Sick lately. Stayed home from work Friday. Unable to form complete sentences.
I wrote a fairly lengthy post on Stephen King’s Dark Tower series yesterday but the cat jumped up on the table, hit the Back button on the mouse and wiped it all out. Sadly, I think it made a fair bit of sense. I’m about 25% done with “Song of Susannah” having finished “Wolves of the Calla” last week.
In brief, I realized the other day that the books in the series I liked the most (being “The Gunslinger,” “Drawing of The Three,” and “Wizard and Glass”) have Roland and his world as the focus. The others (being “The Wasteland” and “Wolves” and so far “Song”) have other characters at their core. The character who interests me the most is Roland, the gunslinger himself. I also want to know more about his world and hear more stories of what is what like before it fell.
The last three books of the series were written back-to-back-to-back and I’m sure it’s because King finally figured out how he wanted the thing to end. As a result, “Wolves” and “Song” are more concerned with setting up the final act of the story that I think will wind up with Stephen King himself at the core. I think King realized he could die without finishing this series and that this series, in some ways, is the culmination of his writing career. I’m less interested with elder King’s ruminitions on the meaning of “story” and more interested in the world he created as a young man in the “The Gunslinger.” The further we get in the series it seems we get further from that initial vision, which is too bad. I’m only following through with finishing off the series because I feel I have to, not because I’m finding it especially revelatory.
2400-words deep into a new story that’s simply entitled “Castleneff” after the main character. Like many of my stories, a big chunk of this one came to me in a dream. It’s not clear how the dream went but I remember waking up with one particular scene in my head. I’ve let the thing tumble around for a month or so, vowing to finish some other projects before starting a new story but I couldn’t hold it back any longer.
What’s interesting is that this is story is a case in point of me having three core scenes that don’e make a complete story. I’ve written some of the beginning, all of the middle, and none of the end yet. These three scenes will stand as the bulk of the story, probably 85% of it. I’m going to write that and then fill in that remaining 15% because there are lots of parts of the story that are interconnected. I just figured out that the protagonist only has one hand, for instance, and it’s a bit odd that this information doesn’t come until you’re well into the story. Obviously, it needs to come in the first scene but as I write the middle (and no doubt the end) there are lots of things that keep popping into the story that need to be mentioned earlier. How do they fit into that first scene? I dunno.
Current Mood – Okay | 
Currently Listening To – Wilco – “A Ghost is Born”
3 Comments
I don’t doubt that King DID veer away from his original vision begun in The Gunslinger. Maybe he finished the last three books out of a sense of obligation to his readers/his publisher/himself or maybe he just wanted to get the damn thing over with.
I can imagine it was an incredible burden. It’s interesting to recall that at about the same time he was working on those last three Dark Tower books, King stated that he was finished with writing altogether.* Then of course, he wasn’t, as evidenced by The Colorado Kid, Cell and the upcoming Lisey’s Story.
I wonder if he had it to do all over again if he’d do anything different with the series. Maybe one day he’ll tell us. Then again, maybe not.
* I just love looking at the photo of King on the back flap of From a Buick 8. It’s like he’s thinking, “Please God, let this Dark Tower thing end!”
This is what happens when you cease being an author — and become an industry. (grin) Though it can be worse — you can be syndicated, a la Tom Clancy. (double-grin)
Dr. Phil
My theory on King was expounded in The Post That Was Lost, but I’ll repeat it here.
If you read the afterword in the first few Dark Tower books you get a sense that he felt it was something special, something he was somehow meant to write although he didn’t know where it was taking him. He started writing the original story back in 1970 and didn’t publish the first book until 1982; the second in 1987; the third in 1991; the fourth in 1997; the fifth in 2003; and the sixth and seventh in 2004.
King was struck by a van and nearly killed in 1999. I think he realized he could have died without finishing his magnum opus and suddenly found the inspiration to write the last three in a rush. One of the central themes is that all worlds tie together, including all of his created worlds and our world. Strands of his stories don’t start creeping into the Dark Tower series until Book IV in 1997. They come on strong in Book IV and are central to the plot in books V and VI. Stephen King himself appears as a character in Book VI. Isn’t there some old saying that once an artist starts appearing in his/her own work, the jig is up?