A ways past the midpoint of Dark Tower VII. Thoughts.

SPOILERS!!!!

I think I see the shape now of how the saga is going to end. I'm not sure how I feel about it. In a way, it's like King is writing an anti-epic, undercutting the big, obvious, dramatic moments with sudden, anticlimactic conclusions.

So far, two members of the ka-tet have been killed (I think...I haven't finished reading about the second incident, but it doesn't look good). The first was very much not the one I would have guessed, and I really did not expect King to kill off the other. Oddly, the only one left now is the one I figured would be killed first. So much for my prognosticating abilities.

Both deaths have a dramatic and an anti-dramatic component. Eddie has a moving deathbed scene, but his death is so random (!) and pointless that, well, only the forces of Random could have brought it about. King is breaking the standard rule that a flawed character has to redeem himself by sacrificing his life for those of his companions. That doesn't happen here. Which is brilliant, because Eddie's death couldn't have been more shocking.

Jake's death is sort of a mirror of Eddie's, I guess (although, again, I haven't finished this section of the book), in that his fatal action is heroic, but his actual moment of death is almost shoved to the rear of the stage.

So far, the series is defying most of my expectations. I had figured the series would go out with a huge bang, a rousing climax filled with blazing iron and armies of light and darkness. But that's a younger man's book. If I had to describe these last three books with one word, that word would be "exhausted." The DT saga isn't so much racing to a triumphant conclusion as it is sort of staggering to the finish line. That isn't necessarily a bad thing. From an artistic point of view, this last book is fascinating. I really like the way King has incorporated himself into the series. The Dark Tower series has always been close to his heart, but now it is Stephen King, embodying all of his physical and emotional trials and disappointments and what I can only imagine to be a deep spiritual malaise as he heads into his autumnal years.

It's amazing how profoundly that accident has shaped King's outlook and the Dark Tower itself. If he hadn't been hit with that van, I suspect we'd be seeing a vastly different end to the series. It's as if the accident made King confront his mortality for the first time, facing him with a fear that he hadn't really delved into before -- the fear of a sudden, random, completely meaningless death. That's the theme that seems to run all through this final book, from Eddie's random death to Sheemie dying, not from using his psychic powers, but from a nail in the foot. Looking at the book as a pure expression of what is going on inside King's heart, it's a curiously sad, almost bitter experience.

This is my favorite passage of the book:

Roland summoned his will and concentration. He focused them to a burning point, then turned his attention to the writer once more. "Are you Gan?" he asked abruptly, not knowing why this question came to him — only that it was the right question.

"No," King said at once. Blood ran into his mouth from the cut on his head and he spat it out, never blinking. "Once I thought I was, but that was just the booze. And pride, I suppose."