Dark Tower Reread pt. 1: The Gunslinger

1982, rev. 2003

"He let them all have it, and the ones behind them. Their bodies thumped like scarecrows. Blood and brains flew in streamers."

As part of the whole King's Highway project a few years back, I read through The Truth Inside the Lie's recommended Dark Tower reading order - the old one, that is, it's been revised since then. Had a blast. I hadn't read word one of the Dark Tower stories at that time, so I was discovering it as I went along. Since then, I've chewed over various aspects of the whole story and have been keeping a mental list of follow-up questions. The time has come to dive back in. To the 7 main books, at least - I may possibly reread a couple of peripherals likes Bag of Bones or Insomnia, and definitely a couple of the tie-in short stories like "Everything's Eventual" and "The Little Sisters of Eluria." And obviously The Wind Through the Keyhole. We'll see how it goes. 

Note - there will be no or little recapping of the stories, so anyone who hasn't read the books might be a little lost. Sorry about that. Spoilers and not just for the book(s) in question but for Dark Tower altogether.

So! Here we are. I've just finished the revised edition of The Gunslinger that King put out in 2003. I gave this one a grade of "A" on my first read, and it came in at #24 in the most recently-compiled McRankings. 

Here's an excerpt from a review someone else wrote as excerpted in my original review:  

"The mystery of the book can also be overshadowing at times, rather than simply clouding perception the reader’s understanding is completely blocked for certain aspects of the narrative; which, at the closing point of The Gunslinger, can be overlooked, provided that they are explained later on in the series, otherwise this will be a serious flaw in this single book, let alone the series as a whole... I would not say this was an enjoyable read, but an intriguing and exciting one that has left me both frustrated and enthralled. The promise of the books that follow make the first book worth the reading as, when it boils down to it, the first book did nothing more than introduce the myths and imagery of the series, which themselves are a truly refreshing take on fantasy fiction."

I more or less still agree. It's one of those books where what is happening is clearly enough described, but motivation/ context is elusive. But is that a dealbreaker for a fantasy epic? You're supposed to want to keep reading to figure out what the heck is going on. 

As for the "enjoyable" read part - is it enjoyable? I'd say it's more fascinating than enjoyable, but my brain is fighting me on that. Even though as I was rereading it I kept noting I wasn't so much enjoying it as enduring it. It's an opaque style of writing that can be a slog. And in a few spots, the mix of recognizable fantasy trope with 70s dystopian fatalism / mystic drugginess does not succeed. And sometimes it seems like King was just adding things (like Zoltan's outbursts, or Roland's suspicion that "what his father really wanted to do was fuck") to be jarring. In the scene where Roland suspects the latter, for example, I didn't get that vibe from Steven Deschain whatsoever.

Back to whether or not I find it an enjoyable read. When I make a list of each scene of the book that stands out to me - the opening palaver with Brown, the re-telling of the massacre of Tull and all that preceded it (including the rather bizarre gun-barrel-abortion), meeting Jake, taking mescaline and having one off with the ring-circle demon, magical jawbones, the journey by handcar under the mountains while attacked by that staple of all post-apocalyptic fiction, slow mutants - there isn't one I'd point to that as unenjoyable. Just describing them makes me want to pop open the book again. What stops me?

The answer is probably the style in which it's written. I'm about halfway through the next book in the series The Drawing of the Three as I write this. I'll save my thoughts on that one til I get there, but the difference in voice is striking. From the first it reads like King Especially if you begin the Drawing directly after finishing The Gunslinger, as I did.

But this is the very quality of The Gunslinger that appeals to me: it's like an actual glimpse through the Ur-Kindle into the King of a different timeline. What did this Stephen King go on to do? It has some great lines - the first sentence is always quoted, and it's a great first line of a book/ saga, for sure, but throughout, there are some real gems. I liked "the witch moaned, a witch with cancer in her belly" as well as another scene-setter from the early pages: "He did not take the flint and steel from his purse until the remains of the day were only fugitive heat in the ground beneath him and a sardonic orange line on the monochrome horizon."

That said, some of the writing is overdone. "As alien to this place and time as True Love, but as concrete as a Judgment" seems a little at odds with some of the other observations Roland makes, or later with the oracle "The gunslinger could gauge the need in Jake's body by the madness the sounds of the crickets bred in his own body. His arms seemed to seek out shale to scrape on, and his knees seemed to beg to be ripped in tiny, maddening, salty gashes."

One thing I didn't like is during the Palaver at the end the Man in Black bids Roland to tell him his tale. But when Roland begins to speak, the chapter (VII) fades out on an ellipsis and the next one picks up after his tale is done. What? This happens off-camera? It's a dodge and intentional frustration; I do not approve of such things. (Moreover, it is never revealed why the Crimson King whom the MIB serves wants them to palaver to begin with, or why he'd go through the trouble of setting it up, or why the MIB would do many of the other things he does leading up to it if the whole point was to set up a meeting. Not here in book 1, but I don't think anywhere else either.)

REVISION

A side-by-side comparison of all the stuff King put into The Gunslinger can be found here. It's a little remarkable to read. Is it just me or was like 80-90% of the recognizable Dark Tower content added in 2003. Is this a cheat? I don't think so, but there is a world of difference between mysterious scene-setting to be solved later and going back and, well, digitally inserting references. In King's intro, he writes:

"Once you know how things come out, you owe it to the potential reader - and to yourself - to go back and put things in order." 

Do you? I don't know. Or is this some kind of wink-wink foreshadowing to how the series would eventually end? 

At any rate, who can fault him for going back to streamline The Gunslinger into the other mythos. It's an understandable impulse and I think it stops short of the proverbial Greedo-firing-first line. Whether or not it improves the original stories I can't say, but it certainly makes them more Dark-Tower-y. 

King also mentions in that intro that The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly was one of the inspirations for finally beginning his magnum opus. Two films he doesn't mention are Alejandro Jodorowsky's El Topo and Holy Mountain. I'm not the first to notice the strong thematic and tonal things The Gunslinger has in common with these movies, with their opaque approach, weird sexualities, existential palavers, quests to the tower/ mountain to reset a world that's moved on, relationship between boy and gunslinger, and scenes of shocking violence. Is this just a case of two plugged-in Baby Boomers who grew up reading and watching similar sci-fi and horror drawing from similar wells? Probably. Which is interesting, as it places King's Gunslinger in the same generational aspirational iconography as something like Easy Rider or Ellison's Dangerous Visions. Which is to say, when one wants to read the "soul" of that generation, The Gunslinger might not be the most obvious place to look, but perhaps it's equally revealing. 

(And Jodorowsky himself even plays the lead in both films - foreshadowing of The Wordslinger's appearance in Book Six.) 

I was intrigued to discover at that link that the creature the MIB serves (whom we know later is the Crimson King) was originally identified as "Merlin" in the original. (Or "Maerlyn," rather.) Given how Maerlyn later appears in the Big Story, it's interesting to see he was first teased as the identity of the Big Bad of the whole series.

One last question re: these revisions: the MIB mentions to Roland that before he gets to the Tower (and the king that lies before it) he must face the Ageless Stranger. Who is this? Does the MIB not refer to himself as that somewhere? (A quick google suggests this happens in The Waste Lands.) It better not be Dandelo. That would be ridiculous. Anyway, I'll be throwing out questions as they occur to me and watching to see when and where the Series answers them. That seems appropriate given the nature of the series - and especially of Book One, here. 

QUESTION

What do people think of the subtitles of the different books? This one is "Resumption." Is that too on the nose?

(More questions but this one is more Drawing of the Three-specific, although it is mentioned specifically here: why exactly are the Doors there for Roland? Who built them? If we assume a benevolent entity/force helping Roland, is this just part of that, or are these things waiting there for anyone who can survive the lobstrosities? And why is the CK telling him about it instead of sending him in some other direction?)

AROUND THE WEB:

"It's not for everyone, but somehow it also is: as when looking at King's entire literary output, The Gunslinger is a hodge-podge of genres and styles, thrown together, that somehow works perfectly." - James Smythe, Rereading Stephen King.

"I love the direction Roland's tale eventually took, but I am enough of a masochist that part of me wishes King had never written any further than this first novel. (...) This was a novel of questions, not of answers; I wanted to know the answers, but in a way, I wanted to never know them.  I love that sort of dark, majestic, unresolvable mystery, and as much as I also love King's later resolutions, I still yearn to be that young man devastated by the thought of Roland sitting on that beach, the Tower distant beyond all hope of approach. "- Bryant Burnette, Worst To Best: Stephen King Books (2018 Edition)

"This is a book loaded with descriptive imagery and flowery adjectives; it tends to be slightly confusing and heavy-handed. And yet… despite pulling clunky metaphors and laborious turns of phrase (that are more awkward than poetic), despite being written by a fledgeling nineteen-year-old author trying to write in a writerly, literary style, The Gunslinger is still pretty damn good." - Thea, The Book Smugglers.

As For Me (2019): A great and murky beginning to the series (micro) and a unique and cock-eyed contribution to the genre/ repertoire-itself/ King's canon (macro). 

Art by Michael Whelan