I know, I should shut up already about how many times I’ve read this Stephen King book or that Stephen King book. But really, I’ve read this book a lot. I think even more than The Stand.
I read it when it was a standalone book (and I had to brave crossing the floor of the Newton Highlands public library — from the children’s section to the adult section), and this was before Uncle Stevie tinkered with it to make it fit better into the world of the Dark Tower. (NB: If I can remember correctly, that first book was a crazy, weird mess. This book is much better.)
I read it again when The Drawing of the Three came out. And then when The Wastelands came out, I read the first two again.
And so on. And so on.
And then I started a re-read of the whole damn Dark Tower universe (including It, The Eyes of the Dragon, Insomnia, The Talisman/Black House, and all of the weird comics). I’ve even reviewed this exact book before for an early (my first ever!) cannonball…**
**OK, this cracks me up. I was looking for a link of my old review and came across my review on a book review site, similar to Rotten Tomatoes, that provides “Book reviews from the world’s greatest critics!”. So there’s that.
Which brings me back to the beginning, with The Gunslinger. Again. I guess Ka really is like a wheel.
This time, I listened to it. And I found it was a completely different experience. Especially if you know where the story is going.
One of the first things I noticed this time around was that the name Roland is never even uttered or mentioned until about halfway through the story. He’s just the gunslinger. This fascinates me. In the later books, he’s pretty much only Roland, which I suppose means that his Ka-Tet (#teameddie) really does humanize him.
The other thing that really got me this time was Roland’s treatment of Jake, and how quickly he morphed from Roland, the father figure, back to the gunslinger when he knew he needed to choose between the boy and the quest. That pissed me off, and made me a little mad about how quickly these two reconcile in later books.
The narrator did a great job bringing this crazy world to life. I could imagine Roland and the weird farmer dude named Brown sitting around and talking while the weird bird Zoltan hovers about. I could see the desolation in the town of Tull and the beauty in the kingdom of Gilead-that-was.
And the narrator really holds your hand to help you notice important clues to the rest of the story.
SPOILERS FOR A BOOK THAT WAS FIRST WRITTEN IN 1978.
Here are a few things that the narrator helps to make abundantly clear when listening, that I might have missed while reading.
Roland has definitely met that piano player before. And that he is not forgiven for simply letting “the girl” burn.
Cuthbert died in battle on Jericho Hill while blowing that damned Horn of Eld that Roland forgot to pick up.
Walter is Marten is Flagg is Farson.
Ka is a wheel. Ka is a wheel. Ka is a wheel.
END OF 40 YEAR OLD SPOILERS.
I love these books and this Constant Reader will probably continue on this journey for the tower for a long time to come. And yes, even if the movie is a complete and total clusterfuck with little or nothing to do with the books, I’ll see it. I mean, look at this:
That’s worth my $12 right there.
I cannot begin a review of a Stephen King novel without mentioning the number of times I’ve read it before. It adds to credibility, right?
I didn’t tackle the Dark Tower books until they’d all come out — I hate starting a series that’s unfinished. I get frustrated waiting a year or two between Outlander books!
The worst part of starting this series before it was finished was when he got hit by the van. Like he describes in On Writing, I was in a total panic that I would never find out what happened to the ka-tet.
I’m reading The Waste Lands right now. I totally thought of you when I started it.
My brother is also reading these for the first time, and he just started that one, too. I’m getting antsy and just need you two to hurry up and finish already.
I really need to re-read this book, if only because of, ahem, that picture you posted up there. I read it before King tinkered with it, and I haven’t read any of the Dark Tower series (most of them hit when I was in a period of epic fantasy exhaustion, it happens) but I have a real weakness for teasing out the ways that books connect to other books in a shared universe.
And, heck, good ol’ Steve always knows how to tell a story.
I really need to move this further up my to-read list.
It really is almost a completely different book now. If you read it again, and make your way through all of the series, go back and give this one another read and see how many clues and themes are introduced that you might have missed. It’s really astounding how much information he lays out here.
Loved these books though the last two/three were maddening.
I’ve read this at least five times, the first version twice, the updated version at least three times. (I’ve read the entire series three times.) I’m obviously a fan. But: this one always felt somewhat disconnected from the others, like it doesn’t quite belong. Maybe the writing style is just too different from the others, even with the edits and added material. Maybe King did it that way on purpose, to show in as many ways as possible that this is about “the Gunslinger,” not “Roland.” I don’t know. It’s always thrown me off, though.