Tag: Stephen King

I’ve said over and over that Stephen King and I go way back—it all began when I filched his mass markets from my mother’s dresser at nine, and scared the crap out of myself when I read them under the covers thereafter. In the years that followed, my mom and I would unearth remaindered copies of his books at secondhand shops; I’d rediscover him via the blessedly extensive collection at the college library; I’d return to him again and again, via a life- and love-consuming quest of the Dark Tower or some sanity-shattering mission to save JFK’s life. Steve and I, we buds from way back. So: Of course I’d devour Joyland. That delightfully pulp (and faithful to the content!) cover, and the invitation: Who dares enter the funhouse of fear? Pshaw—YOU KNOW I DO, STEVE. [Continue reading.]

There remains a Sasha-shaped clearing on my bed; it’s the debris from the stillness of hours devoted to one book alone—there are (the leavings of lunch:) empty soda cans and bags of potato chips, an ashtray and a hollowed pack of cigarettes, a cellphone guiltlessly ignored. That is: I’ve finished reading Stephen King’s The Dark Tower—meaning, the seventh and last book; meaning, all of it. I can’t remember the last time I was so consumed by someone else’s world for months. The last time I had something constant to turn to, a much-needed something to get lost in. [Continue reading.]

Last November, in an attempt to make her proud, I told my mother—the woman who read us Stephen King for bedtime, the woman who made sure that no shelf would be found wanting of a tattered, secondhand King paperback—that I’d begun reading The Gunslinger. And she promptly set down her tea and gasped: “Why haven’t you read—? Oh my god, you haven’t read The Dark Tower series.” [The subtext, of course, went along the lines of: “You are no daughter of mine.] And then we proceeded to gush over Roland of Gilead, because that’s the only way to react to Roland of Gilead. [Continue reading.]