Jakob J. 🎃's Reviews > The Gunslinger

I read the first half of this when I was in seventh grade. I bought over a dozen Stephen King books at a garage sale and laid out a plan to complete the entire Stephen King catalogue. This was even more foolish than my more recent attempt to read the entirety of In Search of Lost Time in one year. (I didn’t). Not, of course, that it can’t be done, only that I have proven myself—over and over again—incapable of following through with my grandiose plans, however comparatively-to-others’ modest they may be. I started several of his books as planned—IT, The Dead Zone, Cujo, The Skeleton Crew, this one—but after however many pages I realized how long it would take. Besides, The Simpsons was on. Nevertheless, I frequently carried his books around with me; at school, at church (was asked not to), at extended family gatherings. Between that, my Misfits hoodie, and my ostensible resting bitch face, my outsider status experienced its genesis. I was silently exiled from my table at lunch, sitting solemnly alone for the rest of the year, perusing my cinder-block sized tomes bearing the commandingly enormous printed name of the master of modern horror. My tastes have evolved, naturally, but I have Stephen King largely to thank for that enduring legacy (and I do thank him).

Returning to this story was a fascinating experience, taking into account the age of the author at the time of its creation (and his subsequent forwarded disavowal of some of the prose within), the time that has passed since its publication, the revisions on the original text, the scope and anticipation of the volumes to come in the series, and the retrospectively obvious influence King had (and probably still has) on my own writing. King himself would probably disagree that this is a five-star book, but reading it after all this time reminded me why I got into him as a youth in the first place, and how truly disturbing some of his descriptions can be. (I read Pet Semetary at an even younger age than The Gunslinger, and in both of them, King does not spare us the true-to-life terror of a child out in the street).

“Jake?”
“Uh-huh?”
“Do you want to remember this when you wake up, or forget it?”
“Forget it,” The boy said promptly. “When the blood came out of my mouth I could taste my own shit.”

The Man in Black is an iconic adversary, the likes with which King has demonstrated that only he has been able to indelibly stamp. He is a devious villain, pretentious and obtuse; dropping hints of foreboding and soliloquizing on cosmic insignificance to terrific effect without (yet) relying on gun slinging (like our rather simple-minded protagonist, Roland), roaring, or hell raising. He invites madness with a deliciously smooth subtlety.

It’s very easy to recognize that King—like any modern horror writer—was highly influenced by Lovecraft earlier in his career, not only regarding the adjective-laden purple prose (guilty), but thematically as well, as with the aforementioned atmosphere of cosmic terror and inconsequentiality. Without question, King has matured and honed his skills as a storyteller over the decades, and many readers have followed him for nearly as long. Some of the writing is good for such a young writer, much of it is good for any writer, and, to be sure, some of it is hilariously overwrought and silly. My favorite simile-example: “Volcanoes blurted endless magma like giant pimples on some ugly adolescent’s baseball head.” Such distracting goofiness notwithstanding, the book is filled with wonder, and extols it in the contemplations of time and the grand cosmos (perhaps circumscribed by The Dark Tower off in the distance, both all-encompassing and yet eternally outside our physical and cognitive limits?).

“The universe (he said) is the Great All, and offers a paradox too great for the finite mind to grasp. As the living brain cannot conceive of the nonliving brain—although it may think it can—the finite mind cannot grasp the infinite.”

A simple taste of some Lovecraftian quaintness (and not the best one), but widely resonant and colloquially articulated almost as if from a Richard Linklater film. Either I get King, he gets me, we both just get Lovecraft in that existential adolescent way, or this is all far more common than my narcissistic, pseudo-precocious, immature and masturbatory mind gave other people credit for.

Whatever the case, I had a hell-of-a-good experience this time around. I owe a great deal of my life-long love for literature to Stephen King, and this has brought me right back to the fundamental reasons why.