In September, I suggested a reading order for the extended universe of Stephen King's The Dark Tower, a series I loved, but hadn't read any of since Volume 7: The Dark Tower came out in 2004. I realized that I missed the characters from the series, and wondered if the reading order I suggested would really hold someone's interest all the way through. I scoured some local bookstores, and then the internet for the hardcovers of the books, and prepared for my quest to read a Super Long series of books.

In my Goodreads review, I noted how conflicted I am by this book. This set of intertwining short stories shifts focus, shifts narrators, and shifts timeframes. Something Stephen King is usually very good at, but which I found clunky in this collection. I think the first and final stories are excellent but the journey between them is lackluster. But the first story did inspire me to start the companion series of blog entries:  A Masochist's Journey To The Dark Tower For People Who Hate Stephen King. I imagine if you're still reading these entries, though, you're probably somewhere with me riding on this Stephen King bandwagon.

1. Low Men In Yellow Coats

I'm a reader.

You know this. You're reading a series about me reading.

I've enjoyed books since I was young. I'm happy to talk with you about which ones I liked and which ones I didn't.

My step-grandfather on my father's side encouraged me toward books that were better than what I'd found on my own. Upgraded from Garfield to Calvin & Hobbes. From Jay Leno's "Headlines" series to E.E.Cummings's poetry. 

The first story in this collection is about an old man who influences a young New England boy to read better books. 

Its also about the Low Men who we will encounter more and more often during the final stretch of the Dark Tower chronology.

It's a 5 out of 5 star story for me. 

*****

2. Hearts In Atlantis

I went away to school. I played Hearts.

My high school years occurred during and after the Persian Gulf War. An unpopular war. A war much of our country was against.

I still couldn't care about this section of the book. It dragged. I had to force myself to finish it.

It's 2 out of 5 stars for this story.

**

3. Blind Willie

I am not a veteran. I am infrequently blind.

Despite its connection to Low Men In Yellow Coats and the return of a character who is probably Randall Flagg, I was not excited to read this story, either.

2 out of 5 stars again.

**

4. Why We're In Vietnam

I am still not a veteran. I'm not a TV activist lawyer. I'm not an alcoholic.

There are many stories about Vietnam that are important to me. Particularly those by Tim O'Brien. But growing up in the 80s and 90s, Vietnam was THE era of discussion that led nostalgia culture. So many TV shows. So many movies. So many books.

There are people who love to read about eras. Become experts on World War 2, or Civil War era America, or The Roman Empire.

I'm not one of them. I did feel a bit more for the characters in this section than the previous two, so I'll say it's 3 out of 5 stars.

***

​5. Heavenly Shades Of Night Are Falling

I've gone back to the place where I grew up. I've reunioned with old flames. I've attended funerals of those I was only passingly close to.

This story is a solid coda to the book.

It reminds me of nostalgia. But in a good way.

4 out of 5 stars.

****

Stray observations:

--I could die happily never reading another Baby Boomer's remembrance of Vietnam.

--I, initially, skipped over entire swaths of the second and third stories, but felt guilty, and went back and read them. I wish I hadn't.

--While I like reading this book at this place in the chronology, it is interesting that this is the first way we will encounter The Low Men, and it will be quite a bit before the characters become directly connected to The Dark Tower. But I suppose it's not as long a separation as the chasm between Salem's Lot an when Salem's Lot becomes relevant to the larger story.

--Think of ice cream. Think of cigarettes. Think of anything except that we are 5,762 pages across this crumbling beam. Don't let the Low Men suspect that you're here.

In September, I suggested a reading order for the extended universe of Stephen King's The Dark Tower, a series I loved, but hadn't read any of since Volume 7: The Dark Tower came out in 2004. I realized that I missed the characters from the series, and wondered if the reading order I suggested would really hold someone's interest all the way through. I scoured some local bookstores, and then the internet for the hardcovers of the books, and prepared for my quest to read a Super Long series of books.

I believe I'm over halfway through my reading of the expanded Stephen King Dark Tower universe. I'm certainly at the halfway of the official books, as I've read The Gunslinger, The Drawing Of The Three, The Waste Lands, and Wizard And Glass, which leaves Wind Through The Keyhole, Wolves Of Callah, Song Of Susannah, and The Dark Tower.

Maybe you are envious of this project but you don't really like Stephen King's writing style. You can still have a similar experience. King's work is loaded with allusions and references. I don't feel they often overtake the narrative (though the final chunk of Wizard And Glass is a bit too on-the-nose Wizard Of Oz for me), but they're there. I've taken somehwat lazy notes during the first half of this journey, and I present you with a list of books that approximate the Dark Tower chronology experience. You can also consider this a For Further Reading List, if you ever do decide to read through the Stephen King chronology. Though, really, you'd be better off getting a time machine, and reading these first, so that you catch all the references during the Dark Tower.

​10. Paradise: While we're at it, why not have a story that features a Black woman with mental illness that's actually written by a Black woman. I haven't yet read a Toni Morrison book that I wouldn't recommend but this seems the most appropriate in reference to The Drawing Of The Three.

​11. Shardik: From the author of the most violent children's book about small, fuzzy, animals comes the tale of a hunter who believes a giant bear is actually a god. This hugely factors into the beginning of The Waste Lands. I kept thinking the reference had something to do with Watership Down, and that my memory was going. Like a bear. Like a bear who was once a god.

If you are a teenager then you are romance.  You are sex. You are a body. Maybe heart. Maybe brain. But definitely body. 

You may say yourself alone. You may dress yourself independent. Wear books. Say video games. Build happy solitude like medieval armor.

But if you boy, you at fourteen are want girls. Even if you also want boys. Even if you grow up all boys and know at fourteen only boys, you will want story girls. You will want fictional flutter heart girls. Because boys at fourteen think every girl Juliet. Because boys at fourteen all body. All romance. All sex. Every fourteen boy loves nonreciprocal girl. Maybe classmate. Maybe neighbor. Maybe older woman. Probably fictional. Maybe book girl, maybe TV sweetheart. Maybe Princess fucken Leia. But girl. Even if woman, fourteen boy thinks of as girl.

Girl doesn't actually exist. Or is not who fourteen boy imagined. Either way doesn't love him heart sex. Boy moves on. Maybe not until fifteen. Maybe not until twenty. Maybe thirty. Maybe him die fourteen at age seventy-nine. Those boys live ugly. Those boys troll computers and women. Stalker boys. Creeper boys. Cult boys. Men's Rights Activists. Republican politicians. Gross boys old men. Hearts broken by their dumb eyes. Can't see difference between teenage romance and real life. Always think themselves hero. Fourteen boys always protagonists of their own dull stories. Fourteen boys insufferable. Never adorable. Don't believe any writer any storyteller who says fourteen boys men. Men can lie. But men Know when they are lying. Fourteen boys think every lie true.

At the heart and the body of Wizard and Glass is fourteen boy. Is love. Is romance. Is death and heroes and trust and manhood and magic and all those things that fourteen boys color in the background of romance because they are so afraid of romance. Afraid because friends say romance is girl thing. And fourteen boys fear being girl things. Because stupid. Gendering anything stupid. Romance languages give nouns gender. English killed that overt declaration of gender. Keeps gender in shhhhhhh background. Because stupid.

Roland gunslinger in this section is teenage boy. Moves to strange new world. Adolescence.  Bring friends. Everyone changing. World moving on. New temporary home is ancient. Everything about themselves is a lie created by their fathers. Roland finds intrigue. Roland finds danger. Roland finds love.  World crashes down around him like world always crashes around fourteen year old gunslinger bodies.

Adult Roland we've known for so much of this list. No love. Only heartbreak. Only him fourteen in the back of his solitude. Not hate women. Not fear women. Not think less women. Roland stupid. Roland flawed. But Roland not misogynist, though of course misogyny courses through Roland like the blood in all humans it is. Now this story why Roland so lonely. So gunslinger. So eyes and cold caliber. So wet shells. So dark tower always at horizon.


​Stray observations: 

--Despite it being referenced in the title of the book and on the cover, I'd forgotten about the crystal ball mythology in The Dark Tower.

--My reading chronology offers a bunch of breaks from the ka-tet that still fit in The Dark Tower journey. This five hundred page flashback focus on Roland is a fun journey, but it made me wish Susannah, Eddie, and Jake had sequences like this. Then I remembered that they all do have their own sequences in other books, they just don't stand out as starkly as this one.

--We are 5,239 pages closer to the tower than when we began, say thankya.

​In September, I suggested a reading order for the extended universe of Stephen King's The Dark Tower, a series I loved, but hadn't read any of since Volume 7: The Dark Tower came out in 2004. I realized that I missed the characters from the series, and wondered if the reading order I suggested would really hold someone's interest all the way through. I scoured some local bookstores, and then the internet for the hardcovers of the books, and prepared for my quest to read a Super Long series of books.

As I get closer to the tower in my reading, I've become focused on King's constantly shifting styles. Not just from book to book, but often within his books. Wizard And Glass is definitely two books. The main storyline, where Roland and his ka-tet continue their journey where we left them in The Waste Lands and a five hundred page flashback story about Roland's youth that sets up the events of the end of this book, as well as some recurring themes and stories in the upcoming books. Sometimes the difference in style and tone takes you completely out of the book. While the contrast between the way King writes the Kansas section and the  section in Mejis is stark, it's also kind of welcome.

A little over a decade ago, I started a book exchange program with a long term coworker. We exchanged books one at a time. We both consistently gave the other a book that they wouldn't have otherwise read, and we each had moderate success at not giving each other any books that clunked when they passed from eyes to brain to heart.

After a few complete successes, I gave this person my copy of American Gods by Neil Gaiman. They made a face, said something along the lines of "I suppose this will do." and gave me a copy of Chris Adrian's Children's Hospital, which I immediately loved.

When it was time to return the books, my coworker said "It ended up being perfect, as I read it on a road trip with my dad, and this book is ideal for road trips, though maybe nothing else."

The beginning and end of Wizard & Glass is a road trip book. Hopefully, you already love the ka-tet characters, you're completely engrossed by the train journey that started during the last book, and Need To See How It Resolves. And it resolves. And then ​the ka-tet find themselves in the world of another Stephen King book, and it's funnish and a pretty good That's So Cool moment, but it's not a great feat of literature, and it won't really change the way you read the series.

My next post will be A Masochist's Journey To The Dark Tower, Part 16: Glass, and it will deal with the heart of this book, which happens to be the middle section, which takes up about 4/5ths of the page length of the book. It's aces.

But when we return from the heart of the book our characters move from a Stephen King world to an L Frank Baum world, and it's...fan fictiony. All the characters continnue to be well-written but the situation is more than just an homage or pastiche, it's a retelling of one of the climactic scenes of The Wizard of Oz but starring the ka-tet.

It's a major letdown compared to the middle chunk of the book. There are some important backstory revelations that help keep it somewhat interesting, but overall it's just kind of okay.  But the kind of okay that's perfect if you're reading it in a plane, or between rest stops on a long road trip. You don't have to think about it too much because it's So Familiar.

I realize this makes it sound like I didn't enjoy the book. I Very Much Did. But mainly because of the five star section that makes up the next post, the bookend portions, sadly, are about 2 1/2 stars.

Stray observations:

-- Blane really is a pain, and I haven't been as happy to see a character disappear from this chronology since I closed The Eyes Of The Dragon for what, I hope, will be the last time in my life.

--There are enough product placements used to explain the connection to our universe that I hope Stephen King received some sort of check. And that he donated those proceeds to the charity of L Frank Baum's ancestors' choice.

--I'm actually posting this about two and a half months after I finished reading it, which is not helpful for remembering my Stray Observations.

--I'm not putting a page count update on this post because it's about the beginning and end of the book, and I don't have it in front of me to subtract out the middle section, soo...just click your heels together and say There's No Place Like The End Of This Chronology three times.