Discuss Stephen King's Dark Tower saga -- open spoilers

Cafe Society
1

I just finished reading the seven-volume Dark Tower saga and would like to discuss it; I see that there have been multiple prior threads about this, which I have read with interest, but none for the last few years. I just found out that an eighth book exists but haven’t read it yet, so please,** No spoilers for The Wind Through the Keyhole in this thread, I say thankya.**

I really loved this series. I am generally an easy mark for Stephen King; I’ve never read a book of his that I didn’t consider at least pretty good, and I’ve certainly never failed to finish one once I started it. I think I would have to say this is probably his masterpiece, though. The vividly drawn fantasy world and lifelike, likable heroes (well, except for the* main* character, but the humanity of the others was highlighted by its absence in Roland) kept me completely engrossed, and even though it’s been about a week since I finished it I haven’t wanted to start any other book and wash away the aftertaste of this one. I have had to stop myself from using Calla dialect in conversation. Unlike many, my favorite book was the last one (and specifically the first half, from when Jake and Callahan enter the Dixie Pig until the death of Eddie), with Wolves of the Calla a close second. If I was forced by Comic Book Guy to pick a least favorite, I would have to say the first one. I am so nerded out that I am planning to make pilgrimage to various key sites when I am in New York next month!

There are some common criticisms that I largely agree with; King’s writing himself into the story as a character was a bold but not really successful experiment, and everyone involved would have been better off had he processed his post-traumatic issues with a qualified mental health professional rather than with his readership. Likewise, it seems that he never really figured out how to follow through on his mid-series inspiration to turn the story into some kind of Unified Stephen King Theory that would refer to as many other books as possible. I’m glad, though, that he decided to quietly drop the idea rather than distort the narrative to fit it.

On the other hand, I do think that King’s presence as a character and also his occasional direct intervention in the plot (leaving Mia’s hotel key for Jake, the note written to Susannah in Dandelo’s bathroom) did serve to set the tone that this work is more of a myth than a typical novel. It’s really all about the miraculous workings of ka, and therefore it would be beside the point to quibble about inconsistencies or gaping holes in the plot (Mordred is able to effortlessly turn Randall Flagg into a hors d’oeuvre, but later comes to grief because he can’t quickly repel an attack from a billy-bumbler?).

And then the ending. Overall I think it’s a good ending, better than any I could have thought of. I don’t think there’s any way there could have been a happy ending for Roland; what reward could he possibly gain at the Tower to make all he lost on the way worthwhile? And it did touch me; as someone said in the other threads, my immediate reaction was “NO! DUDE! THAT REALLY SUCKS!” Still, I couldn’t help but feel a little let down that it wasn’t The Greatest Ending In The History Of Literature. I agree with most that King’s pre-coda address to the reader was poorly done and came off as rude and overly defensive, spoiling the mood and taking the reader out of the narrative. But I can understand the sense of pressure that made him feel that way, having to finally write the chapter that his fans had been clamoring for for years.

I could go on and on, which in a certain sense would be very fitting, but I’ll call it an OP, may it do ya very well.

2

So depressing…so so depressing.

By the way, my interp of the ending isn’t that Roland needs to ‘get it right’. It was that Roland is a tool of the Tower. An antibody. Roland will never have an ending. Well, until the death and rebirth of the universe stops.

Also, I preferred the original Dark Tower book I. Where Flagg wasn’t every frigging evil character.

3

I’d have to disagree with you on two points:

I cared deeply for Roland. I felt like he was a ship on an ocean in a storm, never able to get his bearings because he was pushed and pulled on constantly. He was generally a good man and though he did some terrible things (like letting Jake fall to his death) he was ultimately doing it for the right reason; to save no less than existence itself.

I also love the ending. How could you possibly end a story that epic? The ending offers redemption for Roland; all that journey was not for nothing. He still has a chance to go back and change it all. How many iterations of that journey have there already been? How many more will there be? Is that Roland’s billionth time on his quest?

But I do agree that it is King’s best work and a magnificent story.

4

I want to revisit my ‘depressing’ comment.

Once Eddie is shot, the Ka-Tet is broken and so is the spirit of every surviving member including the reader. And after Jake bites it…well, it’s just a group of people (and Bumbler) going through the motions. Even Suzanne deciding to exit stage left rather than die is depressing. For me, her adopting an alternate universe life is hollow.

5

A few words on this, to start with:
I stumbled on to one of King’s books while bored at college and plowed through all his other novels over the next year or so. While I did go through them without having to wait for anything to be written, I did read them in order, which I think made an important difference. As the years went past, the idea of ‘this is the central hub around which all my worlds revolve’ grew to become more and more prominent, not within the Dark Tower series, but in King’s other works. The catch was, I don’t think it worked the way King wanted it to. Early on, when it was mostly just subtle nods to earlier stuff within the DT books, it didn’t really add much- and as it became more blatant, it started to feel (to me, anyway) like someone periodically interrupting themselves to hold up a shiny object and say “Hey, remember this?” I don’t think it ever really reached the point of immersion-breaking, but certainly hit immersion-putting-dents-in at times.

Outside that specific series, however… Well, I remember putting down* Black House* three or four times and wondering why he didn’t just call it Dark Tower 4: Self-Satisfied Pretension. It felt less like the Dark Tower was the axle of King’s universe and more like it was an invasive alien species, and made the book a pale shadow of what The Talisman was. Insomnia is a more interesting case; there, too, the great journey and struggle of Roland is a monstrous background thing to which the characters of the current story are only tangentially related, but it worked much better; perhaps because these aren’t characters we already know being hijacked to serve another narrative’s purpose; perhaps because they actually do something of their own. Unfortunately, the connection is undermined by it being made one of the future retcons contrivedly pulled in DT 7 to explain why King didn’t keep his universe self-consistent. That retconning also ruined the otherwise subtle dropping of the ‘axle’ element of the story for me, since it just drew attention to it.

I have a lot more to say about this series, but I’ve gone on long enough for now, so I’ll just add: ‘mit schlag’ means ‘with whipped cream’. You can just say ‘with whipped cream’. It does not improve the pacing of your book if I have to put it down to look up the meaning of a phrase you keep using and refuse to translate.

6

I have read everything by Stephen King [roomie is a serious fan] and I will say that I could take all 7 of the Gunslinger series and edit them into 4 tight coherent books. I am not really into the series, I think it is shoved kicking and screaming onto the market to make money. It is an interesting overall story arc, and I have no issue with it spanning several universes and perhaps even centuries [or longer - I can see the different worlds not lining up timewise.] It could, if written properly make an excellent 5 or 6 year [old style 36 week season] series if they were willing to shove money into the project and cast it well. And I wouldn’t actually call it horror, per se - it is more a combination of SF and fantasy with some suspense and thriller aspect.
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7

I hated it at first (pre-book 4), then grew to love it and waited patiently for years to get off that fucking mono. That fourth one… I had problems with it, but I liked it. And then I hated the last 3. HATED. I hate how it ended. I hate how everyone up and died (even though it had been foreshadowed and wasn’t exactly a surprise). I hated how it felt like all the books that were in this world (Insomnia, Hearts in Atlantis) were going to be a part of it in a REAL way, not some “Find a box of books in the cave and have some surreal author-insert bullshit”. I hate hate hate that he wrote himself in, and not only that, did it badly.

I see the books sometimes on the shelf in the library but I don’t know if I can bring myself to read them again. There was definitely a drop in quality pre- and post-accident and I wonder how much different (or at least SATISFYING) it would have been had he not nearly been killed IRL.

I guess that’s the best way to put it too. I don’t always love the endings of long-runners, but I need satisfaction, not my personal head-canon fulfilled. This felt like shit thrown at the wall to see what stuck.

8

I thought it started really strong and then got worse and worse. The first few books were tightly written, had strong characters, good plots and a sense that they were building up to something amazing. But I thought that it floundered badly in the middle/towards the end. It was like he fired his editor or something. The stories got longer, less tight, the plot got more and more convoluted and less purposeful. The great characters kept it from being bad, but I don’t think I’d call it anything better than OK.

The ending, though, was awful. Not Roland starting the cycle again - I don’t have a problem with that (I do think that if Roland got to the top of the tower and it was Stephen King’s house, and he was sitting there with a typewriter that would have been great in a ridiculous, meta sort of way. But the other ending’s probably better). But the warning that he put in front of it was awful. It was rude, overly defensive, condescending, and completely spoiled the mood and pacing. Completely spoiled the ending for me, and is probably the main reason I don’t have any interest in ever reading it again (besides maybe the first few books). I really don’t know why he thought it was a good idea.

9

Only two things I would like to add:

  1. The way King dispensed with the Randall Flagg character was, to say the least, disappointing;

  2. My slant is Roland died quite some time before the first book, and all seven volumes were this particular trip through Hell for Roland, and since Hell is eternal, Roland gets to do it all over again, and again, ad infinitum. Next trip through Hell will be different. And, of course, there have to be good things happening to make the bad things that much worse. What made me think this, were the personal items and scenes Roland encountered while ascending the Tower–if the Tower is the Hub of all universes, why the Roland stuff in the Tower? Made me think the Tower was only Roland’s Tower.

10

I’ve not read anything after Wizards and Glass. I started to get down on SK around the Dark Half, which I really hatedm and never picked up the rest of the series. I have a general details of the plot from other people talking (and complaining), but not specifics. I’ve been having an internal debate about it for years and, well, I haven’t convinced myself to finish the series.

But going by the first 3 books (I only read 4 once, and barely remember anything about it), I thought it was interesting and innovative series to that point. But I was afraid the ending would be unsatisfying, given the build-up. I thought the first book was completely different from the rest (it was written much, much earlier), but I enjoyed it the most. I sometimes wonder what the series would have been like if it had been written in Stephen Kings 20’s and 30’s

11

(Without having read the spoilers) I just started in on it and I’m now reading the second book. I may check back in here once I’m all the way through the octology.

I first read The Gunslinger when it was serialized in Fantasy & Science Fiction back in '80–'81 as a series of connected short stories. Rereading it I discovered how much I’d forgotten. I couldn’t make much of it the first time around when it lacked all context. Back then it was already being billed as part of a “Dark Tower” epic, but as there was no Tower in the story yet, and the few brief mentions of the Tower didn’t explain anything about it, it didn’t convey as much as it does now that the whole octology is out and it’s thematically interconnected with other books. I knew of the literary reference from Shakespeare and Browning, but their relevance to The Gunslinger was completely obscure without further context.

I returned to the DT having just read The Stand because of such connections, and I took up both because I read 11/22/63 last November and found out that it’s interconnected with several other King books like these.

The one thing that had stuck in my memory all these years was the quote “Why is a crooked letter and can’t be made straight.” I remember I graffitied that quote when associating it with a couple of lines uttered by Brian Eno, where he goes “Don’t ask why” near the end of “For Your Pleasure” and “Don’t ask me why” in “Back in Judy’s Jungle.” The connection seemed somehow meaningful at the time.

12

There is also a Gunslinger novella “The Little Sisters of Eluria” in the Everything’s Eventual short-story collection.

13

Dale Sams, I could definitely see the idea of Roland as being somehow part of the Tower, an antibody; except that in that case it seems unnecessarily depressing to have him experience horror in that brief moment when he realizes what is/has been happening. It seems that he in that case he could have felt a sense of relief that he would be able to continue the journey that was his only real purpose in existence.

Anthony Elite, the problem is that he wasn’t doing it to save the universe, he was just doing it because he was obsessed with the Tower. At the beginning of his quest, he couldn’t possibly have known what was at stake. And in the end, when the Beams had been saved and the only possible way the universe could still be destroyed was if Roland went to the Dark Tower and the Crimson King captured his guns, he went right on ahead anyway. I was upset that Susannah never really made an effort to talk him out of that. So maybe the Universe is somehow testing him and the point is that one of these go-rounds he will decide to abandon his quest, settle down with his new surrogate family and open a commala-dancing studio…but wait, then the universe would be destroyed, and if he waited until the point where the Universe had been saved Jake and Eddie would still be dead.

I can’t really come up with a way to understand the ending that makes sense to me.

14

King is one of my favorite authors, but he is uneven. The Dark Tower series is, in fact, some of his most uneven work. Some parts of it are nothing short of brilliant. The first book, as it was originally written, had a dark, hallucinatory quality to it that I really enjoyed. The next two were good, solid stories that introduced some vividly drawn characters.
From there, it was downhill for the main series. Too much stuff that was just dumb, like having Doombots play a major role or introducing himself as a major character or having the Crimson King literally erased. Too much stuff that happened because he needed it to happen, even if it was wildly inconsistent with what went before. I’m thinking here specifically of the deaths of Flagg and Mordred.
I didn’t mind the ending so much, as we had been beaten over the head with the notion that Ka is a wheel.

15

The last 4 books, especially the ending, tainted everything I liked about the first parts. I regret ever starting reading it, and I wish I had those hours back.

My advice: don’t start the series, if you started it, put it down. It only gets worse.

16

Remind me please as it has been a few years: how would Roland’s guns being taken have ended the universe? No snark, I just don’t remember that being relayed to the reader. I had always thought that things wouldn’t be safe until he killed the Crimson King. (totally coincidentally I listened to “In the Court of the Crimson King” a LOT while reading this) If that isn’t the case it would change things somewhat.

Perhaps Roland wasn’t aware that the universe was ending as a boy, but I feel that when he made sacrifices such as Jake he was aware at that point. Again, correct me if I’m wrong.

I guess Roland always picks duty over love and that is the lesson that the tower is trying to impart - that saving a loveless universe is meaningless.

17

If the King had gotten the guns, since they were from Eld, he would’ve gotten to enter the tower and topple it.

18

Duh, I’m sorry, that was so obvious it completely slipped my mind. I was looking for something obscure :smiley:

19

IIRC they didn’t realize the extent of the threat to the Beams until Brautigan told them in the middle of the seventh book. OTOH I think there may have been some suggestions much earlier that Roland hoped to reverse the “moving on” of the world by reaching the Tower, but it wasn’t clearly explained how.

burpo, I can see your perspective about Roland being in Hell, and in fact in the very first conversation he has (with Brown the hermit) he asks Brown if he believes in an afterlife and Brown says that he thinks this is it. But I don’t like that idea, because it means that the whole story and the universe it takes place in exists only to punish Roland for something that we don’t know anything about.

Opinions seem to be all over the place on what happened to Susannah…I thought it worked very well, but some feel that finding happiness in an alternate universe doesn’t really count. I guess it’s a matter of opinion. I think it illustrates the point that the life of a gunslinger involves too many sacrifices to allow for true happiness; that’s why she has to give up her gun and her memories. It would have trivialized the experiences she had had with the ka-tet to have her still be capable of relating to “normal” people after having gone through them.

Fair Rarity, I have to say that I find it hard to understand your perspective. You all-caps HATED the last three books, but you read them anyway? And have even considered re-reading them? I can see not liking #5 and still deciding to give #6 a try, but if you didn’t like that, you’d then read about 1000 pages of stuff that didn’t interest you. If you then chose to go on and read the last 800 and were disappointed, I don’t think you can blame the author for that! As I said, I didn’t like the churlish tone of King’s pre-coda address to the reader, but if this is the sort of fan reaction he had to deal with, I can see very well why he got frustrated enough to write that.

20

OK, how’s this for an ending: Roland enters the room at the top of the Tower and finds a comfortable study with a word processor on the desk. Cautiously, he enters and begins examining the unfamiliar device. Some time later, insane, malevolent laughter is heard emanating from the Tower.

Roland’s story ends there, and is followed by an epilogue consisting of an excerpt from a very long fantasy epic about a character named Stephen King who endures a great many painful, unpleasant, and tragic events in the course of his long. long, quest. :smiley: