The Dark Tower - Stephen King ****
I always read the "extras" especially when I am reading a Stephen King book (as it feels like I am having a conversation with him.)I just happen to be listening to King's seventh (and final) volume in his Dark Tower series, and so this made me think about a couple different things. In my initial list of Things that End, I forgot to include the last volume of a series. Something King knows a lot about, and I have yet to work through. I'm going to save that topic for the moment until I'm finished with his volume seven, but some initial thoughts:
It's true that King is really good at talking directly to his readers. Up until this point he has done that primarily by way of introductions to the novels and essays. I haven't read all his non fiction, but what I have read has struck me for its tone of sincerity. In the Dark Tower VI and VII he takes this up a notch or two by writing himself into the story.
This is, of course, risky. Some readers are going to dislike it no matter how well it's done; others, I am afraid to say, will take that material as gospel truth and nothing will convince them that it's part of the fiction.
Maybe because it isn't, not completely. Part of what King does is watch himself processing the story, and those sections ring true to me. He struggles with the story and with the characters, is unhappy not with what he has produced but with what has happened at his hands, so to speak. A much loved character dies; he anticipates unhappy readers -- is unhappy himself -- but his fictional self is convinced it is out of his hands.
Whatever other strengths and weaknesses this novel might have on its own or as the endings of a long series, it is interesting for this leap of faith he has taken. Some might call it egocentric, which it is, necessarily -- but it is also immensely hard to do, and requires a lot of self examination. King's characters are furious with him, and their observations about his character and person are not kind. Roland, the main character, doesn't like writers at all, and for reasons that made me laugh out loud for their truthfulness. What King has done here, seems to me, is to take the Self as Other into new territories. King as Postmodernist is enough to make your head spin.
I'm going to say one more thing about this novel: not every self indulgence works. King lets himself explore a few short topics which (if I can't keep myself from thinking about them) will make me slightly nauseated. These are so mundanely ... disgusting (and I don't use that word lightly) that I still can't believe he went there, or that his editor let him. And to keep you from paging through this huge novel in some bookstore to find what I'm talking about: the nature of nasal discharge, and pimples. There, I've got that out of the way, so later when I review the book I can leave that be. As King should have done, in my opinion.