9-11 And The Dark Tower

[repost, 9/11/09]

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In The Song of Susanna, King’s own life becomes intertwined with the novel itself. Roland meets his creator – and, delightfully, doesn’t like him much! It was here that King began to draw all things together – tightly. No more hinting around, he was ready to begin tightening the screws.
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3 things were brought together: King’s own life, current/recent history, and the Dark Tower itself.
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King not only writes himself into the novel, he moves events from his life into the flow of the fictional story. This leaves no room for reality and fiction – King has become a part of his own work. He is a character. I heard Tom Nelson say that at the incarnation (when God became flesh) that God wrote himself into our story. The author became a part of the narrative and moved among the characters. Of course, in Song of Susanna, King becomes incarnate in the novel. The terrible car accident and other actual events of King’s life become part of the book.
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Something else rather striking happens: King moves pieces of American history into the book. Now we all are a part of the Dark Tower – in the since that we were all part of 9/11. Certainly those killed were most directly impacted, but the nation and world as a whole shared in the experience. And so the nation and the world are invited into the Dark Tower to imagine a twist. What if the villains in the Dark Tower played a role in the destruction of the Twin Towers?
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No longer did the Dark Tower simply loom over Roland – it loomed over all of us.
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It is under the World Trade Center that Black Thirteen is hidden. Bev Vincent explains it this way: "The idea is that Black 13 will be buried at the bottom of tons of rubble and will therefore be out of anyone's reach. As Callahan says, "one glass ball under a hundred and ten stories of concrete and steel? Even a glass ball filled with deep magic? That'd be one way to take care of the nasty thing, I guess."
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Steven Wu of Steven Wu’s book reviews, says: "And have I mentioned an extremely tasteless reference to 9/11, where King suggests that the terrorist attacks were just an attempt by his villains to destroy a fictional artifact of great value to them?"
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This is an interesting review, since I remember reading Song of Susannah with a sense of breathless glee. We – all of us – had been drawn into the plot. King, me, you, everyone was now a part of this book. I wasn’t offended that King used fiction to draw us in.