Am I really a 'blogger'?

I guess it's official. After years of bucking dozens of trends, I've finally caved in and decided to follow the pack. Everyone's got a blog, and now so do I. I know this is just a form of mental masturbation, but, whatever. I like to write and I like to read what I write. And I like to think that I have a somewhat competent understanding of the English language. (The last time I gave in on what I thought was a fad, I ended up reading all of the Harry Potter books in under a week.)

I'm reading The Dark Tower series, and I've just reached the final book. I felt the first book was amazing while the subsequent three to four books all follow along fairly well. There are some ups and downs within those books, but, to that point, Stephen King had written a series that I thought could eventually be compared with The Lord of the Rings of Harry Potter or any other fantasy series with a fanatical following. But then I read Song of Susannah. And the wheels came flying off. The book is horrible. And I don't think I'm being particularly hyperbolic or unkind. It really is that bad. There's no need for the book. Not only is it the vestigial organ of the series, but King includes many details and sections that have no place in the universe he has created and completely ruin the mythos he has created. For instance:

King is known now as the genre-defining horror author. Most of his books could typically be described as pulp or fluff. Occasionally, he rose above his typical fare by writing stories like The Green Mile, Misery, Hearts in Atlantis, The Girl Who Loved Tom Gordon, and "Rita Hayworth and the Shawshank Redemption." In these stories, King wrote not of horror or fantasy, but a plausible reality tinged with the highly improbable. He also avoided unnecessary and overtly graphic scenes and descriptions. And, for the most part, the first four books of The Dark Tower series follow these trends rather than the typical populist horror stories he's more known for writing. In the fourth book, Wizard and Glass, we see that King begins to lose his way. Rather than sticking to the world of The Gunslinger, King reverts back to his pulpy pop-culture past - even going so far as to include scenes and places not only from his previous books but from other fictions as well. Also, King includes a rather graphic and unnecessary description of a young boy blowing up a stray dog's head with a firecracker. While King may have felt the need to include these scenes as a writer, as a reader, he only manages to rip me completely out of the story. When he writes scenes like these, I am not immersed in his world but aware of the construction behind it. He is not a writer, then - a wordslinger - but a very, very poor magician. Ironically, he alludes to the scene from The Wizard of Oz where Dorothy and her 'ka-tet' visit the Emerald Palace. Don't look behind the curtain.

This continues in the next book. While the story that takes place in Calla Bryn Sturgis seems to fit the overall arc, significantly larger chunks of the book fall outside of the construct of the series. I'm sorry, Mr. King, but vampires and zombies and barely disguised 'low-men' have no place in your story. Nothing so unbelievable occurs in this world you've created. Much like Lucas' inclusion of midiclorians, this drastic change in plausibility ruins the mythology he has created. It just doesn't fit. And the references to lightsabers from Star Wars and snitches from Harry Potter and the continued 'borrowing' from the writer's other books only further diminish the illusion of immersion.

Song of Susannah is the culmination of King's gradual deviation. This isn't merely a scene of unnecessary description and gore. This isn't merely a chapter of implausibility. This is an entire, fully-conceived, full-price book. And it is an abomination. First off, nothing happens in this book. If you were to skip this book in its entirety while reading the series, you would not miss one development in the overall story. On top of that, there is so much unnecessary fluff and gore . . . At one point, one of the characters hypnotizes another character and convinces him that he will be 'regular' for the rest of this life. Really? Was this necessary? Does this benefit the story in any way? Also, by this point, we know that the low-men are evil; that they are creatures of destruction that should be avoided at all costs. And yet King felt it necessary to include a vivid and graphic description of the low-men cooking a human baby. Yes, that's about as jarring a sentence as it was a scene in the book. Why include any of this?

Part of the reason I continued to read the series is that, as a reader, I have been 'drawn' along with Eddie and Susannah and Jake into Roland's search for the Dark Tower. I, too, want to see the field of red roses and the smoky, hazy form of blackness rising out of it. Unfortunately, with Song of Susannah (and, apparently, the beginning of The Dark Tower), this wordslinger has lost his drive and desire to complete the quest.