G is for Gunslinger

April A-to-Z: must-read books

The Dark Tower Series (1982-2012)

By Steven King

(1947-) Maine

The man in black fled across the desert and the gunslinger followed.

Steven King wrote these twelve words in response to Robert Browning’s nineteenth century poem, Childe Roland to the Dark Tower Came. At the time he had very little idea where he was going with it, except that, in his own words: “it was time to stop goofing around with a pick and shovel and get behind the controls of one big great god a’mighty steamshovel, a sense that it was time to try and dig something big out of the sand…” And so begins the novel, The Gunslinger.

More than twenty years later, after publishing more than two dozen books; seven from the Dark Tower series spaced patiently among them, King brought that project to resolution with the series’ title novel, The Dark Tower (2004), satisfied that it indeed would suffice as his personal magnum opus.

That initial ambition surprises me though, as it came on the heels of his epic Lord of the Rings-inspired novel, The Stand, which remains one of my favourite reading experiences of all time. But King was ambitious. His earliest works swiftly progress in scope, complexity and impact. He knew the Gunslinger idea was special and I think he didn’t want to conclude it before he’d realized more of his potential as a storyteller.

Somehow, as a reader, I attended the same wavelength. While The Stand hooked me as a constant King reader, I knew to leave the Dark Tower stuff alone for the time being. And in fact The Stand reading experience was never repeated, and as the things I cherished; King’s particular sensibilities, sense of humour and courageous imagination were no longer enough to defeat the slightly formulaic familiarity which his novels began to impart on me, I turned to The Gunslinger and the Dark Tower series as my fond farewell to the Steven King experience and my last attempt to re-experience the epic wonder of The Stand. Appropriately, I have not read them in succession but over the course of four years, interspersed with other (non-King) books and series of books. It's a delightful reading experience which I'm in no hurry to leave behind.

Though King is hailed as a horror writer, and purveyor of particularly creepy offerings (mostly by non-King-readers, it seems to me), I think you’ll find that fantasy, sci-fi and western elements are all more prevalent here than horror. The story's landscapes transcend time and space, and span the physical and metaphysical, thus different books have different flavours, but are strongly unified by hero characters of great depth.

I’m about to begin book seven, The Dark Tower, after which, I will decide whether to append the experience with his late and presumably optional addition, The Wind Through the Keyhole (2012).

These books are a must-read for any speculative fiction lover. And don’t fret; they’re not too scary!

A passage from The Gunslinger (1982):

“You asleep?”  the gunslinger asked.

“No.”

“Did you understand what I told you?”

“Understand it?” the boy asked, with cautious scorn. “Understand it? Are you kidding?”

“No.” But the gunslinger felt defensive. He had never told anyone about his coming of age before. Of course, the hawk had been a perfectly acceptable weapon, yet it had been a trick too. And a betrayal. The first of many: Am I ready to throw this boy at the man in black?

“I understood it,” the boy said. “It was a game, wasn’t it? Do grown men always have to play games? Does everything have to be an excuse for another kind of game? Do any men grow up or do they only come of age?”

“You don’t know everything,” the gunslinger said, trying to hold his slow anger.

“No. But I know what I am to you.”

“And what is that?” the gunslinger asked tightly.

“A poker chip.”

The gunslinger felt an urge to find a rock and brain the boy. Instead, he held his tongue.

“Go to sleep,” he said. “Boys need their sleep.”

And in his mind he heard Marten’s echo: Go and find your hand.

He sat stiffly in the darkness, stunned with horror and terrified (for the first time in his existence; of anything) of the self-loathing that might come.

The Gunslinger (1982)

The Drawing of the Three (1987)

The Waste Lands (1991)

Wizard and Glass (1997)

Wolves of the Calla (2003)

Song of Susannah (2004)

The Dark Tower (2004)

The Wind Through the Keyhole (2012)

F is for Family

April A-to-Z: must-read books

A Wolf at the Table (2008)

By Augusten Burroughs

(1965-) Pennsylvania

This is a memoir concerning a father-son relationship. How odd then, the cover image: a fork, curled like a claw, bathed in red light. And the peculiar mood at the outset. A reader is inclined to think they’ve stumbled on a werewolf tale. I was skeptical at first, that this was genuine autobiography.

But of course there are men of extreme personalities in the world, and why shouldn’t some of them have been fathers? And why wouldn’t the son of such a man, growing up in strange circumstances, be inclined toward the inwardness, escape and contemplation which would serve him in, and propel him toward, the art of writing.

This book was deeply compelling as it triggered much empathy in me, and it’s conclusion, so subtle but so powerful.

This book is a must-read for anyone who can shed a tear for another, and be grateful for that.

A passage:

   I pulled on the hem of his jacket, his sleeve. I grabbed his cold fingers and yanked them. I said, “Pick me up, pick me up!” Melting snow fell from his cap onto my neck and slid down my back, and this made me screech and laugh and jump in place. My father winced and complained, “Hush, that sound hurts my ears.”

   “Pick me up!” He never did but I said it anyway.

   “Damn it son, please.”

   “I backed away, still fidgeting and twitching with excitement. “Okay,” I said, and allowed him to walk into the house unmolested. Was he heading for the kitchen? Or the living room? I ran ahead of him, tearing across the floor. I made it to his destination long before he did. I hopped in place, up and down, up and down. I just could not stand it!

   Finally, when he reached the kitchen or the dining room table, I hugged him. And then those arms of his slid down between us, prying me away.

   It made me giggle. “You’re tickling me!” I shouted.

   I always managed to hang on a little bit longer.

   I always won!

   It was our game and I loved it. Me against the armsandhands to get to him, his solid core part, the middle, the him.

E is for Escape

April A-to-Z: must-read books

The Long Walk (1956)

By Slavomir Rawicz

(1915-2004) Poland

I was a suburban adolescent when I read this tale of Siberian prison camp denizens dreaming of escape. Since then it has become unclear whether this constitutes a true story or not. Doubts have been raised and answers have been given. I don’t personally give a hoot to what degree the chain of events described in The Long Walk align to an actual sequence of experiences or who it was who truly experienced them.

There is undoubtedly fiction in all true stories as there is fiction in real life itself. And in the pages of all fiction there are no doubt truths.  All stories are an assemblage of components of reality.

Regardless, this book is an unforgettable testament to the desperate human struggle for freedom and survival. It is a must-read for anyone who feels like dropped cell-phone calls, rush-hour traffic or unreliable internet represent hardship.

A Passage:

   It was about nine o’clock one bleak November day that the key rattled in the heavy lock of my cell in the Lubyanka Prison and the two broad-shouldered guards marched purposefully in. I had been walking slowly around, left hand in the now characteristic prisoner’s attitude of supporting the top of the issue trousers, which Russian ingenuity supplied without buttons or even string on the quite reasonable assumption that a man preoccupied with keeping up his pants would be severely handicapped in attempting to escape. I had stopped pacing at the sound of the door opening and was standing against the far wall when they came in. One stood near the door, the other took two or three strides in. “Come,” he said. “Get moving.”

   For me this day—twelve months after my arrest in Pinsk on November 19^th, 1939—was to be important. I was being marched off to my trial before the Soviet Supreme Court. Here in Moscow, shambling through the echoing narrow corridors of the Lubyanka between my two guards, I was a man almost shorn of identity, ill-fed, abysmally lonely, trying to keep alive some spark of resistance in the dank prison atmosphere of studied official loathing and suspicion of me. Just a year before, when the Russian security men walked into the welcome-home party my mother had arranged for me in the family house at Pinsk, I was Lieutenant Rawicz of the Polish Cavalry, aged twenty-four, slim and smart in my well-tailored uniform and whipcord breeches and shining riding boots. My condition now was a tribute to the unflagging brutalities and the expert subtleties of NKVD (Soviet Secret Police) interrogators at Minsk and Kharkov. No prisoner can forget Kharkov. In pain and filth and degradation they try to turn a man into a whimpering beast.

D is for Desire

April A-to-Z: must-read books

Mysterious Skin (1996)

By Scott Heim

(1966-) Kansas

This was the first book I read presented in first-person tense from two different characters in alternating chapters. Thank goodness I didn’t throw it aside as was my initial impulse as I stumbled into chapter two.

The two main characters are teenage products of their childhood traumas. One boy’s past is veiled in mystery while the other appears to have taken in stride circumstances no doubt troubling to the reader. So different are the characters I must assume that one author could not have written both from personal experience and yet to Heim’s significant credit, both are brought to life with touching intimacy in this, his first published novel.

In a society riddled with illusions it is the outsiders who have the most difficult paths but also the greatest potential rewards, in terms of accessing truth. This is a story of two such converging paths.

This book is a must-read for anyone with a heart for the underdog.

Some praise for Mysterious Skin, with which I wholeheartedly agree:

“The boldness and invention of this first novel are astonishing… It is an even , well-ordered place hiding gullies and beasts that will ambush its readers and leave a permanent mark on our dreams.” –Matthew Stadler, author

“Eerie, precise, emotionally complex, quietly charismatic, and full of grace…” –Dennis Cooper, author of Try and Frisk

A passage:

                “Merry Christmas,” I said to Neil and Brian. They still stared at the house, stared beyond its glass and wood and aluminum siding, stared at what had happened inside, years ago. Neil’s face was anxious, heartbreaking in its bruised and swollen state. Brian’s face had leached of color.

                I wasn’t part of this. Where else did I have to go but away?

                I could have said “I have to leave now,” could have explained “it’s better if you two are alone,” but I didn’t say a word. I raised my hand, fingers scratching the air in good-bye, and spun around. I stood there, my back to them, these two people I’d united at last. Then I began walking. The air made brittle stabs at my face, and I swallowed icy mouthfuls.

                I tried telepathy one final time. I didn’t care about its foolishness. I zeroed my mind on theirs, hoping Neil and Brian would hear, just this once. I love you both.

C is for Consciousness

April A-to-Z: must-read books

Neuropath (2008)

By Scott Bakker

(1967-) Ontario

People have read Neuropath, plot-wise a horror story of sorts, and said it changed their whole perception of the human mind and that it was a very creepy experience. When I read the book, it was a profound joy.

The story is creepy at times, yes, but the meat of this book is not contained in the plot. It is in all the state-of-the-art testimony from the neuroscience community which Bakker shares; the tidbits of scientific learning which suggest rather unarguably that we human beings are extremely mistaken about what we human beings are.

And while he presents most of this testimony in rather a poor light, that we should find these discoveries disturbing, it is possible (and more appropriate, I suggest) to view these discoveries from a much more joyful perspective. For, to know thyself is extremely empowering. To know thyself, or rather, the genuine nature of the human brain, especially within the greater context of the nature of life itself, is to understand the amazing thrilling potential of the human being and our potential effect on the universe, and to understand the great hurdles that have detained us just inches from the starting block of conscious evolution, and to manifest great capacities for pity and forgiveness, and to see much deeper through the veil of illusions which blanket our society.

What Bakker may not realize, is that these discoveries are not new. Poets have described these precise realities for hundreds of years, but in different terminology. As someone who was able to access those poetic ideas only after indulging in introspective self-discovery at great length, it is always joyful to find consolidation in literature, but what a find indeed, to see that the science community is now agreeing wholeheartedly with ancient poets. Now if only they realized it. If only the population at large would realize it. What great change might that inspire?

This is a must-read book for anyone who, like Neo from The Matrix, feels innately that there is something not quite real about the world, or perhaps, about yourself.

A passage:

“The world is on the brink, Goodbook. I’m simply the first to cross over.”

Thomas knew what he was talking about, but for some reason found himself pretending otherwise. “Brink. What brink?”

Neil wasn’t buying. “Is it the kids?”

“What are you talking about?”

“Are they the reason?”

“The reason for what?”

“The reason you moved back to Disney World?”

The confusion, the double-take disorientation, evaporated, and Thomas suddenly felt focused, the way only whiskey and outrage could make possible. “You’re drunk, Neil. Leave them out of this.”

Disney world was their pet term for the world as understood by the masses, one papered over with conceit after comforting conceit. A world anchored in psychological need rather than physical fact. A world with a billion heroes and happy endings, where the unknown was irrelevant and confronting your own weaknesses was the breakfast of losers.

“You know, I find it hard to remember what it’s like living with one foot in both worlds. To know, on the one hand, that paternal love is simply nature’s way of duping us into perpetuating our genes—“

“It’s not duping… Look, Neil, you’re really starting to piss me—“

“Not duping? Hmm. Then tell me, why do you love your son?”

“Because he’s my son.”

“And that’s an explanation?”

Thomas had glared at his friend. “That’s the only one I need.”

“Evolution wouldn’t have it any other way,” Neil had said. “It takes a lot of commitment to raise a child to reproductive age.”

Thomas tossed back his shot, clenched his teeth in revulsion and dismay. What the fuck was going on?

“Because you love your kids,” Neil continued, “you expend tremendous resources on them, you train them, feed them, protect them, you would even die for them. You do all the things that your genes just happen to require, and for reasons that have nothing to do with the harsh realities of natural selection.” Neil frowned, leaned back into the cushions. He hooked his toes on the coffee table. “And that’s not duping?”

“They’re just different descriptions of the same thing,” Thomas said. “Different angles.”

Neil reached out to pour them two more shots of whisky. “I guess you have no choice,” he said.

“What do you mean?”

“To rationalize. To set up shop in Disney World.”

Thomas shook his head. “Look. Neil. All this stuff was great in college. I mean we were soooo radical, even in Skeat’s class, mopping the floor with lit majors, freaking people out around the bong…” A pained grimace. “But now? C’mon. Give it a rest.”

Neil was watching him carefully. “That doesn’t make it any less real, Goodbook.” He gestured to the TV, where lines of Muscovites stretching out into a haze of grey snow shared the screen with talking heads and warm studio lighting. “Just look. It’s ending, just as Skeat said it would. No virulent pandemic, no mass environmental collapse, no thermonuclear Armageddon, just mobs and mobs of people, hominids pretending to be angels, clutching at rules that don’t exist, feeding, fighting, fucking…” 

B is for Buddha

April A-to-Z: must-read books

Siddhartha (1922)

By Hermann Hesse

(1877-1962) German Empire

People will tell you emphatically that this book is about the Buddha. It is not. It is about a man with the same given name (Siddhartha) as the Buddha, who searches for truth and reality by means of his own organic exploration, at a time when some of his peers are literally following the Buddha around. And this distinction is critical because it highlights a factor that is critical to the evolution of individuals (and thus mankind): It may be harder work to be an explorer rather than a student of explorers. It may take longer to establish the learning. But the learning is true because it stems from personal living experience and not from testimony, and as such carries much more weight and more power to change you. Such airy delights as faith and hope and belief may be convenient crutches for those with busy agendas in the world of work, but truth blows them away. There is no comparison.

For those with a knack for observation, for solitude and reflection; those with discoveries of their own, the testimony of other explorers can be a great comfort and a tool for consolidation, and to that end, this book is paramount; a must-read.

Siddhartha faces such similar questions, struggles and perspectives as I have, that I was in tears through most of this book. This begged the question: Had the author himself embarked on a similar journey? Did this story come from his own experience or from learning? From what I’ve read about Hesse, he indeed had a knack for solitude at times in his life, and a penchant for spiritual expansion, but he was also an aggressive student of such matters and a personal associate of Carl Jung for a time.

Reading Siddhartha, I had the feeling it was constructed from academic, not personal, experience (though it still resonated profoundly). But as a writer I know that this could be misleading. My own writing is far from perfect, and though I write from personal experience I know it could be interpreted otherwise.

A passage:

“…I am Siddhartha! And there is nothing in the world I know less about than myself, than Siddhartha!”

The thinking man, walking along slowly, halted, overcome by that thought; and instantly another thought sprang from that one, a new thought: “There is only one reason, a single one, why I know nothing about myself, why Siddhartha has remained so foreign to myself, so unknown. The reason is that I was afraid of myself, I was fleeing myself! I was seeking Atman, I was seeking Brahma. I was willing to dismember my ego and peel it apart in order to find the core of all peels in its unknown innermost essence: to find Atman, Life, the divine, the Ultimate. But I myself was lost in the process.”

A is for Adventure!

April A-to-Z: must-read books

Treasure Island (1883)

By Robert Louis Stevenson
(1850-1894) Scotland

This is simply the ultimate boy’s adventure story; the perfect, quintessential adventure story for boys around twelve or so. That I never convinced any of the boys I started more-or-less mentoring at that age, who are now in their late teens, to read this book (as far as I know), is probably the most resounding failure of my life; nothing short of tragic!

If you know a boy in grade school, You have to get him this book. You just have to!    

Jim Hawkins is roughly that age; perhaps a year or two older, and gets caught up in high-stakes, high-seas, life-threatening, nineteenth-century pirate affairs in a gripping, unputdownable tale! I haven’t read it in thirty-five years and I surely won’t read it again. The details are vague in my head but they radiate a magic which I will not compromise by submitting the book to adult perspectives!

The language of the original version is a bit archaic but remains suitable for brighter, more curious boys, according to tests I actually conducted with live boys!  There are texts with modernized language for those who are not up to the challenge.

Treasure Island is historically notable as the origin of such ingrained pirate lore as X’s on treasure maps and parrots on shoulders. Also it was prodigiously morally complex for children’s literature.

A passage:

In I got bodily into the apple barrel, and found there was scarce an apple left; but, sitting down there in the dark, what with the sound of the waters and the rocking movement of the ship, I had either fallen asleep, or was on the point of doing so, when a heavy man sat down with rather a clash close by. The barrel shook as he leaned his shoulders against it, and I was just about to jump up when the man began to speak. It was Silver’s voice, and, before I had heard a dozen words, I would not have shown myself for all the world, but lay there, trembling and listening, in the extreme of fear and curiosity; for from these dozen words I understood that the lives of all the honest men aboard depended upon me alone.   

abed [uh-bed]

Norman Rockwell:
Crackers in Bed

excerpt from recent likebook discussion:

"I eat all my meals in bed. Honestly. I try to clean up after myself for the most part but things go astray. It's not so bad. Sometimes if you awaken in the night a little peckish - you can just pull a little snack out of your armpit or cleavage or what not... it's pretty convenient."

abduct [ab-duhkt]

Men are greatly skilled at harming one another. The laws of men are thought to be the solution to this. But the laws of men are arbitrary. They are meant to punish the harms which threaten to undermine the establishment; even the laws which seem not to be for that purpose so attend that purpose in the end.

We punish presumed harms in accordance with the superstitions of the day, harms born of self-fulfilling prophecy which thus harm accordingly. But we punish none of the great harms which are approved by the elite; those in their best interests to inflict, and for us to inflict on others.

Prisons are taken for granted, while truly they are the privilege of the free. Yet we seem to resent each small price we must pay for it.

abdomen [ab-duh-muh n]

I am fat. Enormous, in fact. Over three hundred pounds. It hinders my every pursuit. I perceive it is a death sentence. But it loves itself, this belly. I have gone to war with it but the belly possesses every advantage. If I win 90% of the battles, do I make 90% of the goal and win 90% of the war to lose weight? No. Ninety per cent success at a dieting war gets you a draw if you’re lucky; a steady scale. You must win 99% of the battles just to turn things a hair in your favor. It doesn't seem fair. I must summon every possible weapon.

It feels hopeless.

Hey, I’m out here! Can you see me?

When I started opening up to certain people about how I’d changed in my perceptions of things, it was very difficult. So much of the material was so uncommon and required so much explanation. It was hard to hold all of the relevant factors mentally at hand. Communication requires common experience and uncommon experiences demand skill and tenacity to relate effectively. I gave people a lot of wrong impressions I think. I believe my closest friendships were harmed in the process. Skepticism is another barrier perhaps though generally a very useful thing. Humans are generally very bad at knowing who to trust and who not to. Very bad. We constantly nurture our ability to rationalize while neglecting our capacity for logic.

With practice, I became better at explaining myself. But as time goes on I think I’m getting worse again and I think it’s because I am losing track of the gap between my perceptions and the apparently normal ones. I’m losing memory of how I once was; how I once thought, and thus where my “audience” might be at. Where does common dogma end and the need for explanations start? These points are slow to show up on my radar these days. Without that mental mapping going on, conversations become unhinged. We don’t get what the other is saying. We just think we do.

The other day I wrote briefly about my alienation from the idea of being “Canadian” and yet I seemed not to have any idea how to explain that because I had no recollection of why some people do feel Canadian. Even at this moment nothing is coming to mind. Why do people feel that they’re Canadian? I suppose if I concentrated I’d figure all that stuff out again; what I regard as the fictions of nationalism, but in a verbal conversation there are no time-outs for figuring out.

I recently referenced my disassociation with “society” and I’m sure in hindsight that it was not understood.

I am physically present in society, yes. And I am largely participating in the accounting of society. I reap many benefits from society: physical protection, physical comfort, food, medicine, luxurious privileges etc.

But mostly society is a set of ideas or constructs which are not grounded in any physical fact but yet we subscribe to them as if they are. Some of them are completely ludicrous if you can free your mind from your instinctive desires and actually look at them objectively. All of the great structures of our society that deal in power and information are in essence unified in their purposes and employ pyramid schemes and slave models, blanket us in distraction, nurture stupidity and inhibit creative thinking while disguising all of it with bait that hooks our instinctive needs.

I don’t approve of the ruling structures of our society and I do not participate in them with my mind the way that most people seem to. I do not subscribe to the ideas and thus when I hear the most normal of conversations that go on by the millions every day, mired in the common perceptions spun by political, religious, corporate, pop-culture, media and formal education cultures, they seem completely insane to me.

I made good money and had a lot of laughs working in Information Technology for a marketing and merchandising company where everything looked shiny and happy on the surface and where the worst of evils were buried under layers and layers of deceit.

I had financial security which is what everyone thinks is the key to happiness. And don’t bother trying to deny it because I know you think that you don’t think that, but deep inside you sure as hell do. Your every damn behaviour gives you away. Our whole society revolves around money; especially the things that look like they don't.

I gave up the financial security, traded it for a crappy part-time security guard wage so that I could devote my life to work that I believed people needed, work that runs against society, work that society will not pay me for. That is a big reason I feel I am in essence outside of society. Of course it would be easier to sell that idea if I were far more productive and actually making an impact with these pursuits.

Yes, I was able to achieve one great thing in life and it was the courage to face myself for real. It was the courage to contemplate that Satan himself might be standing behind a door and I could either open it or run away and I fucking opened it. It was fucking terrifying and I did it because I was somehow addicted to the pursuit of truth. It was like a drug. That achievement knocked all kinds of walls down. It destroyed all the investments I’d ever made in the pursuits of wealth and toys and reputation and suddenly I was free to examine myself and people and society and the universe without any care for what I wanted to be true. I no longer needed any particular things to be true. If I could accept being the devil I could accept anything. It was a thrilling escape to access such an unimagined power of objectivity. And so I can perceive society from outside of it instead of from inside of it where I was previously blinded by the walls of investment; by instinctive need; by survival/domination instinct.

That is one way in which I operate outside of society. Physically I am inside society as a kind of prisoner-with-benefits, while mentally I perceive it from the outside. Idealistically I am outside of society because I would tear it all down in a heartbeat, had I the power (and not entirely without a rebuilding plan). And financially… (and finances is what it’s all about) I generally feel I am outside, because I gave up my financial interests so to spend my time and energy on something noble for which I have no intention or likelihood of financially profiting from (plus fairly concrete charitable plans just in case).

What do I sound like when I talk like this? Do I sound like I’m completely full of shit? I wouldn’t blame you if you assumed so. Do I sound elitist, like I think I’m better than everyone else? I hope not. I'm better at some of this stuff than other people because this is what I work at - at the expense of other things in my life which I neglect and so am not good at. I have my flaws for sure. In some ways I am a cheater and a hypocrite; I know. I’m aware of that. Sometimes I think about trying to defeat certain flaws; trying to set the angel in me fully free. But mostly I’m afraid that such an angel would just float around and not be able to relate to anyone.

I want us all to set our angels free.

The Big Reveal!

Okay, I’ll keep this short! April A-Z Blogging is just around the corner. This will be my third – maybe fourth year? I’m trying to get it all prepared ahead of time so that I can try to concentrate more on Camp Nano April Edition. The goal, once again is 50,000 words.

The theme for this year's A-Z blogging challenge shall be…

Must-read books: A collection of reviews which focus around usefulness and for what kind of reader – or person – the book should be considered a must-read.  Some titles shall go back to my childhood and be recommended for children. Not all will be novels but they will all be special books that made a heavy impact on me.

Many will have been reviewed in this space before but I shall endeavor to offer fresh perspectives.

If you’re blogging A-to-Z this year, feel free to drop a comment here and I will check you out come April first! No foolin’.