Thursday, November 22, 2018

Dark Tower & the Slinging of Many Stories

I've concluded reading the Dark Tower series by Stephen King over the last year and a half-ish. It's a long series. I have many spoiler-ific thoughts, but I'll try to boil them down for the sake of a palatable read.

To start, a retrospective recap of each of the books:

The Gunslinger
There was a period in the first book where the style seemed a bit obtuse, like I was dropped into the middle of something and didn't quite have my bearings. But I eventually sifted out a few bearings  from the Mid-World Sands. I didn't really have a great sense of direction on it, but I was very captivated by the ending: a vision of a limitless universe on the tip of a blade of grass. And having a villain seemingly fade away and die seemed like an intriguingly weird way to go, instead of some action-packed showdown.

The Dark Tower II: The Drawing of the Three
Felt a bit drawn out (see what I did there?). 2D doors and visits to other versions of history to abduct other people certainly added to the sense of the world's weirdness. I wasn't a fan of this book because I didn't particularly like any of the characters over its span.

The Little Sisters of Eluria
I read this one out of order. Seemed like a bit of a detour from the main plot that only served to remind how strange the world had become.

The Wastelands
The world building really started to come together for me here. I was absurdly sucked in by the whole idea of a primitive, chaotic society living on top of the remains of an expired, modern civilization. Lud creeped me out, even moreso Blaine. And the stories of Tik Tok man and old German warplanes... It was like taking an adventure story as a tour right down the middle of strangeness on top of strangeness. Oddly captivating.

Wizard and Glass
Seemed like a good ol' fashioned western tale, with a bit of a twist. I took quite a bit of enjoyment watching Teenage Roland & Co kick ass against stacked odds. I liked how when it boiled down to a climax, the big baddie just took a shot to the head in the middle of a chaotic battle. They didn't take turns throwing punches, and no diatribe on the edge of death. Kinda refreshing when compared to standard Hollywood fare.

The Wind Through the Keyhole
I mean, okay? Seemed like a detour, and it's whole point was "This explains the origins of Mid-World! Kinda, maybe, I dunno. Look, Roland did more Roland stuff as a teenager."

Wolves of the Calla
It was an okay adventure on its own, but it seemed like the majority of the plot didn't have much impact on the rest of the overall story. Had some exciting bits and twists and whatnot. It fleshed out the twisted nature of the world some more, and showed Adult Roland & Co working and bonding as a team. And yet, most of it just felt kinda side-tracked.

Song of Susannah
I felt like this book raised a lot more questions than it answered. It started to feel like there weren't many concrete rules to how anything worked anymore (Susannah is non-pregnant with a demon sharing her body, who got inseminated from Roland?). And I don't really get the nature of the various levels of bad-guys and vampires and critter things. I feel like King was going, "See guys?! Look at how weird everything is! Weeeeiiiird!" Alas, at this point I was quite invested in the characters and overarching story.

The Dark Tower
It covered a ton of ground. Lots of worlds and whens, with different battles of different shapes and sizes. I got pretty bummed out when Eddie and Jake and Oy died. I understand the need to increase the difficulty of the hero's journey at the end, but it started feeling a bit repetitive in how every one/thing was a trap. Yeah, we get it, it's really treacherous on the final path to the tower, but does everything needed to be some strange, lurking menace that can only be defeated with an even stranger solution? Whatever, at this point I'm fully invested by the count of about a bajillion pages and definitely need to see how it all ends.

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Okay, that covers that. Now I want to touch on three points in a bit more depth.

The World
Mid World was quite possibly my favourite character of the series. The whole concept of a world that had 'moved' on, and in such a malevolent way, was hard to resist. It wasn't just ye standard "man vs environment" scenario, because it certainly seemed like the environment was actively pushing back against the protagonists.

Post apocalyptic movies and stores are pretty commonplace, but I liked this vision of a primitive society of farmers and ranchers built on the dusty, precariously placed bones of a more modern age. Shadows of technology cast over day to day life. And what still works isn't trustworthy and could betray you at a moment's notice. Really good stuff. I think it's been one of my favourite sci-fi settings in a long time. Wasn't too crazy about some of the more elaborate magical and supernatural stuff, though.

I also liked how King wove in a Western interpretation of the knights of the round table. It's like the cliche noble cowboy, but jacked up on steroids. Almost superhuman skill and resolve to fix the world through his sacred crusade. It's a great mix of genres: The series follows a Wild West-flavoured knight through a primitive civilization on top of the ashes of a modern world. Crazy stuff. And somehow it all works.

The Ending
You know what? No complaints about this one, surprisingly. I mean, some of Roland's ka-tet (ugh, that word never stopped being cheesy to me) had to die. They've killed so many that a few of them had to follow victim as well. And the final goal can only be proportionally desirable to the sacrifices have laid at its feet. I won't lie, I got choked up when Eddy and Jake died. It was heart-braking how Oy got depressed, stayed with Roland, and got killed. I'm glad Susannah survived - that kept things from being too cliche. I like how she reunited with an other-worldly Jake and Eddy. It was just enough of a quasi-happy ending to make me glad that the three found some peace on the other side of the journey.

Despite the author's advice, I read the series to its very last drop. Roland's ending was much different than his friends. He's doomed to repeat it all over again. Which felt... quite fitting to me. In a way, he had become a very two-dimensional character in how he was purely motivated and defined by his quest. He never had enough depth to support a post-Tower existence. Repeating it all over again seemed appropriate, and dangling the possibility that he could maybe, perhaps, someday break the loop seemed like a pitch-perfect bittersweet note to end on. It left the door open just a crack and maintained enough mystery to allow the universe to keep spinning by just out of the confines of the series' periphery.

The Author
I get it, I really do. But at the same time I really didn't like it. I think I understand where King was coming from, and I can appreciate how he's trying to convey how heavy the burden of creation can be. I mean, hey, he's the author of our time/society. The dude's prolific and ubiquitous. He's earned his stripes. And yet with every reference to his own character, his other stories/characters/books, and other literary naked inspirations just felt so out of place. As I walked through the pages of the Dark Tower series, it seemed like those self-referential parts was a small pine needle in my shoe. Sometimes it was there, sometimes it wasn't.

It felt too self-indulgent. Making his own character be one of the key elements keeping the world from destruction seemed so... well, self-indulgent. And how he criticized his personal habits. And Roland's disdain for King's character. And mentioning the other books he'd written. Hey, he wrote those stories and built those worlds, and without King this fictional world would certainly cease to be. And I can only imaging what a weight that would be to carry around, especially when you have some many readers anxious to peer over your shoulder. Grating. I just found it all to be a bit contrived and ostentatious.

Was it really necessary to integrate large, unmodified passages of "Childe Roland to the Dark Tower Came" into the body of the story? Hey, I'm all for being inspired and borrowing imagery from a work you admire. But do you need to beat your audience over the head with it?

Truth be told, a couple years ago I found some partial, off-hand reference about how the Dark Tower series referenced the author within itself. That little idea is ultimately what drove me to seek out the first book and give it a go - I'm always up for the clever poking of holes in the fourth wall. What I found, though, was that King went at the wall like the freakin' Kool-Aid man on a bad acid trip.

Look at all this griping. Let's be constructive for a moment and ask how'd I'd fix it.

I think it'd be a lot better if Stephen King's character appeared not as Stephen King, but as The Auther. And then make him appear and be referenced a solid 50% less. Make him an uncertain character that appears around the edge of the story once or twice, just enough to tease interest without being overbearing. And instead of deliberately spelling out connections between other works (I'm looking at you, Father Callahan of Salem's Lot), merely allude to it. Give readers the space to search for these hidden meanings and easter eggs, looping those little lines of yarn around thumbacks. Back off, just a bit. It moves things from being too self-focused to allowing the user to feel smart and clever by uncovering those references for themselves.

Here I am, a total nobody with no experience on nothin', giving constructive criticism to Stephen Freakin' King. Yeesh.

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I enjoyed the series. As I get older I'm getting quicker to bail on half-consumed media if I'm not feeling it. And I definitely read every word of this insanely huge story. There were so many places and times and people and things and species and names. Too many, in fact - at times I just had to plow through without knowing if I was supposed to be familiar with a particular proper noun in front of me. But I definitely got to where I was going, and I'd be lying if I said I was never totally sucked-in and eager to find out what happened next. It made for a good read. I'm glad I followed Roland and his crew around for a while, they definitely captured my attention and took me to strange places.
-Cril

I see you standing on the other side
I don't know how the river got so wide
I loved you baby, way back when
And all the bridges are burning that we might have crossed
But I feel so close to everything that we lost
We'll never, we'll never have to lose it again

Now I bid you farewell, I don't know when I'll be back
They're moving us tomorrow to that tower down the track
But you'll be hearing from me baby, long after I'm gone
I'll be speaking to you sweetly from a window in the Tower of Song

Yeah, my friends are gone and my hair is gray
I ache in the places where I used to play
And I'm crazy for love but I'm not coming on
I'm just paying my rent every day in the Tower of Song

Leonard Cohen - Tower of Song