Lamron Lit Corner: The Gunslinger and the beginning of Stephen King’s Dark Tower
“Once again there was the desert, and that only.”
~Stephen King, The Gunslinger
Though Stepehen King has become synonymous with horror throughout his decades-long career, the more intense fans of his will know that horror is in no way his only genre. Is it his most popular? Sure, but like many readers and writers-to-be, the love for the craft came from a variety of sources, one being fantasy. As King says in his introduction essay for his seven-novel-long Dark Tower series, “On Being Nineteen,” he was inspired by an author many know and love: “J.R.R. Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings was madly popular in those days, [...] 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 [...], were born out of Tolkien’s.”
In this respect, how do The Dark Tower novels relate to Tolkien? They lean far more into sci-fi than fantasy, their targeted audience is definitely not children, and the tone overall is completely different. Well, for those that have read the first novel in the series, The Gunslinger, the connection is more than clear as Gunslinger creates a space wherein King can reach to become one of the greats in the genre, to “build the tallest, dig the deepest, write the longest” in an attempt to find a place next to Tolkien himself. The results?
The Gunslinger begins with one of the most clear, cut-and-dry opening lines in any novel, yet one that has continued to be at the forefront of readers’ minds when thinking of iconic first lines: “The man in black fled across the desert, and the gunslinger followed.” So much is said and unsaid in the one line: who is the man in black? Who is the gunslinger? Why follow? Why a desert? Why is one fleeing? Where are they going? It snaps us into a space that, while seemingly unimportant, is paramount to the overarching storyline of the books. Roland, or the gunslinger, is chasing the man in black and Walter, the man in black, is running away. Character motivations are set as well as the setting all in one fell swoop.
Having originally been published serially in a fantasy/sci-fi magazine, The Gunslinger is broken up into five parts: “The Gunslinger,” “The Way Station,” “The Oracle and the Mountains,” “The Slow Mutants,” and “The Gunslinger and the Dark Man.” Each section houses its own arch, not only detailing the events that occur in the desert, but the past events and tragedies that have led to Roland’s pursuit, his lonesomeness, as well as the reason behind the morally-gray decisions he makes. Each also includes some sort of action sequence, some more than others, that act to keep the reader engaged, building slowly for the fifth section’s climax.
It’s in this structure that King himself found one of the flaws of his original publication. King felt that his younger self was leaning too heavily into Tolkien’s work as well as his language, leading to his decision to re-release his first four books in 2003 with revisions. These revisions also change this language of a young author King who believes was trying too hard, making flowery language too prominent. Being a rather strictly unstructured writer, King noted that the books begin to flow a bit more fluidly as they go on.
Despite it being King’s least favorite of the series, I found The Gunslinger a great introduction to a series. First, it’s the shortest of the novels, meaning you can dip your toes in before jumping head-first into the narrative. While I’ve never read the unrevised version, I found that the flowery language, while being less-Kingsian, does play to the uncanny, almost liminal nature of The Gunslinger.
If you’re interested in giving one of fantasy’s most popular series a shot, The Gunslinger is well worth your time even if you don’t end up reading all seven Dark Tower novels.