When I was in junior high and high school, twenty-odd years ago — and let me tell you, they were very odd years, yuk yuk yuk — I read everything Stephen King had written. I started with an “oops” book club edition of Christine my mother had lying around the house, but before long I’d devoured many, many more, from both his by-then back catalog plus every new one to come down the pike until I finished high school or thereabouts, and stopped — briefly — until his magnum opus popped up again, in new and improved and expanded form, in 1990. (I’d read the original ’78 text before, on the suggestion of a friend from church (no, really), and was blown away.) Here was King working at a fundamentally different level than he’d ever shown before, or since in standalone work. I heard him say once, on a talk show, that “half these things sound like jokes until I get a’hold of ’em,” and that’s true — Hello! Haunted Plymouth, anyone? — but there’s nothing at all funny or even particularly abstract (at least in post-9/11 America) about the premise of The Stand. Here was a work head and shoulders over the rest of his output, and King’s own commentary about his fans suggests I’m not alone in this assessment. It’s an achievement of a novel that has been criminally overlooked outside genre circles these last 30 years. Even a weak TV miniseries conveys at least a minor part of it scope (aided, no doubt, by strong casting — it featured Gary Sinese, Rob Lowe, Ruby Dee, Miguel Ferrer, and a then-unknown Jamie Sheridan).

For whatever reason, though, I never touched King’s next major effort, his Dark Tower cycle. Perhaps this was partly because I didn’t think it could be worth my time — my tastes changed in college, and became less willing to entertain what, by the mid 90s, had become somewhat formulaic output from King. Having written and revisited The Stand, and made many millions besides (who knew Rowling would eventually eclipse him, with a little help from exchange rates?), what motivation did he have to produce more demanding work? Perhaps, too, it was an early manifestation of something I joked about here only last year, when Robert Jordan shuffled off this mortal coil without completing his 12-volume Wheel of Time cycle: don’t start reading a series until you know the author will live long enough to finish it. So for whatever reason, I quit reading King, and never touched his own song of Roland. (I was very nearly, and tragically, vindicated; King finished the Tower only after his roadside brush with death).

So I left it alone until two weeks ago. I have a weakness for plot-driven fiction on the road, and God knows I’ve been on the road this spring. Figuring it’d be worth at least a couple hours — and knowing that King had, finally, finished the series in 2004 — I picked up the first volume of the Dark Tower (The Gunslinger)on the Saturday before a 4+ hour flight to Seattle the next day. My flight’s arrival into SeaTac was delayed just enough to prevent me from hitting a Barnes & Noble upon my arrival, which vexed me greatly, as I’d consumed the first book whole and was desperate for more. After my first day on site with the client, I drove to the nearest bookstore and picked up the next two (The Drawing of the Three and The Waste Lands). As I write this, I’ve just finished #3, and will crack #4 before I rest my noggin tonight.

Let me say this, less than halfway through this seven book series: It makes The Stand look like illiterate pulp. King is working on a whole different level, and is clearly maturing and gaining expertise as he goes along. The new, expanded editions include a forward explaining this from King’s point of view; the first bits were written very early on (initial stories were published in ’78, and written even earlier), but he only came back to the cycle relatively late in his career (book 3 didn’t show up until 1991).

It is in this third book that he really hits his stride. Book one sets the stage, and establishes important facts about the Gunslinger (Roland of Gilead) and his world. Book two establishes the relationship, sort of, between Roland’s world and ours, and the peril that faces both. Only in book three do we see where King may go, and what parts of our shared literary tradition as well as his own not-inconsequential mythos he incorporates, and in the best possible ways. Consider this passage, from late in book three (I don’t think this is spoiler-y; most King fans know what little is revealed here):

“Call me Fannin,” the grinning apparition said. “Richard Fannin. That’s not exactly right, but I reckon it’s close enough for government work.” He held out a hand whose palm was utterly devoid of lines. “What do you say, pard? Shake the hand that shook the world?”

Pleased to meet you. Hope you guess my name. The name’s not the same, but the initials sort of, oh, I dunno, STAND out, don’t you think?

Granted, the reintroduction of a popular (and clearly eternal) villain isn’t always a good thing, but the themes King builds on, and the ways he builds them, make the Dark Tower — at least so far — the most thrilling work I’ve read in some time. King is working on levels both literal and postmodern; he transposes elements of traditional fantasy into a modern (or, again, postmodern) setting without becoming contrived or cute, and he does so while maintaining his own inimitable, compelling, and compulsively readable voice. If you thought The Stand hinted that King possessed gears he wasn’t using in his more traditional horror output, The Dark Tower is your clearly affirmative answer. A professor of mine, in ’90 or ’91, suggested the epic was a dead form; a student colleague offered that “Stephen King thinks he’s writing one.” For my money, he was right.

Granted, it’s a daunting idea for some to consider the sheer volume of pages involved here, I admit. Make no mistake; he’s working like Tolkein did. The gap from one book to the next is like the gap between chapters in a regular story. It’s a seven volume novel, and dwarfs his previous efforts; my paperback of The Waste Lands alone runs to 588 pages. However, if there were ever a story you wished wouldn’t end, you’ll understand why, not even midway through, Chief Heathen is thrilled with the idea that he’s got four books to go.

As St. Webb might say, my friends, pick up on it.