Song of Susannah, Stephen King

Song of Susannah is the sixth book of Stephen King's series, The Dark Tower. Its length is listed at 432 pages. So, it is significantly shorter than the volumes before, but longer than the first two.

At this point I have read more than 3/4 of this volume. Although it doesn't quite have the beauty of some of the earlier volumes, I nonetheless have enjoyed it quite a bit better than Wolves of the Calla. There are some quite interesting aspects to it which I will get into shortly.

This book is centered around Susannah having Roland's demonic baby. She has been hijacked, yet again, by a new personality. However, it is different in that this is not one of her own personalities, but rather a new individual altogether. She has fled from the Calla in an effort to bring to term the pregnancy in another dimension of earth.

The ka-tet (Stephen King's expression to describe a kind of tightly knit posse, brought together by fate) is split into two: one to rescue or recover Susannah, and the other to obtain the property rights to the land in New York on which the sacred wild rose lives. Jake, Oy, and Callahan go in pursuit of Susannah while Roland and Eddie go after Calvin Tower, the owner of the New York property.

One scene disappointed me: when Susannah first appears in New York for the deliverance of the baby, she robs a lady of her shoes. I find the stereotype disturbing.

Probably one of the most interesting aspects to this book is the involvement of Stephen King as a character and plot twist. King writes himself in as a kind of God or conduit. The question of either being a kind of God or a conduit is never answered. Does Stephen King invent the characters, worlds, and events that take place in the books, or is he merely a conduit for them? When Roland and Eddie meet Stephen King, King knows less about what is going on than they do. King is at the point in his life where The Dark Tower series lies nearly forgotten in a box. He has, he says, essentially run away from the book, and speaks of his fear of it: is it the fear that he cannot complete the series? that he isn't good enough to complete the series? is it the fact of living within the story, as writers do as they are written, frightening to him? These are some of the other questions that I think he, the character and maybe the writer, come up with.

In any case, at this point of the story, I have enjoyed it quite a bit. There is none of the slow paced, pointless rambling that pained me through Wolves of the Calla. In King's phraseology, "Thank ye sai!"

I finished it! Good book. I really enjoyed it from beginning to end.

Sparingly, King indulges the reader in some terrific horrific imagery:

...the smell in the air hadn't been pork. The thing turning on the spit, brown as a squab, was a human baby. The creatures around it dipped delicate china cups into the drippings beneath, toasted each other... and drank.

 Susannah gives birth in the 19th chapter of the novel: quite fitting considering the repeating theme of the number 19. The story, for the most part, ends here. But then there's an interesting twist.

King writes himself into the story once again. How much of it is fiction, how much of it is biography? I don't know. I really love how he describes going over an old manuscript (The Gunslinger):

Usually working on an old story is about as appetizing as eating a sandwich made with moldy bread.

I think I would liken it to putting on dirty clothes after taking a long hot bath.

This last chapter seems to be a series of journal entries that somehow involve the creation and selling of the The Dark Tower series. Again, is this fact or fiction? I'm very, very curious. Curiouser and curiouser! One interesting thing he writes is, "...books were treasures you protected with your life." I can't help but wonder if that sentiment had anything to do with the creation of the book dealer. I can't imagine, having read what King wrote on working on an old manuscript that he could contemplate rereading his own journal and throwing in relevant bits and pieces. Surely they are fictional entries loosely autobiographical.

There's something particularly beautiful about this last chapter. It's the kind of last chapter that I wish all of my favorite authors of my favorite books had written: imagine Tolkien having a chapter like that after his Lord of the Rings or The Hobbit! Imagine Paradise Lost, and regained, by our great poet Milton, having a chapter like this? How about Asimov, or Heinlein, or any of the others? I think if all the books had sucked as bad as Wolves of the Calla and they had ended with this journey into the creation of this series, it would have all been worth reading. King has a fantastic narrative ability which transcends fiction.

This excerpt also gave me a good chuckle:

The worst thing to happen this week, I hope, will be my wife's bed coillapsing under the weight of our son and daughter-in-law--the idiots were wrestling on it.

I'm still laughing!

One of these days I'm going to do my '50 best novels' or 'writers' or something. You know, one of those lists that only means something to me. Kind of like this reading journal that I keep, the stories that I write, the poems that I wrote... I wonder where I'd put King. He definitely belongs on that list.