The Gunslinger
by Stephen King
General / Favorable Reviews |
Critical Reviews |
|||
Imagination to paper takes time ***** At under 300 pages, "The Gunslinger" - the first book from Stephen King's "The Dark Tower" series - may seem oddly short, especially when compared to the latest volume from the epic, weighing in at around 700 pages. And still, Constant Reader, there are thousands more to go! According to the
afterword from this book, it took King twelve years to complete the
writings. He wrote the opening line, "The Man in Black fled across the
desert, and the Gunslinger followed" while an undergraduate, the middle
portions when "`Salem's Lot" was going bad, and was inspired with another
concurrent writing: "The Stand." For King to have kept the Gunslinger, the
Man in Black, Jake, and the other characters - and really the entire world
of the Dark Tower - alive for so long in his mind is a testament to not
only the power that this held over the author, but holds over us - his
Constant Readers. Moreover, since the first publishing of "The
Gunslinger," around twenty years have passed, a number of newer volumes in
this series have come and gone - yet with this first, partially inspired
by Robert Browning's poem, "Childe Roland," and partially inspired by
reams of green paper (read the afterword to the book), you know that this
was a very special creation indeed. "vaoy" (from amazon.com)
|
Start of the series and writing seminars *** I've read a number of reviews of the series and have been told by friends how great it is, so I decided to check it out. Reading and understanding the intro/forward King has written in this revised edition helped a great deal. King wrote this book early in his career with the intention of writing a grand epic. He explains the author of this book at the time had not really found his groove so to speak and had spent a little too much time in writing seminars. One particularly revealing comment King makes about himself was that the seminars taught him to favor ambiguity over clarity and simplicity. He also goes on to mention when he revised the book he found many areas for improvement, but was able to leave the writing alone in places where he was seduced into forgetting the writing seminars by a particularly entrancing piece of story. I find this captures the book well. Reading it, the book shifts from a very
interesting tangible plot to the Gunslinger slipping into ambiguous dreaming and
past thoughts within the same page. You can almost tell where King has gone back
and done revisions as you can see his 30+ years of experience fixing his amateur
mistakes. Neil Goldsmith (from amazon.com)
|
|||
|
[Return to APOCALYPTIC FICTION home page]