I've reached the Dark Tower at last.

Last night marked a milestone for ol’ Duffless, I finally finished The Dark Tower.

I started it on 11/10/2004 and finished it on 4/22/2008 in a conference room in the Merrimack Valley at 9:02pm.

Yes, that’s right, 3 years, 5 months and 12 days later I’m finally done.

A mere 1259 days from when I started, or 179 weeks, or 30,216 hours, or 1,812,960 minutes (well you get the picture).

It’s been an epic journey in “slow reading”, and much like Roland I took a few friends with me to the Tower. Fellow blogger, Tiger Daisy, (a known reading machine) started it a few weeks after me and plowed through the series at an alarming rate – I think she finished the whole thing in less than 6 months. The benefit, I got her used copies.

Soon after my brother aka “The Boy” joined me on this journey. The Boy is a notorious “slow reader”. It’s not that he reads slowly, it’s that he drags out the completion of books to epic proportions. He took over 2 years reading The Stand, M-O-O-N that spells a fucking long time.

Once he learned about the scope of the Dark Tower, he was on board for this feat of Duffless family literary endurance.

As of this writing, The Boy is about 60 pages into the final book. I have been about a book ahead of him this whole time, but the mission is not to reach the ending quickly, rather to un-artificially drag it out as long as possible, while still working towards reaching the Tower. We read it slowly because it’s what must be done! It’s what makes us who we are! It’s not about winning; my completing first was not a victory, just a mile-marker on the road, or as Stephen King and my friend Dan like to say, it's not the ending its the journey. Dan stole that from King - bastard!

I bought the first book, The Gunslinger, at the The Paperback Exchange. This is the used bookstore at the front of the neighborhood where I grew up. I like going there to pick up cheap paperbacks when I'm back home, usually Stephen King. My mom used to tell me when they would get a new crop of King books, or when they would go on sale. (An interesting to only two people side story -the lady who runs the shop has lived in our neighborhood for like 35 years and is a notorious gossip – the last time The Boy and I were in there, she asked my brother about one of his friends also from the neighborhood, and then told us she hated him and his family and would not piss this friend if he was on fire – harsh words from an old bag!). I digress.

I have been doing another related gauntlet of sorts; I have been on a mission to read every Stephen King book. It started in 1988 with IT and it’s been an epic battle; it seems each time I finish one he has written 2 more. Now that I’ve completed the Dark Tower Series, I have read most of his longer works, but I still have a lot of reading to do. I think another blog post should be devoted to my figuring out where I stand, I think at one point I was around the 50% mark, but he’s writing them faster than I’m reading them, so I’d guess I’m now only about 33% done, but we shall see.

So let’s talk a little bit about The Dark Tower. It’s a 7 volume series written by Stephen King. He started it 34 years ago, but the first book wasn’t published till the early 80s. Before he was even a famous writer, he was working on his first drafts of The Gunslinger (BTW, if you are considering reading the Dark Tower, I suggest getting the revised edition of the Gunslinger, since he made a few edits to tie the series together better.)

If you base your count on the trade paperback editions the books vary in length from the shortest (The Gunslinger @ 336 pages) to the longest, the final book (The Dark Tower @ a wopping 1072 pages). In total the trade paperback editions come in at 4,768 pages. WOOT! The books all vary, its hard to classify the series, its part western, part sci-fi, part horror, part adventure, part crime let alone all the glorious pop culture references and so on and so forth.

What I find most interesting is that since Stephen King started writing these books in the early 70s, he created characters and elements that are injected into many of his other books. Direct connections can be made from the Dark Tower series to books, such as Salem’s Lot, Eyes of the Dragon, The Stand, Rose Madder, Hearts in Atlantis, and on and on and on, it was even referenced in the latest King movie The Mist (which kicked ass btw).

You do not need to have read the Dark Tower to read his other books, and vice versa, but its pretty funny to realize that he’s connected all these worlds and you didn’t even notice it until you started down Tower road. I had always wanted to read the Dark Tower, but never started it because it wasn’t complete until 2004. He took his sweet ass time in finishing the books that’s for sure. But he just wasn’t ready for the series to be complete. However, after his brush with death he felt compelled to finish them at last. He even told fans basically, “yeah, I know I’m being a dick but I’m just not ready to finish”. I love how King is a fan of things himself, and understands his audience’s (Dear Readers) frustration. I think Kings a cool dude, very down to earth in my opinion. I remember how sad and pissed my friend Dan was when King was hit by the minivan having only finished half the series – at the time I was reading the Stand and Dan kept trying to get me to start the Dark Tower –I think he just wanted an other person to feel his pain

So now that I’m done, I have this urge/need to go back and reread the connected books, at the time I didn’t realize the connections. However, that would back-track me on my progress towards finishing all his books. I feel torn on the issue, like I’m being ripped apart by lobstrosities, I need some astin and maybe a bottle of Nooz a-la. Perhaps I will focus on Tower connected books I haven’t read yet, so I guess its time for The Black House, Eyes of the Dragon and Insomnia to name a few. Damn, those are all long too (but not as long as this blog post)! If you are considering starting it, word is they are being turned into a movie series by J.J. Abrams, so I'd suggest getting cracking now and I suggest the illustrated editions, they are cool.

But I love the challenge; I love the idea of plugging away at something for the sheer joy of completing an epic task. I’ve assigned myself two other tasks this summer:

1. walk all 11 miles of the MinuteMan trail out to Bedford and

2. finally tackle War and Peace (or at least start it, its been on my to do list since 1992).

I now need to find who will come on these journeys with me, and who will be ka-tet.