Book #21

The Dark Tower, Book I: The Gunslinger
by Stephen King


Part of me wanted to dive straight into Eclipse, the third book of Stephanie Meyer's series, but I'm usually happier when I put other books in between, and the best of all is when the books are quite different from the series I'm trying to get through. And I'm saying this like it's news. Anyway, I re-read one of my favorites, Stephen King's The Gunslinger, because I want to re-read the whole Dark Tower series this year. The most interesting thing about this was how much more I realized about the book from the first time I read it, which must have been fifteen or twenty years ago, somewhere in there. Back then, the parts I focused on most were Roland's most badass moments: the gunfight with the town of Tull, the coming of age battle with Cort, his final confrontation with the man in black. But this time I paid attention more to the things in between: Roland's meetings with his father, and the time with Jake, especially when Jake falls. It impresses me that King could follow through so well in the later books, when his author's note says that he had no clear idea, while writing this one, where these plot lines were headed. It makes me wonder how much writing there is to be done without conscious thought, and what exactly you need to have in you to be able to hear the voice whispering the words in your ear.

Oh yeah, and the writing in this book is much worse than in the later books. He's trying too hard in several places. But then, he wrote it starting in college and going on for twelve years; it's actually pretty cool that he managed to leave those parts in when it actually came to publishing the thing.