It Feels Like The First Time
7-28-16, 3:25 am
This is just something that I thought that I should try. I am attempting to re-read The Dark Tower series by Stephen King and I just thought it might be interesting to jot down my thoughts while revisiting this lovely world.
This first entry is really just kind of a summary of the first 50 pages of the book, seeing as not a whole lot happens. Further in the story I will offer more of my own thoughts on how things progress.
So here we go: the first novel in the series is The Gunslinger, originally published in 1982. Warning, there are spoilers in this post!
First off: The intro and forward are amazing! The intro has my favorite quote in it:
“Nineteen is the age where you say ‘Look out, world, I’m smoking TNT and I’m drinking dynamite, so if ya know what’s good for you, look out!”
I know that at some point in my life I have used this in some college essay I wrote. I probably didn’t get a great grade on it but it totally stuck with me.
The forward then goes to explain how Mr. King doesn’t really think that authors should really talk about their writings, which is humorous because that is exactly what he is doing.
This book series is something that I basically fell in love with right at the end of my high school career. Or maybe it was right after I had graduated. I remember reading some of the later novels while in community college.
I have always had a little bit of disdain for the first novel: The Gunslinger. If memory serves I thought it was particularly slow and not much happened for the majority of the book.
I don’t know if it was because I was young and just wanted my literature to be spoon-fed to me or if I just had a shorter attention span back then, but so far I am totally digging this first book the second time around.
King has such a way of writing that just draws me (and others, obviously) in to the point where I just don’t want to stop reading. I don’t know if it is because of the sporadic chapter breaks or if I just want to know what made me love it so much the first go-around.
The Gunslinger starts with the famous line “The man in black fled across the desert and the gunslinger followed.” Going into this as a second re-through I also am aware that that is also the last line of the series (SPOILER ALERT!!!)
Then the narrative kind of switches in my opinion. Well I guess it can’t be called “switching” seeing as there have only been twelve words total to begin with. Maybe it’s still the same but the first chapter or so is pretty shrouded in a sort of effort toward mystery that I don’t normally expect from King. I know this is written very close to the beginning of his career so it’s to be expected but it kind of threw me for a loop. It almost seems like he’s trying to hard to leave a lot to the imagination. (I mean: I’m 50 pages in and I still don’t know our main characters name!)
He then seems to spend a lot of time explaining the desert…I guess, in retrospect, it isn’t a lot of time, but it just seems to drag on and I don’t really think that is a very good way to start such an epic. That could kind of describe this whole novel if I remember correctly, but that’s getting ahead of myself.
Okay, so the gunslinger is traveling across the desert. He then comes to a little plot of land with a measly corn crop and a man tirelessly tending it. This is when the story finally gets going and starts to become something entertaining. King seems to have a shift in the way he is writing when other characters are involved. This is probably intentional but, again, it seems like when the gunslinger is alone he’s just writing to fill space.
So Roland, the gunslinger (I don’t know why King keeps his name secret for so long seeing as the back of the book mentions it.), comes across this man and his raven. I have a particular fondness for ravens, blame Poe. The man seems perfectly kind and is offering Roland food as well as water. Roland accepts both offers and fills his satchels while the man makes dinner.
While filling the satchels, Roland begins to suspect that the man is really just a ruse from the man in black that he is chasing. Some sort of enchantment. He briefly thinks that this man may try to kill him. The man has already met with the man in black before Roland showed up and has stories of his magic. This really adds to the mystery of the man in black which is nice because I don’t recall much of him from my previous reading. The man seemingly convinces Roland that he intends no harm towards him.
Brown, which is the mans name, and Roland eat together and then Roland decides he wants to tell Brown of what happened in Tull, the city that the gunslinger has most recently visited. Brown is very willing to hear this story but for some reason Roland all of sudden is at a lack of words. I found this odd because he starts to tell the story then he can’t find the words, but then he goes to pee on the mans corn then when he comes back he’s all ready to start talking. I don’t know if this was just something to add some girth to a somewhat short novel, but it kind of acts as a speed bump in the narrative.
So now we have our first level of backstory. So far I get the feeling of the movie Inception. In the movie they have multiple levels of dreams, but in this we get multiple levels of flashbacks.
Roland talks about how he bought a mule before making his way to Tull. This is kind of confusing because the way it’s written makes it seem like he doesn’t have the mule anymore but later on we find out that he showed up with the mule to Brown’s place.
So the gunslinger and his mule show up in Tull and this place is very odd. No one seems to like talking to him. Roland tells this story of how he got there and ends up in a bar and orders three hamburgers, but it turns out this place doesn’t have any bread (or so they say) so he just gets three slabs of questionable meat.
After eating his “hamburgers” he starts talking to the bartender, Alice. Roland wants to know what happened when the man in black was there before the gunslinger showed up. As he’s asking this a man comes up behind him with a knife and demands that Roland give him money. This I found odd considering that Roland is a gunslinger, and has the skills the take on the drunk man whose trying to hustle him. But Roland gives this man some money and turns his attention over to Alice again.
Alice has quite a story to tell the gunslinger but, for some odd reason, her price is for him to have sex with her.
The two go upstairs and Alice begins her story, which is the next level of this Inception-like narrative.
Alice talks about Nort, who is the man that demanded money from Roland. Nort is addicted to devil grass. Devil grass is kind of explained, but not really. It is essentially a drug that grows in the desert and most users smoke it but when you get really addicted you begin to chew it, which turns your teeth green and eventually kills you. Nort is at the last stage of the addiction. Right before the man in black showed up, Nort had died. When the man in black enters the bar it’s kind of a wake for Nort. The body is still in the bar and people are there in a sort of make shift funeral.
The man in black orders some whiskey and then basically brings Nort back to life using chanting and whatever magic he has…
Nort comes back to life and he gives Alice a letter from the man in black that says if she wants to know the secrets of the afterlife all she has to do is say to Nort “nineteen”.
She tells this to Roland and he warns her that she should never say that word to Nort (“as far as you know now the number after eighteen is twenty!).
That is where I have stopped for the night. Remember we are currently inside the story that Alice is telling to Roland that is inside the story that Roland is telling to Brown.
That’s it for tonight, so, Constant Reader, I’ll see you tomorrow.