Contents
INTRODUCTION ON BEING NINETEEN (AND A FEW OTHER THINGS)
ARGUMENT
PROLOGUE BLAINE
PART ONE RIDDLES
CHAPTER I BENEATH THE DEMON MOON (I)
CHAPTER II THE FALLS OF THE HOUNDS
CHAPTER III THE FAIR-DAY GOOSE
CHAPTER IV TOPEKA
CHAPTER V TURNPIKIN’
PART TWO SUSAN
CHAPTER I BENEATH THE KISSING MOON
CHAPTER II PROVING HONESTY
CHAPTER III A MEETING ON THE ROAD
CHAPTER IV LONG AFTER MOONSET
CHAPTER V WELCOME TO TOWN
CHAPTER VI SHEEMIE
CHAPTER VII ON THE DROP
CHAPTER VIII BENEATH THE PEDDLER’S MOON
CHAPTER IX CITGO
CHAPTER X BIRD AND BEAR AND HARE AND FISH
INTERLUDE KANSAS, SOMEWHERE, SOMEWHEN
PART THREE COME, REAP
CHAPTER I BENEATH THE HUNTRESS MOON
CHAPTER II THE GIRL AT THE WINDOW
CHAPTER III PLAYING CASTLES
CHAPTER IV ROLAND AND CUTHBERT
CHAPTER V WIZARD’S RAINBOW
CHAPTER VI CLOSING THE YEAR
CHAPTER VII TAKING THE BALL
CHAPTER VIII THE ASHES
CHAPTER IX REAPING
CHAPTER X BENEATH THE DEMON MOON (II)
PART FOUR ALL GOD’S CHILLUN GOT SHOES
CHAPTER I KANSAS IN THE MORNING
CHAPTER II SHOES IN THE ROAD
CHAPTER III THE WIZARD
CHAPTER IV THE GLASS
CHAPTER V THE PATH OF THE BEAM
AFTERWORD
INTRODUCTION
ON BEING NINETEEN
(AND A FEW OTHER THINGS)
I
Hobbits were big when I was nineteen (a number of some import in the stories you are about to read).
There were probably half a dozen Merrys and Pippins slogging through the mud at Max Yasgur’s farm during the Great Woodstock Music Festival, twice as many Frodos, and hippie Gandalfs without number. J.R.R. Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings was madly popular in those days, and while I never made it to Woodstock (say sorry), I suppose I was at least a halfling-hippie. Enough of one, at any rate, to have read the books and fallen in love with them. The Dark Tower books, like most long fantasy tales written by men and women of my generation (The Chronicles of Thomas Covenant, by Stephen Donaldson, and The Sword of Shannara, by Terry Brooks, are just two of many), were born out of Tolkien’s.
But although I read the books in 1966 and 1967, I held off writing. I responded (and with rather touching wholeheartedness) to the sweep of Tolkien’s imagination—to the ambition of his story—but I wanted to write my own kind of story, and had I started then, I would have written his. That, as the late Tricky Dick Nixon was fond of saying, would have been wrong. Thanks to Mr. Tolkien, the twentieth century had all the elves and wizards it needed.
In 1967, I didn’t have any idea what my kind of story might be, but that didn’t matter; I felt positive I’d know it when it passed me on the street. I was nineteen and arrogant. Certainly arrogant enough to feel I could wait a little while on my muse and my masterpiece (as I was sure it would be). At nineteen, it seems to me, one has a right to be arrogant; time has usually not begun its stealthy and rotten subtractions. It takes away your hair and your jump-shot, according to a popular country song, but in truth it takes away a lot more than that. I didn’t know it in 1966 and ’67, and if I had, I wouldn’t have cared. I could imagine—barely—being forty, but fifty? No. Sixty? Never! Sixty was out of the question. And at nineteen, that’s just the way to be. Nineteen is the age where you say Look out, world, I’m smokin’ TNT and I’m drinkin’ dynamite, so if you know what’s good for ya, get out of my way—here comes Stevie.
Nineteen’s a selfish age and finds one’s cares tightly circumscribed. I had a lot of reach, and I cared about that. I had a lot of ambition, and I cared about that. I had a typewriter that I carried from one shithole apartment to the next, always with a deck of smokes in my pocket and a smile on my face. The compromises of middle age were distant, the insults of old age over the horizon. Like the protagonist in that Bob Seger song they now use to sell the trucks, I felt endlessly powerful and endlessly optimistic; my pockets were empty, but my head was full of things I wanted to say and my heart was full of stories I wanted to tell. Sounds corny now; felt wonderful then. Felt very cool. More than anything else I wanted to get inside my readers’ defenses, wanted to rip them and ravish them and change them forever with nothing but story. And I felt I could do those things. I felt I had been made to do those things.
How conceited does that sound? A lot or a little? Either way, I don’t apologize. I was nineteen.