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I’ve read a number of Stephen King novels, and in general have been satisfied with them. The man has been writing for forty years or so and his paid his dues; even if he did get a six figure advance for CARRIE back at the beginning of a career. But I’ve recently read what was meant to be his path to novelist glory, the DARK TOWER series, and I fear that in my opinion, it’s not all that he meant it to be.
The first sentence of the series is glorious, it promises something classical, grand and hypnotic. Listen:
“The man in black fled across the desert, and the gunslinger followed.:
Who wouldn’t want to find out who this gunslinger and his quarry are? It’s magnificent. And the first two books of the novel live up to that adjective. But he just doesn’t sustain it through the rest of the series. First of all, he is self-indulgent. He includes references to other popular novels –and his own—throughout the book. If he did this once, it would be all right, a bit of hat-tipping, a bit of vaudeville. But the fabric of the book depends to some extent to these kind of references and it’s distracting to say the least. King even includes himself as a crucial secondary character. I want to like it, I want it to pay off, but it only leads to certain novelistic party tricks and a certain amount of sophomore philosophizing.
Now, I’ve got to say something about the Stephen King phenomenon and how I deal with it as a writer. In general, writers who thing of themselves as doing literary work Hate King. They thing he’s too rich, they think he’s a hack, they celebrate his nearly being run over and killed a few years ago. I am not one of these. Some of his novels are very enjoyable, if you overlook certain flaws. THE STAND is good if you can overlook the fact that the demon Randal Flagg and his ghoulies are ultimately swatted out of existence by the very Hand of God. MISERY is a wonderful novel if you can overlook the fact that the imprisoned writer escapes Annie Wilkes by breaking her back with a thrown Underwood typewriter. And so on. But let’s not forget THE SHAWSHANK REDEMPTION, which is without any flaw as far as I can see, and is beautiful work into the bargain.
But back to TDT. I think my two biggest complaints about the series are that the Tower itself isn’t really explored. At the beginning of the series, the sorceror Walter explains that it is the lynchpin of existence, and that to climb the Dark Tower is to ascend through the very scales of being, from the microscoppic to the stellar. Now, I have no idea how this could be represented, but then I’m not the one who made the brag –through Walter—that he was going to explore this.
Secondly, all of the gunsluingers except Roland die before they reach the Tower. Now, unlike some, I don’t resent the author who kills off major characters. But it occurs to me that King might have explored the Tower my fully by bringing these characters to it and mounting its steps with their varied psychologies. But that, I’m afraid, probably requires a philosopher, and Mr. King restrains himself to being a popular entertainer; a fine enough thing, surely, but, it seems, not equal to the task of exploring Robert Burns’s classic poem through fiction.
