Hub 137 by Various

Author:Various
Format: epub
Tags: Science fiction, Horror, Fantasy
Publisher: Right Hand Publishing

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Coming to Terms with the End of Stephen King’s The Dark Tower Part I – King and the Modernists

by ro smith

There was a time when I would have unreservedly named Stephen King’s The Dark Tower as my all time favourite story. I say ‘story’ rather than ‘novel’ or ‘series’, because it really is better regarded as one story, too long for a single novel, unfurled over seven volumes. This story, I would have said, and King’s execution of it, was as close to perfection as any work of literature was likely to get.

Would that I was still possessed of such sweeping enthusiams.

I was fortunate enough to stumble upon Roland and his ka-tet some time in the mid-90s, when Michael Whelan’s haunting artwork still graced The Dark Tower’s covers, and only three of this seven volume colossus were in existence. I know many a person for whom this would have been a cause of immense frustration. Many’s the warning I’ve had against starting The Wheel of Time, and other such tales that ‘grew in the telling’. But I don’t think I’m alone, as one of The Dark Tower’s ‘Constant Readers’, in saying that there was a sort of savour of anticipation in the long wait between The Waste Lands and Wizard and Glass, or Wizard and Glass, and Wolves of the Calla. Especially when it was worth the wait.

We felt somewhat cheated, then, when the last three books came out at predictable intervals, in quick succession. It didn’t help to quash the feeling that maybe, just maybe, these books had been a little bit rushed.

That they should have been is, of course, completely understandable. Well do I remember the jolt of fear that, to my shame, coloured the pity, sympathy, and shock with which I heard the news that Stephen King had been run over, and was in critical condition. I couldn’t help but think: what if he had died, and left The Dark Tower unfinished? How must King, himself, have felt? It’s no secret that he was every bit as invested in his masterpiece as his fans. Add to that his growing blindness… who could blame the man for feeling that mortality was knocking, and the time to procrastinate was over.

Nonetheless, the last three books did feel rushed, and I don’t think it was just the sudden, unsettling regularity of the publishing schedule. What was it, then? Well, let’s examine some of the complaints (from here on in, spoilers are most definitely ahoy):

First bone, so often picked: writing yourself into your own story as a character – maybe even as God – is jumping the shark, egomania, and a whole world of ‘no’.

Second bone: we’ve spent the last six books awaiting the hauntingly described moment when Roland reaches the Tower, winds his horn, and the ghosts of all his companions – the heroes of the past – rise from the dead and sing, rejoicing that, finally, the childe Roland to the Dark Tower Came1, and all the worlds were saved. None of this happened.

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