I finished Stephen King’s The Gunslinger today and enjoyed it immensely, enough in fact that I was half tempted to get the second volume of the series and run back to the exercise bike so I could read some more. This first volume of the DARK TOWER series was short, not 300 pages and the reader slides right through it. I finished it in less than 2 ½ hours, but I am a moderately fast reader, especially when fully engaged in a book, or chained to it by the rotating wheels of a bicycle. Further, faster, further, faster, seems to be the mode of bicycle reading at its best.
But back to the book. I had read one of the volumes in this series once before, the third one I believe. It left me completely confused. I believe my mom had sent it to me in a consignment of old books she was passing on. I read it before realizing that it was part of a series, or that I would become so involved.. At first I thought the western theme did not appeal; but it does. It is archetypical after all, as the story of the journey or the quest, and the whole issue of good and evil. King approaches the story in an interesting, at times confusing, intelligent and gripping way. At first off-putting, you are drawn in. Nothing is clear in this world. But then nothing is really clear in our world either; one begins to feel at home even as one is uncomfortably aware that one is lost and out of place. I am not going to tell you about the characters. I do not yet know them, if ever I will, and am still confused at the end of book one, but I think this is part of the point. Knowledge is always partial.
A good story. I have always liked Stephen King. He is obviously a literate and good writer. His stories are good as stories and I am partial to good stories. The best make us think about ourselves a little differently, but the best stories always do. He is literate but does not write literary fiction, a plus in my book, because literary fiction seems so often to be too heavily bound up in its own existence. Give me a good story any day. I am looking forward to the next volume.
I will have to read the end again tonight again before bed. There are things to ponder.
But not quite at the end, and not the ponderous subjects I intend to contemplate later, this line resonates with me now:
“despite a tremendous increase in available facts, there were remarkably few insights”.
Of course you will recognize why this appeals. Have I not rambled on and on about this very thing far to often?