#books Okay. Sit down. I’m just now reading Stephen King’s The Dark Tower series. I love King’s writing, but took a break from it way back in the early 80’s after I spent the afternoon in a small town library waiting for my boyfriend to get out of a job interview. I selected a book of King’s short stories with which to pass the time. When I left the library to go to the appointed post-interview meeting place, it was a bright sunny early summer day, sunshine, blue skies. 1/
I was walking fast for fear I was going to be late (this wasn’t a town I’d visited before and didn’t want to get lost, though how anyone could get lost in Raeford NC, i don’t know), turned a corner a little too quickly and almost bumped into a man coming around the corner from the other direction. I screamed. Loudly. I was so unnerved by King’s short stories, I screamed in a lovely gentleman’s face in the middle of a beautiful day. I took Mr. King in sporadic doses thereafter, so missed TDT. 2/
I’m loving it so far (on book 3). I did just read that a critic described the “early installments” as a high falutin’ hodgepodge.” ? I would suggest gently that said critic appears not to have made good use of the necessary “willing suspension of disbelief” that makes reading poetry and fiction such a joy, and had apparently no appreciation for the brilliant scattershot use of allusion King employed. END