Wednesday, February 23, 2005
Stephen King, you wanker
If you think you may ever read Stephen King's Dark Tower Septology, do not continue reading this blog entry. I'll try hard not to give away key plot points, but it is those plot points which have spurred the emotion which led me to blog this evening. Once again, read ahead at your own risk.
My mother, somewhere in her journey through bookdom learned just how close to your heart a character, who exists solely in an author's imagination and in his/her words on a page, can grow. It was a painful lesson in that this particular character died on the very last page of the book. She was so marred by her love of the character and her disgust at the character's untimely death that she left the practice of reading the narrative from front to end and entered into the dangerous world of skipping ahead, if ever she found that she loved a character. I have never done this, and I do not intend to, but tonight I can understand why she would take action to keep herself from feeling that kind of pain. Two characters that I loved dearly died today. And within a hundred pages of each other. When the first one died, or rather when the character received its fatal blow, i put the book down and walked away to mourn. I was confused and unbelieving. I waited a few hours and picked the story up again and mourned with the rest of the characters on the deathbed. I bid the character goodbye. And I stayed with everyone as they moved on. And then another died. And not a character I could have bared to see die, but the unbearable. I'm not prepared to give up on the book, because like the main character, I'm come too far and given up too much to quit now. From when I began reading this series in summer of 2000, from nigh page one, I have longed to see the tower and with all that I have left behind, I will tread onward.
The great evil in all this, however, is how much the writer tries to incorporate "fate" into this story. So much so that he even seems to indicate that he couldn't help killing off the characters that had to die, because some "greater force" was leading him to do so. And as much as that may be true, Mr. King, it was no fictitious character that brought about the death of these who have passed on. Please know, Mr. King, that their deaths are on your head. I suffer you know mercy from that. You must bear the guilt. You, dear writer, are a wanker.
Edit: From Peter Jackson's Two Towers: "It's like in the great stories, Mr. Frodo. The ones that really mattered. Full of darkness and danger, they were. And sometimes you didn't want to know the end. Because how could the end be happy? How could the world go back to the way it was when so much bad had happened? But in the end, it's only a passing thing, this shadow. Even darkness must pass. A new day will come. And when the sun shines, it will shine out the clearer. Those were the stories that stayed with you. That meant something, even if you were too small to understand why. But I think, Mr. Frodo, I do understand. I know now. Folk in those stories had lots of chances of turning back, only they didn't. They kept going. Because they were holding on to something -- that there's some good in this world, Mr. Frodo... and it's worth fighting for.
touchè, Mr. King. But I still can't believe you did that.
My mother, somewhere in her journey through bookdom learned just how close to your heart a character, who exists solely in an author's imagination and in his/her words on a page, can grow. It was a painful lesson in that this particular character died on the very last page of the book. She was so marred by her love of the character and her disgust at the character's untimely death that she left the practice of reading the narrative from front to end and entered into the dangerous world of skipping ahead, if ever she found that she loved a character. I have never done this, and I do not intend to, but tonight I can understand why she would take action to keep herself from feeling that kind of pain. Two characters that I loved dearly died today. And within a hundred pages of each other. When the first one died, or rather when the character received its fatal blow, i put the book down and walked away to mourn. I was confused and unbelieving. I waited a few hours and picked the story up again and mourned with the rest of the characters on the deathbed. I bid the character goodbye. And I stayed with everyone as they moved on. And then another died. And not a character I could have bared to see die, but the unbearable. I'm not prepared to give up on the book, because like the main character, I'm come too far and given up too much to quit now. From when I began reading this series in summer of 2000, from nigh page one, I have longed to see the tower and with all that I have left behind, I will tread onward.
The great evil in all this, however, is how much the writer tries to incorporate "fate" into this story. So much so that he even seems to indicate that he couldn't help killing off the characters that had to die, because some "greater force" was leading him to do so. And as much as that may be true, Mr. King, it was no fictitious character that brought about the death of these who have passed on. Please know, Mr. King, that their deaths are on your head. I suffer you know mercy from that. You must bear the guilt. You, dear writer, are a wanker.
Edit: From Peter Jackson's Two Towers: "It's like in the great stories, Mr. Frodo. The ones that really mattered. Full of darkness and danger, they were. And sometimes you didn't want to know the end. Because how could the end be happy? How could the world go back to the way it was when so much bad had happened? But in the end, it's only a passing thing, this shadow. Even darkness must pass. A new day will come. And when the sun shines, it will shine out the clearer. Those were the stories that stayed with you. That meant something, even if you were too small to understand why. But I think, Mr. Frodo, I do understand. I know now. Folk in those stories had lots of chances of turning back, only they didn't. They kept going. Because they were holding on to something -- that there's some good in this world, Mr. Frodo... and it's worth fighting for.
touchè, Mr. King. But I still can't believe you did that.
# posted by Adam @ 7:12 PM 
