A Brief Guide to Stephen King (22 page)

Both Roland and Eddie are having mental problems: the gunslinger recalls two separate realities, one with Jake alive, one with him dead; Eddie is having weird dreams and starting to connect with a boy in New York. The boy is Jake, who is also in difficulties and believes he should have died on 9 May 1977 but hasn’t. He writes an essay that contains various clues about Roland’s quest but doesn’t remember writing it. Running away from school, he buys a children’s book called
Charlie the Choo-Choo
, and believes he’ll find a route to Mid-World, Roland’s domain, on the corner of Second Avenue and 46th Street. However, all that’s there is a construction site, a key, and a rose.

As Jake searches for a place to cross over, the others travel along the Beam and find a ‘thin’ place. Susannah distracts the demon guarding it by having sex with it, while Roland pulls Jake through from the haunted house in our world. The ka-tet is now complete, and they adopt a billy-bumbler, a smart animal they name Oy.

Following the Path of the Beam leads them towards the city of Lud, and they stop briefly in the town of River Crossing, where Roland is given a silver cross to lay at the Tower. To get to Lud they must cross the Send Bridge, and Jake is kidnapped by one of the Lud-ites, Gasher. While Eddie and Susannah look for Blaine the Mono, a sentient train that will speed their journey, Roland and Oy rescue Jake from the hands of the Tick-Tock Man. After they have left, the wizard Richard Fannin deals with the Tick-Tock Man’s failure, determined to ensure that the ka-tet get no nearer to the Tower.

Blaine the Mono agrees to take them to Topeka, the boundary of Mid-World and End-World but the ka-tet quickly realize that Blaine is insane. He intends to commit suicide with them aboard unless they can stump him with a riddle . . .

The third ‘Dark Tower’ novel is named after T.S. Eliot’s poem ‘The Waste Land’, first published in 1922. Both sections of the book derive their titles from lines in the poem: ‘I will show you fear in a handful of dust’ and ‘What are the roots that clutch, what branches grow/Out of this stony rubbish? Son of man,/You cannot say, or guess, for you know only/A heap of broken images, where the sun beats,/And the dead tree gives no shelter, the cricket no relief,/And the dry stone no sound of water.’ The latter is an apt description of the blasted lands through which Blaine travels with the ka-tet on board after they leave Lud. The book was given the subtitle ‘Redemption’ in its twenty-first-century reprints.

A short portion of
The Waste Lands
appeared in
F&SF
in December 1990, under the title ‘The Bear’, relating the ka-tet’s meeting with Shardik, but King reworked the section quite considerably between the short-story publication and the final manuscript of the third volume. In his afterword, King noted that each volume of the series was taking longer and longer to write, but promised that if there was a
demand for it, he would continue the series. He apologized for the abrupt cliffhanger ending to the story, claiming that he was as surprised as the reader that the tale ended where it did.

The links with
The Stand
become more explicit in
The Waste Lands
, with the connection drawn between Randall Flagg and Richard Fannin. The latter notes that one of his previous followers had used the phrase ‘My life for you’ – that being one of Randall Flagg’s less successful acolytes, Trashcan Man, whose actions in
The Stand
don’t eventually help Flagg’s cause. There’s also a crossover to the later
Rose Madder
, in which the city of Lud is talked about briefly.

Talking about the book shortly after publication, King noted that the connections between his twenty-two-year-old self who wrote the first story and the twenty-year-older King who completed
The Waste Lands
were ‘still there, they happen effortlessly’. To him, ‘the story exists. Only sometimes you get a little pot out of the ground, and that’s like a short story. Sometimes you get a bigger pot, which is like a novella. Sometimes you get a building, which is like a novel. In the case of “The Dark Tower”, it’s like excavating this huge f***ing buried city that’s down there.’ At that point, he wasn’t at all certain that he would ever complete the excavation: ‘I’ll never live to do it all,’ he commented wryly.

The Dark Tower IV: Wizard and Glass

(Donald M. Grant, November 1997)

The ka-tet try to riddle Blaine the Mono without success, but when Eddie starts telling childish jokes from Jake’s copy of
Charlie the Choo-Choo
, Blaine can’t cope with the illogicality so short-circuits. They reach Topeka, in the 1986 of a world where the majority of the population has been wiped out by a superflu. Various clues make it clear that it’s not the world that Roland brought the others from, and they are no longer on the Path of the Beam. Following Interstate 70 they find a thinny – as the Dark Tower
declines, these dimensional holes have been increasing. In the distance is a shimmering green palace.

As they rest, Roland tells the others the story of how he began his quest. After becoming aware of his mother’s adultery with the sorcerer Marten Broadcloak, Roland was spurred to win his guns aged just fourteen and earn the title of gunslinger. His father Steven, one of the leaders of the Affiliation, sent him and his ka-tet, his friends Cuth-bert and Alain, from Gilead to the town of Mejis, believing this would keep them out of danger. Steven was aware of his wife’s infidelity with his trusted counsellor but had more pressing matters to deal with.

However, Roland and his ka-tet discovered a plot by ‘The Good Man’ John Farson to use Mejis’s oil to fuel his planned rebellion against the Affiliation. Roland fell in love with Susan Delgado, who helped him and his ka-tet to escape from jail. Farson’s plan was foiled, and during the battle Roland got hold of the Wizard’s Glass, part of Maerlyn’s Rainbow: a pink, glass ball that can be used as a spyglass. Local witch Rhea Dubativo had been keeping it safe and used it to spy on her neighbours, and was furious when it was removed to be returned to John Farson. She took her anger out on Susan and arranged for her to be sacrificed at the Reaping Night festivities. Roland learned of Susan’s death and the danger faced by the Dark Tower from the Glass before the boys returned to Gilead.

Eddie, Susannah and Jake tell Roland the story of
The Wizard of Oz
as they approach the green palace and find red shoes. Inside they find both the Tick-Tock Man and a real wizard – Marten Broadcloak, now calling himself Randall Flagg, who currently has the Wizard’s Glass. After Flagg flees, he leaves the Glass, and Roland shows the others how he dealt with a threat the Glass showed him. It came from his mother, whom he shot with his father’s guns after the Glass showed him a false vision of witch Rhea approaching
him. He offers his new ka-tet a chance to step away from the quest, but it’s now their quest too.

Constant Readers had to wait six years for the conclusion to the cliffhanger at the end of
The Waste Lands
, and King received many letters on the subject encouraging him to finish. These were handled by his staff, Julie Eugley and Marsha DeFilippo, who ‘nagged me back to the word processor’, according to King’s dedication in the volume. In an interview with Joseph Mauceri after he’d delivered the 1,500-page long manuscript, King mentioned a seventy-three-year-old woman with Parkinson’s Disease who ‘had this fear that she was going to die before I finished the story. She was hoping I’d write one more before she got too feeble to read them’.

A portion of the book was released as an extra in the double-pack of
The Regulators
and
Desperation
, although King was criticized for this; a note from him in response, addressed to ‘Gentle Readers’, was posted to the alt.books. stephen-king online group by his publishers on 21 November 1996 which concluded: ‘Those of you who are yelling and stamping your feet, please stop. If you’re old enough to read, you’re old enough to behave.’ Penguin reprinted the text on their website a couple of months later.

King wrote some portions of Roland’s childhood when he was first working on the original ‘Dark Tower’ stories, and comments in his afterword on how the series has slowly become more central to his writing. In the gap between volumes three and four, his other work had included
Insomnia
, which has many links to the Dark Tower, as did, to a lesser extent,
Rose Madder
; however, he was more concerned about being able to write the love affair between Roland and Susan – the relationships he was creating in his contemporary books were very different (this is the period of
Dolores Claiborne
and
Gerald’s Game). Wizard and Glass
links most strongly to
The
Stand
, with the connections to Randall Flagg – and his various disguises through the ‘Dark Tower’ series – starting to become clearer. The twenty-first-century subtitle was ‘Regard’.

The rest of the story was started as he returned from Colorado to Maine after overseeing work on the miniseries of
The Shining
– which was clearly a productive time for him, since he also began to think about
Kingdom Hospital
(see
page 247
) around the same period. Many years later, he admitted that he knew how things were going to end for Roland by the time he finished
Wizard and Glass
– although his next story for the Gunslinger stepped back into Roland’s past once more as he met ‘The Little Sisters of Eluria’ (see
page 178
). His plans for the rest of the ‘Dark Tower’ however were put on hold as a result of his accident on 19 June 1999 – and the figure 19 started to become increasingly more important within the saga’s mythology.

NB: Readers coming to the Dark Tower
’
fresh are recommended to read
The Wind Through the Keyhole
between
Wizard and Glass
and
Wolves of the Calla.
However, since King retroactively inserted this story into the saga, it is covered in chronological order of publication on
page 175
.

The Dark Tower V: Wolves of the Calla

(Donald M. Grant, November 2003)

The ka-tet are continuing along the Path of the Beam and arrive in the farming village of Calla Bryn Sturgis. The inhabitants there need their help, and the code of the Gunslingers will not allow Roland to refuse. Every generation, the Wolves descend on the village and take a child from each of the town’s twins; they are returned a little later, ‘roont’ – mentally handicapped and fated to grow to a large size then die young. Andy, a positronic robot, has warned the villagers they have a month before the next arrival. The villagers’ plea is echoed by Pere Callahan, a priest who has come through to Mid-World bearing Black Thirteen, another piece of Maerlyn’s Rainbow.

The ka-tet are distracted by constant references to the number nineteen, and by dreams which see them go ‘todash’ and visit New York in 1977, where they realize they have to protect the rose Jake saw on Second and 46th. Callahan tells them that Black Thirteen can help them go todash, which means they have a way to get to New York – a city which Eddie and Jake notice is in a different reality from theirs. They also have another problem: Susannah is pregnant, and has developed a fresh personality, Mia, who isn’t keen on visiting the rose.

As the ka-tet prepare to help the villagers, and train some of them to use their sharpened dishes, Orizas, Eddie travels through another doorway (the means by which Callahan appeared in Mid-World) back to New York, so he can buy the lot containing the rose. He wants it to be sold to an ad hoc company, the Tet Corporation, for a dollar. On his way back, he brings a number of valuable books through from the old bookseller, Calvin Tower, who owns the lot, and has gone into hiding to avoid those who are trying to buy it in order to destroy the rose. The books include a copy of Stephen King’s
’Salem’s Lot
.

The gunslingers protect the village from the Wolves – who use lightsabers and ‘Harry Potter Edition’ ‘sneetches’ – after Roland has caught a traitor, who explains that a chemical is taken from the children’s brains which helps the powers of the Breakers who are trying to destroy the Tower. Even as Susannah’s waters break, the Wolves are destroyed, although a young boy Jake befriended and one of the village women are killed.

As everyone celebrates, Mia takes control of Susannah’s body and goes through the doorway with Black Thirteen, cutting off the rest of the ka-tet’s access to that world . . .

The accident which nearly took Stephen King’s life had a dramatic effect on the story of the Dark Tower. Although he knew how it would end, and a lot of the pieces along the
way, the realization that he might have died, leaving the book stuck in limbo, altered King’s perspective on it. One of the tasks he set himself once he was back writing was to complete this epic adventure.

The three books which form the concluding trilogy of the original version of the ‘Dark Tower’ series were written as one, and divided for publication. Readers were not going to have to wait for another six years to find out what happened next: all three books were advertised together, with Viking even including a prologue from the Grant edition of
Wolves of the Calla
in their trade reprint of
Wizard and Glass
.

Prior to starting work on the new story, King listened to the entire quartet of novels as recorded by Frank Muller, and hired Robin Furth as his assistant to prepare a list of every important name and object from the saga to date – this would eventually form the core of Furth’s mammoth
Dark Tower Concordance
. The fifth volume went through various title changes: initially it was known as ‘The Crawling Shadow’, or ‘The Werewolves of End-World’ before he decided on
Wolves of the Calla
, which he subtitled ‘Resistance’.

The saga’s roots in the Western became more obvious in this story, which riffs on the John Sturges film
The Magnificent Seven
, itself a version of Akira Kurosawa’s
The Seven Samurai
. The Spaghetti Westerns of Sergio Leone, and the works of Howard Hawks also play a significant role. King also mined his own back catalogue: Pere Callahan is the erstwhile priest of
’Salem’s Lot
, and this book acts as a sequel to King’s second bestseller, providing considerable detail about Callahan’s life and death after leaving the Lot, and mentioning in passing the fate of the book’s protagonist, Ben Mears (which Callahan learns when the Black Thirteen allows him to go todash). Callahan’s reaction when he reads excerpts from the vampire novel is priceless.