The Gunslinger Followed

Last night I read Stephen King's autobiography and writing manual "On Writing". The early stuff about coming of age in the 60's and the sales of his first novels was wonderful reading. I'm still staggered by the fact that he got a $400,000 advance for "Carrie" way back in 1973. I'm staggered because that would be a nearly unthinkable sum for a debut novelist even now, when an advance for a first novel from a major publisher tends to be in the low six figures.

But unlike many as-yet unpublished writers, I don't have any issues with Mr. King. He's written some fine novels and penned some lines which I especially admire. My favorite is the opening sentence of his Dark Tower series:

"The man in black fled over the desert, and the gunslinger followed."

As they say in "Sweeney Todd", God that's good! It has such majesty and poetry in it, and yet is so elegant and simple. And ensuing paragraphs reveal what the sentence is really about: King the perpetual craftsman in pursuit of King the true artist. I have to reread that series again in order to find out if Roland succeeds. As King has written a few novels which I greatly admire --especially "Firestarter" and "Misery"-- I want to believe that he does, although I seem to remember hearing that things turn out quite badly for the hero.

But more affecting than anything else in that book, maybe, is King's description of his near encounter withdeath. He was taking a walk along a country road when a truck veered into him, nearly ending his life. As someone who has nearly died three or four times myself,I find this stuff very compelling. I know that my experiences have tended to sharpen my sense of my own mortality, and thus quite directly affected my habits and attitudes surrounding the production of daily pages. I am mostly grateful for my thanatic encounters, though, where King is obviously furious about his. I hardly blame him. My experiences came as a result of madness and my own carelessness about certain things, whereas King was creamed by a grinning lunatic.

Still, for all of our differences as writers and men, I recognize in King's account the story of one who has returned from the dead. Once you've been near that border, your spirit and your art change for good. He announced several years ago that he has retired. But I hope that he will draw something mighty from that dark well, and vex everybody who dismisses him as ahack. Well, what do they know, Mr. King? I still say you've got your best novel ahead of you.