154. Oh! The immortal shame! That was the last time I took nerd English.
That didn’t get me to crack open a book, however, although it must have contributed. No, I think it was my family’s gentle ribbing that finally pushed into the pages of Stephen King. You see, dear Reader, that my sister started reading (when I say reading, I mean reading adult novels for fun, not learning how to read) at much younger age. She’s three years younger than I am, and started a least a year before I did. So it could have been sibling rivalry or that my parents noted my sister’s prodigious endeavours and I was jealous.*
That summer, I started reading The Stand. It took me forever: that’s not a small book and you’ll remember my paltry 154 words-per-minute. I did finally finish it, though: the night before I finished it, I dreamt The Stand. Why The Stand? My father was, and still is, a Stephen King fan. And at the time, King had recently published a new, uncut version that he wasn’t quite famous enough to pull off when the book first came out. That was the first book that came to his mind when I asked him for a recommendation. It was good enough, that I started reading his other books. I didn’t read them all, and don’t remember all that I read, but some I did remember were the first three books of The Dark Tower Series. Given my recent spate of spare time, I decided to re-read the first three, and continue with the rest of the series. Now that I’ve finished the whole series, herewith some thoughts on Stephen King and The Dark Tower. I’ll spare you descriptions of the stories. If you’ve found this little corner of the internet, I’ll wager you’ve heard of Amazon.
I remember thinking when I watched the Star Wars re-release in ’97, “Was it always like this?” I found the acting hokey, the sets and special effects amateurish, although it still had enough going for it that it kept a special place in my movie viewing heart (I have since completely changed my mind on Star Wars, but that’s a different post…). The same thing happened when I re-read the Dark Tower books. I noticed things, good and bad, in his writing this time that I either didn’t notice, or didn’t mind when I first read them.
I noticed, and this is probably a result of reading so many web designers’ blogs, King’s use of font. In the earlier books, it was just italics, and all caps, but in the later books, with much higher production values, we get different entirely different fonts as well. With his use of font and text styles, we can immediately see a character’s thinking, we can tell that a powerful being is speaking, we know we’re reading a dream.
Also, consider this:
With the killer straddling his mid-section, he struggled against the bloody knife in the killer’s hand closing in on his throat. As lightning flashed outside, he saw the hate and rage in the killer’s eyes. But did he also see a hint of regret, a flash of recognition for the innocence that the killer once possessed?
I made up that sentence. But I noticed a lot of that kind of thing in King’s writing this time, and remember it from his other books as well. Every character has some hidden, contradictory emotion that is visible in their movements or their eyes. And the other characters see it.
Try as might, though, dear Reader, I cannot condemn this story or the author. The man can write, tell God thank ya. As epics of good versus evil, this story is right up there, although definitely not in the cultural lexicon like Star Wars. I often found myself comparing these books to the Lord of the Rings. King often said himself (in the afterwords and arguments, the literary equivalent of a DVD extra) that that was what he was trying to write. I’ll tell you up front that I didn’t like the Lord of the Rings as books. I found Tolkein to be very boring; his painfully detailed descriptions of the environs made it really hard to read. King’s writing doesn’t suffer from that: he adds the right amount of detail so that you can picture it in your mind but not enough that it bogs down the story. For instance, in the last book, a giant spider presses on a character’s jeans just below the knee. The way King describes it, I can feel that spider on my own legs. A lot of his characters, too, while a little cliched, also have some depth, more than the fellowship at any rate. And Roland is a far more compelling lead character than that pussy Frodo.
I could go on and on, but that’ll just show how much of a geek I really am. Suffice to say that when I read the last page of the last book this afternoon, I wanted more; the story ended too early. I think that’s the best compliment I can give.
* Revenge is sweet: The rest of my egghead family has to wear nerd glasses now, and I still have perfect vision. Ha ha ha ha ha.
