Song of Susannah
I finished Stephen King's 6th Dark Tower novel, "Song of Susannah", a couple of weeks ago. I enjoyed it, but...
Stephen King needs an editor.
Every time I read his more recent works, I get this feeling that now that he's the world's best-selling novelist, publishing companies are afraid to really edit his works. [I get the same feeling about J.K. Rowling too.] King is a great storyteller, but his stories could do with tightening up.
Having said that, I'm enjoying the theme that King is working right now. I'll say no more in the main entry. Read the extended entry if you don't mind spoilers.
King seems to be obsessed with writing. I believe he writes not just because he wants to, but because he has to. "The Dark Half" dealt with how an author's alter ego can come to life, with Thad Beaumont's alter ego, George Stark, literally coming to life. However, this is metaphorical for something I believe King really felt about his own alter ego, Richard Bachman. Richard Bachman had a life of his own within King's head.
In "Song of Susannah", King plays with the idea that writers create worlds through their works of authorship. Once the world has been created, it takes on a life of its own. This echoes something King himself has said about his characters - he means for them to do one thing, but they keep wanting to do something else. In his foreword to "'Salem's Lot", King writes about how he had initially intended to write a different kind of vampire novel - one where the vampires win. But by the end of it, he found that his human characters wanted to be heroic, so be heroic he let them. Heroic in a Stephen King sense, that is. Nobody lives happily ever after in a Stephen King novel. Evil may be thwarted, at least for the time being (and in some cases it is not thwarted at all), but those who helped defeat it then suffer as a result of the experience. That, if nothing else about his novels, is true to life. People do not emerge emotionally unscathed from harrowing experiences.
So King himself becomes a character in his own novel. His "creations" come visit him in Maine, telling him he must finish the story. He must once more pick up the tale of the Dark Tower, left unfinished in some boxes, and complete it. A metaphor, I think, for how his characters haunt him in his mind, clamoring to have their stories told. Roland and his ka-tet seem to haunt King more than any of his other characters. The Dark Tower mythos seeps its way into other of his works, affecting nearly everything he writes.
And so in writing a novel about the Dark Tower, King also manages to write a novel about the writer's creative process. Told, like any other Stephen King story, through allegory.
Comments
I've generally felt that way about King since "It", which was so bloated I was rooting for the clown to kill the kids and end my reading misery.
He's done some decent things since, but it seems to be tight writing at his whim, not as a rule.
Posted by: Jane | June 29, 2004 06:29 PM
Recently came across a fictitious memo from an editor to his famous author. "Dostoievski: Your manuscript, Crime, Punishment, and Repentence is too long. Cut it by a third".
Posted by: SS/Dad | June 30, 2004 10:58 PM
How could you miss the point? You couldn't be more wrong about what King was trying to say with his Dark Tower books. The Writer does not CREATE the world he writes about. That world already exists but certain people must write about it. King said himself the the stories just come out of him,like he's not in charge. Read the book twice. Matter of fact read a couple more king books and the complete picture comes together. There are MANY worlds other than the world we know.King is basically saying that all fiction is not really fiction but real events in parallel worlds. This is why you cant just "MAKE Up" a story. A true writer is just a doorway to another world. Who's to say that if we reach the edge of the universe you wont find yourself on a rose petal? We a human beings take what we call "imagination" for granted. After all, OUR world is REAL. Right? I mean we ACTUALLY exist. No one ever really thinks about this,because thinking about it can drive a person mad. We block that out by worrying about car payments,rent,what movie we're gonna see.Trivial stuff. When you sit down and think about the fact that we EXIST,and how big a thing like that is. The ANYTHING seems possible.
Posted by: Juan | July 1, 2004 10:39 PM
Actually, Juan, I've read a lot of Stephen King books. I've read about half of the things he's written. And I disagree about what his point was. Both Roland and Eddie refer to the world they entered as the real world. A world that was "real beyond reality. It was...anti-todash." Not that it was a parallel world.
They also refer to King as the man who made them, their god, if you will. If King merely opened the doorway, he would not be the man who made them.
There's also the notion that in King's world, time travels in just the one direction. In other worlds, the fictional worlds, if you will, Roland and Eddie could go back and revisit a day. But in King's world, they can only visit a day once.
So the writer creates the world, but once created cannot control it. It then takes on its own will and pushes at the writer. Since the writer creates the world, there are doors between his worlds, the doors of his psyche. But the world of the writer is the real world, not the other worlds.
Posted by: Lesley | July 1, 2004 11:45 PM
"King said himself the the stories just come out of him,like he?s not in charge."
You've proved Lesley's point right here Juan.
Posted by: BSB | July 2, 2004 08:05 PM