On my second trip to the Dark Tower

October 22nd, 2010

Warning: Spoilers abound. You’ve been warned.

Yesterday, I finished my second trip to Stephen King’s Dark Tower. I completed my first go-around the day the last book was released as I read the volume in one sitting. This time, I took several months to get to the end courtesy of the audiobooks from Audible.com. I started “The Gunslinger” months ago, and worked my way steadily through the series an hour of reading at a time.

I was curious how this second pass through the series would fare. When I went through the first time, I was like a starving man finding a meal: I went through the books as fast as possible to find out what was in the top room of the Dark Tower. Now that I already knew how everything was going to play out (or did I?), I was able to patiently absorb the books in their entirety.

My verdict for the series is that it is still a landmark piece of American fiction, and may be this century’s best example of a fantasy epic. I think it’s better than Tolkien, Brooks, and everyone that came before. Rather than set the entire story in a faraway land, King deftly connects Roland’s world to our own through various doors throughout the series. This connection gives the Dark Tower a relevance and heft that is rarely found in books about brave warriors fighting dragons with their crafty elf companions. The Dark Tower is successful because it makes the Writer and Constant Reader characters in the vast cosmic drama.

To do this, King appropriated one of Lovecraft’s best tricks and made it better. Lovecraft was famous for interjecting bits of reality into his tales so that the readers often had little idea of what was real and what was made up. He and his contemporaries established the foundations of the Cthulhu Mythos (even if it was not called that during his life) by citing each other’s work within their own tales. Readers assuming that these tales were created independently were led to believe that these authors were citing something far older, and much more mysterious.

In the Dark Tower, references and citations to existing works (The Beatles, Marvel Comics, Harry Potter) are key elements of the fundamental story. While the citations are mostly one-way (King to other creators), the extensive Dark Tower links in King’s other works suggest that there is something deeper going on. In my first pass through the Dark Tower, I wondered if King’s insertion of himself in the story was a trite gimmick or literary genius. In my first pass through, I was going too quickly to tell. In my second pass, the technique seemed quite sound, and quite necessary to the tale. For if the Dark Tower is the pivot on which an infinite number of realities of revolve, surely one of those realities must be our own. If this sounds like a mere writer’s fantasy, I’d encourage you to review the many-worlds interpretation of quantum mechanics. Whether he wrote it or not, invoking a multiverse requires that King (and you and I) be a part of the story.

When reading the parts about the interactions between Stephen King and the gunslingers, I was moved by how personal those passages are. In those bits, King lays out his philosophy of storytelling (the author is merely the conduit for the tale), his struggle with substance abuse, and the accident that nearly claimed his life. While “On Writing” is a more direct autobiographical work, the Dark Tower is a more emotional one. Personally, I believe “On Writing” is King’s ego talking, whereas the Dark Tower is his id speaking.

Now, to the most contentious issue in the series: the Dark Tower itself. In this second pass through the series, the Dark Tower is an abstract concept until the end of the book. It drives the gunslinger forward, but we don’t know for what end or purpose. Halfway through the last book, we learn that the Dark Tower is irrelevant after the heroes destroy the Breakers’ camp and save the life of the Writer. With the Breakers freed and the Writer saved, the remaining supports of the multiverse are saved and the process of healing can begin. Mounting the Dark Tower does not accomplish anything and is purely an exercise of vanity and stubbornness. Susannah recognizes this, leaves the quest upon saving the worlds, and finds happiness. Roland does not and is forced (again) into his own cycle of eternal(?) recurrence.  ”The man in black fled across the desert, and the gunslinger followed.” thus becomes both the prelude and the epilogue.

However, is this an infinite cycle? The Horn of Eld suggests not. Prior to entering the Dark Tower, voices ask Roland why he didn’t retrieve the artifact after the battle of Jericho Hill. After returning to the desert, the horn is with the gunslinger. (Is the Horn the true sigil required to enter the Tower?) While forcing the gunslinger to repeat his quest repeatedly suggests cruelty on behalf of the powers that be (Gan / the Dark Tower), returning Roland to the desert with the Horn years after he originally abandoned it suggests a kindness that Roland will eventually finish his quest and find peace.

In one of the Author’s Notes for a previous Dark Tower book, Stephen King mentions the heartbreaking letter from a reader dying of cancer who wants to know how the story ends before she passed on. King regretted that he was unable to provide the answer and didn’t know (at that time) how the story would end. By shunting the resolution of Roland’s quest into a subsequent cycle, we find ourselves in the patient’s position – we will probably pass on as well, before knowing if the gunslinger reaches his goal. Some readers hate this ambiguity, but I’m okay with it. I’d rather that Stephen King keep the mystery of the Tower alive through this literary device instead of coming up with a trite and simple ending where everyone lives happily ever after. The Dark Tower is not a “happy ever after” story, and I think that King recognizes that this story is larger than his ability to craft its proper ending.

By ending the series in this way, I think that King shows a profound amount of respect for his readers and this story by admitting that his inability to describe the top room of the Tower himself. A lesser writer would ruin the series with a shaky ending, but King allows it to live on in a satisfying manner in the minds of the readers. In this way, we can each be a conduit for Gan and finish the story in our own private way. In the subsequent cycles, the Constant Reader takes the mantle of the Writer from the original author. Nifty.

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