Making My Way to the Dark Tower

Alternate Title: Dustin's $8 Investment Pays Off

Stephen King. For my money, he is a highly skilled and consistently solid author. He represents that rare, enriching phenomenon in popular culture: a huge commercial success with true artistic integrity. Known first and foremost as a master of horror for books like The Shining and Pet Semetery, the man's word processor has also given the world stories such as The Shawshank Redemption, Stand by Me (published as The Body), and the non-fiction On Writing.

Ironically, I've never read any of the writings I just listed. However, a recent bit of introspection revealed to me that I have read more of Stephen King's books than I have any other author's in any other genre. Unless one views the Bible as being made up of 66-71 truly individual books, each one being similarly authored by the Holy Spirit. In that event, the Paraclete trounces King as my most read composer of written works.


The Requisite Lengthy Preface
(Skip to the Next Heading If You're Not Feeling into Excessive Verbiage Today)

My relationship with the famous (human) author began with Night Shift. The fact that this volume is a collection of short stories made it a logical choice to be the first book of his that I, still a junior high age kid with a far less rigorous attention span than I now possess, ever read.

Next came The Running Man, more of a novella really, which I received English credit for reading during my sophomore year of high school...and at a conservative, Christian school no less. My lasting memories of this text are a) it's substantially different from the Arnold action film it inspired and. b) it introduced me to the word "pudenda."

Soon thereafter, I read The Green Mile. Released as a serial novel, I read the first three parts consecutively and the last three several months later. A couple years later I would read the lengthy Desperation in 3 days or less, and then its genetic companion The Regulators during my junior year of college.

From about 1994-1996, I practiced the bad habit of asking for books I thought looked cool and then basically ignoring these volumes once I received them. I only made it 30 pages or so into The Stand before I gave up on that epic mamma jamma. Insomnia still sits in my closet entirely un-paroused. Rage, Roadwork, and The Long Walk (which came bound together with The Running Man) are three further works of which I've not read a single page. There was even a well-worn copy of It that came briefly into my possession before I passed it off to Mark Schwartzkopf.

This summer, when I was searching for gainful employment and feeling guilty about watching copious amounts of television, I rediscovered my largely unread Stephen King collection. My longtime friend Aaron Homoya had just finished reading Firestarter and was preparing himself to tackle The Stand (which he did successfully), and his adventures in imagination inspired my own literary course Ending a 3-year hiatus from King's books, I read two of the books already in my possession: Skeleton Crew, his second collection of short stories, immediately followed by his third, Nightmares & Dreamscapes.

When Christmas time rolled around, I asked for one of his most recent writings, the zombie-esque scary story Cell, which I read this past winter. Cell brought my grand total of wholly consumed Stephen King books to eight. This number raised to nine after I consumed King's fourth, and presumably final short story compendium, Everything's Eventual.


The Dark Tower and Mr. Lafferty's Eight Bucks

Yet, for all the thousands of pages I have read of his writings, I long avoided delving into what he personally acknowledges as his master work: the epic Dark Tower series.

The urge to read these books honestly didn't take hold of me until roughly 5 years ago. During my mostly jobless summer of 2002, I read 14 books covering several different genres. (Noticing a pattern here.) Foremost among these texts was J.R.R. Tolkien's widely revered Lord of the Rings trilogy. Together with The Hobbit, these books showed me the deep joy one can experience from immersing oneself in an elaborate and extensive work of imaginative fiction. In discussing how much I liked these books with Mark, he shared with me how much he enjoyed what had been published of the Dark Tower series. When Mark told me the fact that most of the fan mail Stephen King receives concerns this series, I knew then and their that I owed it to myself to explore what all the hubbub was about.

Committing myself to that exploration proved to be the most difficult. At the time, Mark and I had our little chat, four Dark Tower volumes were in print: The Gunslinger, The Drawing of the Three, The Wastelands, and Wizard and Glass. Knowing full well how many unread King novels I had piled up at home, I procrastinated on purchasing these texts out of the fear that they would suffer similar neglect. So I made a promise to myself: If I ever saw all four books in mass market paperback edition available at the same bookstore, I would buy them then and there. I further qualified that the packaging of each book must reflect that they came from the same printing. I was especially adamant on this point seeing as Signet had just re-released much of the Stephen King catalogue wrapped in snazzy, newly designed cover art.

For nearly a year, whenever I went to a Barnes & Noble or a Borders, I check the shelves in their Literature & Fiction section to see if they had the inventory necessary for me to honor my vow. Every time I checked, however, I would run into the same hitch. Volume 3, The Wastelands, was never available. Around the time I was reading The Regulators, I informed my friend and then roommate Dustin Laffterty of my "Dark Tower resolution" and the problems I was having fulfilling it.

Less than two weeks later, Dustin surprised me with a copy of The Drawing of the Three.

When I asked Dustin why he had chosen to give me this most welcome gift he said something to the extent that: "I was at the Barnes & Noble in Castleton [on the north side of Indianapolis] and saw that they had all four of the books you were talking about. I couldn't remember exactly which one you said you couldn't find but I thought it was that one. I figured maybe if I bought it four you, it would encourage you to buy the rest of them."

To this day, I still feel honored that Dustin would invest $8 in my future reading endeavors driven by no other factor than his own goodwill towards yours truly. What I can't remember for sure is whether or not I risked killing the buzz of that warm moment by informing Dustin that he had not, in fact, bought the book I could never find. Nonetheless his investment spurred on my own. That same weekend, I traveled to the same bookstore where he had been and discovered that the other three books were indeed there. I purchased them immediately. I left that Barnes & Noble confident that I would begin reading them in the very near future. After all, I had just dropped twenty-four of my own dollars on top of what Dustin had spent on my behalf.

WRONG! Whenever enough space opened up in my personal schedule to do some recreational reading, I found the task of reading my Dark Tower books too daunting to take on. True, the first volume, The Gunslinger, was only 300 pages. But each successive volume considerably outdid its predecessor in terms of length, so that volume four Wizard and Glass is 700 pages of print much smaller that the font featured on the pages of The Gunslinger.

Breaking the Seal

Fortunately, I have become much more ambitious in my reading in recent years. And after adjusting to reading 100 or more pages of theology/philosophy a week during my two years at Candler, I've learned that reading a 600-page novel really isn't that ominous of a task. This point was really brought home for me at the beginning of the present month when I read Everything's Eventual (583 pages) in 11 days. One of the stories contained therein is a mini-novel called The Little Sisters of Eluria. The protagonist of this tale is Roland the Gunslinger, the central character from the Dark Tower Series.

Little Sisters is a "prequel" of sorts and reading it lead me to realize that now was the ideal time to finally join Roland on his quest to reach the Dark Tower. Once I begin my Ph.D. program in the fall, I expect to have little time for any sort of recreational reading for the next several years...let alone recreational reading in the quantity this series will require of me. In all, the Dark Tower saga is made up of seven books, and the later volumes continue the pattern of increasing substantially in length. (Stephen King wrote parts 5-7 in close succession, releasing the final volume in late 2004.) I'm hoping to complete the whole shebang by the time classes begin in September.

I'm off to a hell of start. I started reading The Gunslinger a week ago Wednesday (May 9th) and, as of today (May 20), I am halfway through Wizard and Glass. That's 1722 pages read over the course of 12 days! At this pace, I might only take me about two weeks to finish a quartet of books it took me five years to get started on. Although the rapidity with which I am moving through them is more a testament to the high quality of the material than it is to any skill or strength of commitment on my part. Obviously, I'm enjoying myself.

I will close this long-winded reflection with two personalized comments:

Mark, you once told me that you thought the quality of the series dropped off a bit with The Wastelands but picked right back up in Wizard and Glass. I concur 100%, my friend.

Dustin, of the books I've read, my favorite volume is undeniably The Drawing of the Three. I thought you might appreciate knowing that your money was well spent. Sorry it took my four years to finally capitalize on your generosity. :)