IN LOCO ESSE  

30 December 2016 | Return of the King


For the first time in close to 30 years I bought and read a Stephen King novel.

I had a co-worker, well over ten years ago, mention that she was reading "The Dark Tower" series of books by King, and while I never pressed her for more info about it, the title stuck with me all this time. And a week ago, I was passing by the fiction section in the bookstore and saw a reprint of "The Gunslinger," the first book in the seven-part series. It's not very long, so I decided to purchase it.

I had read almost everything King had written when I was a teenager, but for some reason, about the age of 17, I stopped. In fact, the last book I remember buying and reading was "Pet Sematary," although I recall having the first edition of "It," a book I never read. I looked up King's list of books in chronological publishing order and was very surprised to see that "The Gunslinger" had come out in 1982. How did I miss this? I wondered. I had never even heard of this book, even though the 80s were the high tide of his reign as "the master of horror" for a teenage guy.

I got to thinking of why I stopped reading him. It wasn't a conscious decision at all: looking back, it just seemed to happen. It reminds me of a conversation I had with my brother about "Star Wars" when the prequels started coming out in 1999. He asked if I was excited about it and I remember just shrugging. He was very surprised because he remembered me as a young kid just loving "Star Wars" to the exclusion of almost everything else. But here I was, a thirty year old man, and the most I could do was shrug when asked about "Star Wars."

Again, it was just something that I think I grew out of. I didn't get tired of it, but after the last movie in the original trilogy was released in 1983, it kinda faded from view, and by the time I had graduated from high school five years later, it was just a memory. I never got into reading any of the novels in the "expanded universe" or bought comics, or went to conventions, or anything like that. I wasn't scouring "Starlog" magazine for news about future films. Looking back now, in my mid 40s, I can't think of a reason why I lost general interest.

Same thing with Stephen King. I didn't stop liking him, although it's interesting to see myself now having a strong avoidance for horror movies when I thought they were the greatest thing when I was a teen. (It was to the extent that my dad thought something was wrong with me.) It's rare nowadays that I read any fiction, even from an old favorite author. Since King considers "The Dark Tower" series his magnum opus, I felt like I could certainly at least read the first book, and I wasn't disappointed. I'll probably buy the second book in the series. (Can't say the same for "Game of Thrones": read the first book but just cannot bring myself to go any further, and I've never seen the series at all.) "The Gunslinger" had all the familiar edges and voice of King's novels that I had read when I was a teen, but sometimes I wonder what it is he has against young children who often meet grisly deaths in his stories. I'm still at a loss to figure out why I stopped reading him after high school, or stopped caring about all those things that I liked so much when I was a kid.

It's just one of those things that happens, I guess.

Click to share this post on Twitter  Click to share this post on Facebook  Share on Tumblr