Childe Roland (and Bragg) to the Dark Tower Came.

     I have just completed the first leg of my vicarious journey to the Dark Tower as I have finished the first book in a seven part marathon series entitled The Dark Tower.  I'm a bit of a Johnny-come-lately; The Gunslinger, the first book in the series, was originally published in 1982. But at least when I finally reach my aforementioned destination I may boast that it was not a bandwagon that delivered me.
     I am not what anyone would call a Stephen King fan (or reader, for that matter); I enjoyed the film adaptaion of The Shining, and I remember the confused feeling as fear and intrigue coupled within me while watching IT as a child, but I have never had a desire to pick up any of King's literary work.  There are people in and out of my life, however, whose tastes I respect that have read this particular series.  Since I enjoy the keep of their company I assumed there must be something to it.  Thus, consequently, began my journey. 
     I must say that I am a fickle reader by fault, often putting down an unfinished book to start another one (it is nothing for me to read 3 books at a time).  It is difficult enough exercising this habit considering that decoding the vernacular of my favorite authors (Hemingway, Faulkner, Thoreau and the like) requires from me patience, an unwavering conscious, and a little research.  After picking up The Gunslinger, however, I knew that not only would I have to break this habit but further commit to being faithful, exclusive, as it were, to this series. I would have to best my non-commital personality.
     So that brings me to the present with one novel under my belt.  I am crossing strange lands with Roland the gunslinger on his quest to reach the Dark Tower.  And while I do not know if he ever reaches it, my plan is to see this through to the end.  In the last stanza of Robert Browning's poem Childe Roland to the Dark Tower Came, from which King drew inspiration for his epic series, the hero is able to see the ghosts of those who had attempted and died trying to reach the Tower.

I saw them and I knew them all. And yet

Dauntless the slug-horn to my lips I set,

And blew. "Child Roland to the Dark Tower came."

 It is my hope that I do not meet the same fate as others who have gone before me and have failed, that I will not join the ranks of their ghosts, that I will reach my own Dark Tower (and not take myself too seriously).