I hate Stephen King’s Insomnia

Insomnia

Stephen King’s Insomnia. Sigh.

I could be some hack reviewer and say, “I’ve found the cure for Insomnia, it’s this book, hahahahahahahahah.”

I’m not a hack reviewer though. For those of you who have listened to my tapes, you know that I’m a fantastic reviewer. Okay, Carol is a fantastic reviewer, but I’m not bad.

This book isn’t the worst thing ever. It’s not even the worst thing that Stephen King has ever written (Tommyknockers still exists guys) but there’s a very particular reason why this book has my Irish up. That reason is called The Dark Tower.

The Dark Tower

Many of you might not know about the Dark Tower. Stephen King fans seem to come in three different categories: casual fans, devoted fans, Dark Tower fans.

The casual fans have read a few Stephen King books. They likely got them as gifts because they like horror, or they saw a Stephen King movie once and figured they’d check it out.

Devoted fans love King and read just about everything he writes. They will sometimes seek out magazines where King’s short stories appear. Those fans aren’t without their blind spots, however. It’s likely they have never heard of The Plant. They might not know about Skybar.

Devoted fans are usually aware of The Dark Tower, but they aren’t really interested in it. After all, they were published by a niche house (Donald M. Grant) and they don’t get the publicity of the other books.

Dark Tower fans are freaks, we really are. We devour everything King writes. As we methodically moved through each thing that he wrote we discovered The Dark Tower and a whole new world opened up for us.

At first, we thought it was a somewhat entertaining, but slightly boring book that clearly came from his college years. Spaghetti western but it’s got a bit of horror paint thrown over it, sure we get it, King.

Then came the final chapter.

Where it all Changed

The Gunslinger finally catches up with The Man in Black and speaks with him. Their conversation is vague but Black mentions enough things (England, and his nearly immortal nature) to deduce that this creature is none other than Flagg.

Yep, Flagg from The Stand, from the Eyes of the Dragon. This is an exciting development that places The Gunslinger on a much different path.

Us Dark Tower fans love to find connections. That’s one of the biggest sources of pleasure for a true Stephen King fan. Flagg pops up here and there to wreak havoc and then to crawl back under whatever rock birthed him.

More than that, though, cities, characters, histories, they all seem to permeate many of King’s stories, creating a multi-verse. When you have read everything he’s written you can get a clearer picture of all the interconnectivity.

Multi-verse

And sometimes that connectedness comes even when the stories are clearly not set in the same universe. I think it’s pretty obvious that The Gunslinger (Roland) and his world are separate from what we would call the “real world”.

Flagg makes that connection. He is unique because he is a supernatural entity and can, presumably, traverse the multi-verse.

It’s unfortunate that so many different movie studios own Stephen King properties because I think it would be a fantastic idea to make films about all the of the King universes and then connect them. Almost like each movie was another season of a television show.

Think about it. Instead of getting a person to watch one movie, you would be hooking them in little by little into a larger story that would not only be immensely satisfying for them but also immensely profitable for the studios. Instead of one movie, you’re getting people to buy tickets for twenty of them.

And what story would be at the center of this cinematic universe? What would provide the lynchpin for everything? The Dark Tower books. The reason is simple…

The Wasteland

In the third book of the series, The Wasteland, we learn that there are doors that connect the different worlds. It allows Jake to travel from “our world’ into Roland’s and thus heal the mental break that The Gunslinger is suffering from.

Wasteland is a brilliant book. Exciting, scary, wonderous, and a great example of world-building. King’s saga started out as a western/horror but has now captured just about every genre that you can imagine. There’s quite a bit of science fiction in there, thus the world-building.

Problems

There are two problems with The Wasteland, neither of which has to do with the writing.

The first is that it ends on a cliff-hanger. Remember when I said these would make great movies? Sure you do it was like five seconds ago. Anyway, imagine leaving your movie off on a cliff-hanger. Like the season finale of a television show. How much money do you think you’d make the opening weekend for the next film?

Our heroes are in the clutches of Blaine the Mono who wishes to kill them if they can’t find a riddle that will stump him. This is a clever scene and I do like it, but what I don’t like is what comes next. It’s the second problem with the book.

It was published in 1993.

That’s right, two years ago. For TWO YEARS we have all waited to find out what happens with Blaine. How do our heroes escape? Do they even all escape? Well, we don’t know because the next book isn’t out yet.

We also get confirmation that the Man in Black is Flagg. So…cool.

There is no indication that King is even working on the fourth Dark Tower book.

Enter Insomnia

So what does all this have to do with Insomnia? Why does it make me hate it so much? Would it be too simplistic if I said it was because it wasn’t a Dark Tower book? Because I mean that’s basically it.

Insomnia takes place in Derry, Maine. Even casual King fans will know the significance of that city. Yet that’s not where the connections end and that’s a big part of the problem with this book.

Let’s take the story for what it is without any of the other connections.

The Plot

An older gentleman has lost his wife and now contemplates life alone. This alone is a scary enough thought and great fodder for a horror book. King is at his best when he can connect his supernatural elements to real-world fears.

As a result of his depression Ralph (the widower) suffers from insomnia. He sits up and watches the world wake up. He is literally watching the world move on without him, but more importantly, it’s moving on without his wife. She’s gone and the world continues on, uncaring. It’s almost diabolic.

As his insomnia worsens he starts to see little bald men that he calls “doctors” because of their little coats.

These creatures tell him that they are agents of The Purpose. Basically what we would think of as fate. There is a third “doctor” who is an agent of The Random.

This connects back to our theme of death and indifference. Ralph’s wife is dead. Is that because of some grand plan by a supreme creator? Is it just random chaos? The book takes the point of view (much like last year’s Forrest Gump) that both are happening at the same time.

The docs tell him that his buddy Ed is a rare person who is not assigned to either The Purpose or The Random and is able to completely change existence. The creatures tell Ralph that he needs to stop Ed from destroying existence by ramming his plane into a pro-choice rally at the convention center.

So far, so good. I almost wish instead of his large event that Ed was a serial killer or something like that. It seems like this book would have been the perfect place to explore questions about the nature of death and the nature of life. How we deal with both and how the consequences of life affect us.

Shoving in the Dark Tower

This is where everything falls apart. The reason that Ed cannot be allowed to kill Susan Day or her crowd is that doing so will affect Roland’s quest for the Dark Tower. We learn towards the end of the book that specifically he has to save the life of Patrick Danville, a little boy who likes to draw and will apparently be important in Roland’s story.

King also introduces the character of the Crimson King, which is essentially the devil. It’s fairly clear that he is supposed to be the boss of Flagg, which takes a little bit away from him to be honest.

Flagg is an interesting character as another agent of random chaos. He shows up and cares only about tearing down what has been built. He wants to watch the world burn. That’s his only motivation. He can’t be reasoned with; he can’t be bought.

Now we learn that he’s simply a minion of another creature that we don’t have the emotional connection to because we barely know him.

Now, this can all change, of course. King might give us a rich backstory to The Crimson King. We might fully explore his relationship with Flagg and his reason for existing.

But this book isn’t the place to do it.

Connections

So often, King’s books are enhanced by their connections to other works. It leads to moments of satisfying discovery, it adds realism to the events transpiring, it’s just great world-building.

But the connections don’t help this book, they kill it. The plot gets hopelessly bogged down in these details and the actual characters and their stories can’t breathe. Instead of getting an interesting and introspective look at a person, we are forced to take a step back and see the larger view for the entire story.

That distance breaks the emotional connection to the character. If Ralph is merely a pawn to be used in this war between The Crimson King and Roland then why do we care? He’s got to accomplish this one task and our heroes over in the Dark Tower series will never know it.

This book should have been an intimate portrait but instead, it was like a long, long chapter of the Dark Tower series.

Lessons of Insomnia

Write the next Dark Tower book, Stephen King!

I doubt that he will ever read this, but if he ever does that’s the lesson.

I am terrified that Insomnia’s fate will spill over to other books. The Dark Tower clearly occupies King’s subconscious mind and if he continues to put off continuing his story there’s a very real possibility that the world of the Dark Tower could spill into everything he writes. That would not only hurt us Dark Tower fans, who want an actual sequel but his devoted fans who will find such books inaccessible. Not to mention the casual fans who will be completely lost.

Also, not to be morbid, but the man isn’t getting any younger. Accidents happen all the time, what if he dies before he can finish the series? Not as if that would be the only tragedy if he were to die, but it’s a practical problem.

Final Thought

Insomnia isn’t a terrible book, but it’s not very good. It has a preoccupied quality to it. Almost as if King is suffering from writer’s block but is so talented and practiced that he’s able to write through it even though the good ideas just don’t come.

It’s time to get behind the steam shovel and just work on The Dark Tower until you finish it. It is his magnum opus, the sprawling epic that many of his fans will cherish even if it isn’t what he’ll be most known for.

Don’t let another novel die because of your fear Mr. King. Finish the Dark Tower.

I really want to know what happens.