The Dark Tower Reread pt. 7: The Wind Through the Keyhole

“These are things that happened, once upon a bye.”

Plot: (1) Between the events of Wizard and Glass and Wolves of the Calla, Roland and his ka-tet take shelter from a starkblast * in Gook, a deserted town on the Calla side of the river Whye. ** To pass the time until it's over, Roland tells them the tale of (2) when he and Jamie DeCurry *** were sent to trap a skin-man **** in Debaria. Within that tale, young Roland tells them the old Gilead children's tale The Wind Through the Keyhole: (3) Young Tim Stoutheart, on the dubious advice of the Covenant Man ***** travels far beyond his part of the world to find the magic drop that will restore his mother's eyesight. 

* wicked killer storm.

** don't worry about any of these names.

*** fellow Gunslinger of Gilead-that-was.

**** Shape-shifting Murderer.

***** Our old friend the Man in Black. 

Three stories in one, each section unfolding into the next, then back to the beginning, this little coda to the Dark Tower series came out in 2012, 8 years after King ended the Dark Tower tale in bk 7. And guess what? In almost every way that matters it's the best and most Dark Tower-iest book of them all. I don't reasonably know how to quantify such a claim - does it have NCP? Magic? Memorable characters and tragedies? A mix of adventure fantasy, sci-fi, and horror? Does it move forward or contribute to or clear up the overall epic mystery? All these things and more. And it ties together perhaps the most important theme of the entire series.

So maybe we should be seeing TWTTK atop more Dark Tower lists and not treated as some kind of (well-regarded nonetheless) afterthought. 

"Hile, Sir Throcken." - Roland's greeting to Oy, early on.

Just love the sound of it, particularly as a greeting for a small, Oy-like creature. Had I a pug or other small dog, I'd say this whenever he or she entered the room.

The author with Marlowe, a possible keystone-Earth version of Oy, last seen in bk 7.

Some bulletpoint-randoms before we get to the individual sections:

- Sort of a fan-service appearance for Walter. Does he seem like himself? Wonderfully so. Does his appearance make sense? Kind of? I mean, we learn Tim was a gunslinger of Gilead after all and even saw the Dark Tower (in some other tale we'll never get). The only issue it raises is - this is Roland telling this story, and Roland's mother telling it to him. Does this complicate the whole Roland/Gabrielle Deschain/ Marten palace intrigue, perhaps even fatally? I think so. it's a mistake to have Roland telling a story that has these sort of details about Walter, as well as an appearance by North Central Positronics. There is no indication in any other appearance of these things that these are things Roland has stored in memory from when he was a child in his mother's lap. 

When my friend Bryant and I palavered on this one during the original stretch of the King's Highway, we both made attempts to engage the larger King online community on this POV point. Neither of us got much for our troubles except some defensive discomfort for even even bringing it up. Ah well.

More importantly and back to the specific task at hand: who cares? Do you want this story without Marten Broadcloak? Or NCP? Of course not. If each book of the Dark Tower series was a movie, say, and made lots of money but won no awards, and if the same actor played the Man in Black throughout, this would be the one where he gets the legacy win for Best Supporting Actor. 

Not particularly enamored with Jae Lee's illustrations, in general or here in TWTTK. This will be the last of them I share. What the heck am I going to do for pictures?

Is it weird that he gives Tim so much aid, particularly with the items left at the dogan with Maerlyn? Who can figure this crazy asshole out? He does what it does, he do what he do. Presumably it was all part of the game of castles he played right up to his untimely end.

"The bugs are voracious flesh-eaters, but according to the old wives, they'll not eat the flesh of a virtuous man." 

So the MIB tells Tim when discovering his da's corpse in the river. (Near "yon pookey," but more on that momentarily.) What a bullshitter.


- I like that Daria can detect - and even distinguish between good and bad - magic. I like everything about Daria actually. After Andy, is there a malevolent robot we see in the series? We meet Nigel (in bk7) and the Algul Siento fire response team (not to mention Eddie's good-natured-enough grill in the cave) - they're not exactly lawful characters but they're not malevolent. And here's Daria, who is lawful. And lonely and loyal. Maybe King just felt bad about creating any more bad robots after Blaine and Andy and all the rest.

- Speaking of bad robots (sorry), is there just a tad bit of Lost in this book? Self-consciously so, I mean; obviously, there was a lot of Dark Tower in Lost itself. Along with just about everything else, sooner or later. All things serve the Beam. 

- Bix (the ferryman) got the "Z" from a NCP storehouse or museum of sorts. Sort of like finding new tombs to rob. I could read a whole book about the "Lost Tombs of the Old Ones" and the radioactive/ robot/ speaking-demon problems of digging them up. Or a tie-in book, done up like a fake encyclopedia or something. Man Jesus! The money, fortune, and storytelling glory these Dark Tower copyright holders leave on the table.

- It's cool to see Jamie DeMurray, the last of Roland's original band of gunslingers. He doesn't have too terribly much to do here, but that's okay. These Antilles Wedge sort of characters are just cool to have in the background (and not die). (EDIT: Please see comments.)

SOME RECURRING KING MOTIFS

"It made him feel like an icy visitor in his own head."

More bulletpoints, do it please ya.

- Even the mud people laugh so hard they have to hold on to each other to keep from falling over.

- King's hit or miss with some of these Roland-isms. "Jing jang" is great. Anyone want to go through all the books ever written and replace "telephone" with "jing jang?" Fine by me. I never much cared for "popkin," though, or much of the can-vas-ne-Gan-dinh-ka-mahfah stuff. But whatever - it comes with the epic fantasy territory. Then there's stuff like "pookey," the In-World slang for Giant Serpent in a Tree, which appears by my unofficial count something like 254 times in the novel's 336 pages. I wish I could understand King's brain sometimes.

- Big Kells. The ubiquity of this sort of villain in the King-verse is sometimes exasperating. You could say 'well, the ubiquity of this sort of man in the world' justifies it. Which is a point, I guess, just not one I find particularly persuasive for King's over-use of it. Like psionics holding hands in a circle softly goading characters to the next plot point, it's effective, I guess, but sometimes it's just repetitive. Not so much a criticism or fatal flaw just a here-we-go-again. 

All that aside: let's say Big Kells was the only such villain in the King ouevre. Very effective, very memorable, very satisfying to see him get the poetic justice we need from such fairy tales.

DARK TOWER STUFF

So, we learn that Roland ended the instructive days of Cort at Gilead. Sure hope the kingdom doesn't pay a price for losing the guy who teaches the gunslingers how to gunsling or anything...

"He can't catch anyone, Tim - he's himself caught, pent up at the top of the Dark Tower. But he has powers and he has his emissaries. The one you met is far from the greatest of them."  - Maerlyn on the CK.

The appearance of Maerlyn at the end of the saga was teased by King way back in The Gunslinger, and here we finally see him. Roland never does (that we know of) but close enough. Any discrepancies, and Maerlyn provides the answer. ("I was drunk," he tells Tim with some embarrassment.)

What do we learn of the mythos with Maerlyn here? He's fallible, of the White (i.e. of the lawful and Eld), he knows many things, and he may or may not be sending vague messages of help through space and time to counter-balance the insidious work of the Crimson King.

"Tim saw Maerlyn once more -" I read that and blocked thinking about it immediately. Oh no you don't, Sai King. Unh-unh. Fool me once way more than once.

KING METAFICTIVE COMMENTARY

I'm sure you're all familiar with Bryant Burnette's theory on The Dark Half, right? It's sketched out over a couple of posts over at The Truth Inside the Lie. The basic gist in his own words (from the comments here:) "Beaumont was so addicted to the things he was addicted to that he'd essentially invented a second personality under which to play in that world. Then, when he tried to go cold-turkey, that personality proved to be so potent that it took on a life of its own. Seems like a good metaphor. The fact that King was able to come up with so many different -- and useful -- ways of examining the same subject (addiction) is a bit of a wonder."

I think something similar is going on with the Crimson King in the Dark Tower books, how it all plays out. Roland is "good" King's twin, fighting his way past all the various hang-ups, tendencies, addictions, obstacles, guilts, and mistakes that the Crimson King put in his way, that the "good" King enabled, etc. (Think of Maerlyn, again, here, talking to Tim. The true man-behind-the-curtain speaks. Again.) It's this reason why the CK is offscreen and - as an actual character - extremely unsatisfying, and even why he's dispatched the way he is in bk7. He's an externalization of King's own dark half, and the entire Dark Tower journey is a million-word deconstruction of King's writing and life, metaphorically explored and served up to us.

Along these lines here are some thing specific to TWTTK:

- the "Starkblast." Do I need to remind you the name of Beaumont's alter ego in The Dark Half? What is a starkblast? A killer storm that will destroy everything in its path if one doesn't hunker down and find cover. King's written extensively on how his writing saves and renews him. How does the ka-tet wait out this storm? They pass the time in story. This fits with everything King has written about his writing and how it saved/ saves him from his addictions (and pain). I'm reminded of the liner notes to Johnny Cash's (amazing) Unchained, where he writes of his own struggles with staying sober. (paraphrased) "Sometimes at night, I still hear the wolf howl somewhere in the dark out there, and I want to go howl with him." But, he doesn't, he picks up his guitar and tells a story. 

And here, the connection between storytelling and salvation from/ attempted sabotage by the Crimson King is part of the plot, not just metaphorical window dressing. Fascinating stuff. I'll keep up this line of inquiry when I get to the other reviews but wanted to red-circle it (no pun intended).

- The demon in the mine in the skin-man section. ("It speaks to your face and tells you to come inside.") What does it do once you're inside? Changes you, physically and mentally, sets you on a destructive cycle that destroys all in its path and tears families apart. All the demons or dead machines (or thinnies) of Roland's world have this same message: come in, come in, come join us in the land of the dead. I suggest this is purposeful. The author has wisely positioned a gunslinger between himself and it. 

- Finally, at the end of the Skin Man tale, Roland receives a letter from his mother that basically absolves him of the considerable guilt he (understandably) carries for killing her. Chronologically this is all happening before we ever meet Roland in bk1, but publication-wise, this is the last word of the Dark Tower saga. It ends on a note of maternal reconciliation, of solace. This is not just important, it could be the point of the entire thing. I mentioned last time that King seemed to be processing both the death of his mother and some of the lingering effects of childhood in "Low Men in Yellow Coats" and (via Roland) in the Dark Tower books in general. 

In the Tim Stoutheart story, what motivates young Tim's quest? Believing the lies of one indifferent, trickster father, he wants to save his mother from another untrue father, who murdered his true father, rendering him absent. Is this the projection of King's childhood? It is, for what it's worth, a common fantasy of children in fatherless homes. Whatever, though, back to the mama - how does Tim get home after he meets (and rescues - that's important) a benevolent (though equally absent) father figure? He closes his eyes and says the magic words: "How I miss you, mama." This simplest and purest of truths, all artifice stripped away, is the redemptive magic. 

I've got to tell you, I got really teared up at this, this time around. If you picture King spending a good portion of the years since sobering up reprocessing many of the things blocked out from the years under the starkblast of drugs and alcohol, there's a hell of a lot of weight in this one line. He referred to Roadwork as his contemporaneous attempt to process his mother's death. I think he got a lot closer in "Low Men in Yellow Coats" and closest of all here. This is the true fairy tale end to both the Dark Tower and to King's long-delayed roadwork.

THE SKIN MAN

I didn't want to end on a completely sappy - though wonderfully earned and pivotal to all things - note, so here's a parting observation from Roland from the Skin Man saga: 

"I'd seen such mealy white flesh before. It was brains. Human brains."

~