On Sub-chapters

Me: Did you finish the first chapter of the first book of The Dark Tower yet?

Ben: I told you I am on like chapter fifteen.

Me: Those are sub-chapters.

Ben: You're a sub-chapter in a Stephen King book.

Me: You told me you'd read the first chapter and I thought "oh that's not too bad, he's moving right along," but in actuality you had read like ten pages.

Ben: Yes, exactly.

Ben: Stephen King had deceived me into thinking that he had ludicrously short chapters.

Ben: I was not about to question the most popular novelist of our century.

Me: That's the point, books with short chapters are easier to read because it doesn't feel like an effort to reach the next checkpoint, you skip ahead and go "oh, only five pages till the next break, I can just read that now," and then you keep doing that until you've finished the book in one sitting.

Ben: There is such a thing as sub-chapters that are too short.

Ben: One sub-chapter was two-thirds of a page.

Ben: That's a sub-page.

Ben: I appreciate that it is a non-standard structure, but I hesitate to say it's superior to a book with just normal chapters.

Me: This is an entire normal-chapter in As I Lay Dying:

William Faulkner: My mother is a fish.

Ben: That's pretty great.

Ben: I enjoy that

Ben: and applaud it.

Me: Yeah, then that girl gets tricked into being raped in exchange for abortion pills that don't work, or something.

Me: How's your novel coming?

Ben: It's in the planning phase.

Ben: I'll have a lot of enforced free time this month because I have to take care of the house while my mom is recovering from her operation.

Me: Is it based on the murder of your student teacher?

Ben: Possibly.

Ben: It might just be a delirium of unrelated ideas.

Ben: Like, say, cowboys in the future who know magic and sing "Hey Jude."

Me: It's been done.

Ben: Fuck.

Me: Maybe you should read that instead, maybe it will inspire you.

Ben: See I told you, I have already absorbed Stephen King into myself.

Me: Maybe I should get started on my epic sci-fi/fantasy series.

Ben: Is it better than Animorphs?

Ben: Would somebody make a blog to review it a decade after it was written, is what I am asking.

Me: No.

Ben: So this is your Dark Tower.

Ben: The book that ties together all your disparate mythologies.

Ben: Am I in this book and am I a villain or a protagonist?

Ben: Or both?

Me: What the hell are you talking about?

Ben: I told you I am so tired.