The Road to the Dark Tower: Exploring Stephen King's Magnum Opus by Bev Vincent

Author:Bev Vincent [Vincent, Bev]
Language: eng
Format: azw
Tags: Sample Book, Sample Book
Publisher: Penguin Group
Published: 2004-09-27T22:00:00+00:00

KING HAD ALREADY WRITTEN SECTIONS of the next cycle of stories, originally titled Roland Draws Three, by the time The Gunslinger appeared in 1982. The first forty handwritten pages of the book vanished, and he still doesn’t know what happened to them.29

He confessed in the afterword to The Gunslinger that his vision of the overall arc of the epic was unclear. He didn’t yet understand exactly what had befallen Roland’s world, the nature of Roland’s confrontation with Marten, how Roland’s friends Cuthbert and Jamie died or who Susan was. But he hadn’t forgotten entirely what was on the missing pages or what he intended for the story.

King fictionalizes this stage in his development of the story in Song of Susannah when Eddie and Roland visit him in 1977. His character knows Roland, but he hasn’t created Eddie yet. He doesn’t know about Blaine or the implications of nineteen. “Except somewhere I do. Somewhere inside I know all of those things and there’s no need of an argument, or a synopsis, or an outline. . . . When it’s time, those things—and their significance to the gunslinger’s quest—will roll out as naturally as tears or laughter.” [DT1, afterword]

Once the world at large knew about the Dark Tower and a small percentage of King’s readership sampled The Gunslinger, clamoring for the next installment began, a tune that would haunt the author for the rest of his career. “When are you going to write the next book?” became one of his Frequently Asked Questions,30 posed at virtually every public appearance. The Castle Rock Newsletter reported that the top two questions in his fan mail were: 1) what is the Dark Tower and how do I find it? and 2) when will the next installment be published?31

Before his appearance at Cornell University in 1994, King told one of the organizers, “Every one of [the five thousand people present] is going to raise their hand during the question-and-answer period and say, ‘When’s the Dark Tower going to go on?’ ” When King established his official online presence in 1998, “When will the next Dark Tower book be released?” was near the top of his FAQ.

King told an interviewer, “I have three women who work in this office that answer the fan mail, and a lot of times they don’t tell me what’s going on with fan mail except for the stuff I pick up myself. But they put every Dark Tower letter on my desk. This is like a silent protest saying, ‘get these people off our backs.’ ”32 King calls these “pack your bags, we’re going on a guilt trip” letters.33

Still, in the mid-1980s, many of King’s readers were unaware of The Gunslinger and most of those who did know about it either couldn’t find or afford a copy.

In late 1985, the Castle Rock Newsletter announced a tentative 1986 publication date for The Drawing of the Three. It’s hard to imagine how King had the energy to delve back into Roland’s world after finishing

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