The end of a long road: Stephen King's Dark Tower

BY BRENDAN NEWTON, for THECOMMENTARY.CA

GUEST COMMENTARY

Thursday, 02 February 2006

It was the summer of 2001. High school was behind me, college was vaguely ahead somewhere, but I had nothing really in front of me, nothing to read and study and obsess over. I had worked my ass off at school over the past year (halfway through the summer, said work was handsomely rewarded by a string of A's on my high school transcript, plus a helpful little provincial scholarship award), but all that was done. Meanwhile, most of the TV shows that I had followed religiously throughout high school had finished their runs or had dipped in quality and ceased to interest me. So, at a loose end one scorching July afternoon, I wandered off to my local library and returned as I usually do from such an excursion, carrying more books than I'll ever possibly have time to read. On this occasion, one of those books was the first part of Stephen King's serial novel The Green Mile. I had never been a big King fan; I had read Carrie in high school (and found that it hit way too close to home), and had tried a couple of his longer novels but didn't really care for them. I had loved the film version of The Green Mile, however, so I thought I'd give it a shot. For some reason, this time King's warm-and-friendly-yet-dark-and-menacing style of writing and storytelling drew me in, and I was soon back at the library looking for the other parts of the novel as well as other books by King. In addition to The Green Mile, which I had finished by the end of July, I picked up King's novel Desperation, mostly because of the cool cover artwork. This was the book that really hooked me on King, a long, weird novel about an ordinary eleven-year old boy (who reminded me very much of myself at that age; King is always at his best when writing children and I know of no other author who has captured so well childhood as experienced in North America in the late twentieth century) and unwilling hero who finds himself dragged into a battle between supernatural good and evil of biblical proportions. Like almost all of King's novels, it was scary, powerful, and funny, with great characters battling a terrifying, impressive villain.

So, I had my new obsession, and as a functioning Internet addict I decided to take a look at what the Web had to offer fans of King. I found several good websites run by fans who as near as I could tell were even more obsessed than me (Question: Before the Internet, how did people reassure themselves that there are weirder and more obsessive people than themselves out there?.) They poured over King's works, endlessly debating their favourite books, scenes, monsters, and characters. Through these fans I soon had a list of "must-read" books, including "classics" like The Stand, Salem's Lot, The Shining, and It as well as newer books like Bag of Bones and Hearts in Atlantis. But the books that provoked the most obsessive fan discussion were the books in the then-unfinished Dark Tower series, which I had only vaguely heard of; I knew that it involved some sort of quest, and that it was kind of a Western, but that was it. Fans talked of the characters with such interest, however, obsessed so thoroughly over the series' unsolved mysteries and speculated so much about the connections between the series and King's other works that I was soon at-you guessed it-the library, looking for the first volume in the series, The Gunslinger. The unique tale-a sort of Horror-Fantasy-Western with some Sci-fi elements thrown in for good measure-captivated me, and I soon counted myself a full-fledged Tower junkie. At the time, only four novels in the seven-volume series had been published; I devoured all four of these within the year and then sat back and waited for the fifth volume, which appeared the next year and was closely followed by the sixth and seventh (and final) books. While some fans felt that Books Five and Six in the series (subtitled Wolves of the Calla and Song of Susannah respectively) didn't measure up to what had come before, I was not among them and loved the twists and turns of these two books. I had finished the final book some time ago when Joseph e-mailed me to say that he'd just received a paperback copy from Simon & Schuster and would I mind reviewing it? Given that one of my hundreds of vague ideas had been to write something for The Commentary about the series, and since I especially wanted to sound off about the final chapter of the series, my "yes" was pretty much a reflex action. I'll be reviewing the final book in the series, simply titled The Dark Tower, but I must stress that I strongly recommend the series as a whole; it's not quite like anything else you've ever read, and Books 3 and 4 are probably the best of the series. I was going to do an in-depth summary of the books and characters, but really, if you haven't read and enjoyed the other six books, there's not much of a reason to read this one, or my review of it. I also must mention that spoilers will abound, so if you haven't read this book and intend to read it, stop reading now. Anyone else still with me? (insert sound of crickets chirping here)

Anyways, Book 6 closed with our heroes in deadly peril and trying to find each other again after being separated for most of that book. Roland (the central character of this series, a sort of cross between Clint Eastwood's Man With No Name and one of King Arthur's questing knights and the Last Gunslinger who is obsessed with finding the mysterious Dark Tower that binds all existence) and Eddie (a young junkie-turned-Gunslinger from New York; one of the coolest things about this series is the way that characters hop between "our world" and a vividly imagined fantasy world) are in Maine, having just had a shocking encounter with a writer named Stephen King who seems to be of some importance (King's insertion of himself into the series as a character was strongly criticized by some fans, and it's certainly a move that could have ruined the series, but his sections are well-written and his involvement in the universe works. Just about). Susannah (a paraplegic black civil rights activist with a split personality and Eddie's common-law wife who was impregnated by a demon in Book 3) has just given birth to Mordred (named by the child's demon mother, Mia, for the son who killed his father King Arthur), the monstrous offspring of both Roland and the series' "Big Bad", the Crimson King. Jake Chambers (an eleven-year old boy and spiritual son of Roland who has already died twice and returned), Pere Callahan (the fallen priest from King's early novel Salem's Lot whose vampire-hunting adventures eventually led to his meeting up with Roland's group; yet another thing to love about this series is the way it brings back characters from earlier books and links all of King's work into one universe), and Oy (Jake's pet billy-bumbler, a sort of talking half-racoon, half-dog; it's not as ridiculous as it sounds, trust me) are tracking Susannah in an effort to save her, but the path to her is blocked by a legion of vampires and other assorted beastly servants of the Crimson King.

In the final chapter of any TV series or series of books, all bets are off. Characters who have been bulletproof in previous installments can be killed off with impunity, no matter how much it might upset some fans. King makes this clear within the first thirty pages or so, as, in a moment of redemption (that's the other thing about final chapters; character's story arcs will be wrapped up, and hopefully there'll be some redemption; King makes it clear that he does not believe in happy endings, but he does believe in at least satisfactory endings) Pere Callahan sacrifices himself to the vampires to allow Jake and Oy to escape to find Susannah. Find her they do, after she too has escaped from her captors (although the monstrous spider-baby Mordred escapes), and they are soon joined by Eddie and Roland. The reunion is a joyful one, but they have work to do, as the Tower-and therefore all existence-is threatened by the forces of the Crimson King in both Roland's world, where enslaved psychics known as Breakers are working to telepathically destroy the beams that hold the Tower in place, and in "our" world (or at least a fictional facsimile of our world), where Stephen King's imminent death in a road accident (King's insertion of his real-life near-fatal accident into the fictional narrative is another of those threads that caused consternation among some fans but just about works because of the way it's set up) will ensure that the tale will never be told and the Tower will fall. Roland's ka-tet (a "ka-tet" is a group of people who are deeply united in one common purpose; King sprinkles his fantasy world with fantasy terms such as this one; it is not as rich and complex as, say the languages created by Tolkien for Lord of the Rings, but it is a nice touch that reinforces the feeling of fantasy) must first liberate the Breakers and then save King's life if the quest can continue. They do both these things, but at a heartbreaking cost; Eddie is killed in the battle to liberate the Breakers, while Jake sacrifices himself to save King's life. Heartbroken (along with this reader) by these losses, Roland, Susannah, and Oy press on to the Tower nevertheless, encountering several more powerfully-described landscapes and several more memorable foes on the way. They also meet a new ally, Patrick Danville (a character whose involvement in the series was prophesized in another King book, Insomnia, as early as 1994), a talented young artist whose drawings-and erasings-become reality. Patrick's drawings give Susannah the opportunity to be reunited with Eddie and Jake in an alternate New York (King is ambiguous as to whether or not these are resurrected versions of "our" Eddie and Jake or distinct alternate versions; this ambiguity works, as the reader is left to decide how happy an ending this is for Susannah), and Patrick's abilities also provide the key to the final defeat of the Crimson King (the ultimate baddie is simply erased out of existence), but this does not come until after Roland loses his last "family" member, as in yet another heartbreaking sacrifice (this time I actually had to put down the book for a few minutes to compose myself; being with these characters with you for a while and then losing them takes its' toll) Oy dies saving Roland from the attack of the spider-child-monster Mordred, who then dies under Roland's guns. Having thus sacrificed all of his loved ones to his obsessive quest, Roland finally enters the Dark Tower. King interrupts the narrative at this point to say that he is proud of the tale that he has told, and that he did not particularly want to write an ending to it; for him, it is the journey that matters, not the final destination. Therefore, he gives the reader the option of not reading the ending that he has written. Now, one may be tempted to dismiss this as a clever excuse for having written a bad ending, but this section is so heartfelt, and I happen to agree with King so strongly on this point (no good story is ever long enough, no matter how happy the ending), that it seems churlish to do so. Even so, I went ahead and read the ending (if you want to know what it is, read the book!) and thought that it was well-written and very open; without giving it away, I will say that this ending satisfied me, and again the reader is left to decide whether or not this ending is happy or tragic.

My brief summary of the 845-page novel does not do the writing justice; in terms of writing, this book is King at his best, full of well-written asides and vividly depicted characters and places; King forcefully makes us care about and understand his creations, especially the boy Jake (as I said earlier, King is at his best when writing children); the fact that Jake is probably the best-realized character makes his death all the more hard for the reader to bear. I also loved the little bits of what appear to be King's own thoughts about life; no ending is a happy one, and it is not the ending/destination that matters but the story/journey (the afore-mentioned section at the end of the book that discusses this might be the finest thing that King's ever written, probably because it's a concept that's so central to his philosophies of art and life). From the beginning of this series, these books have come with terrific illustrations, each by a different artist (Well, actually only the first hardcover editions come with the illustrations; getting the pictures was the way that I rationalized buying the expensive hardcover editions on my meagre student budget); for this book, however, King went "back to the beginning" and had Michael Whelan, who illustrated the first book in the series, do the artwork. A wise choice; Whelan's drawings for The Gunslinger were fantastic, and if anything his illustrations for The Dark Tower are even better; it's really scary how close this guy's illustrations come to the way I imagine these characters. These illustrations are easily the best of the series, and that's saying something given the quality of what's come before. (One of the only exceptions to this rule that I can think of is The Lord of the Rings, and I think this is only because Tolkien didn't really understand the size of the story that he was telling until the final chapter.) In terms of writing and artwork, then, I loved this book. I did have, however, some problems with the way that the story unfolded; although it's still a well-told tale, storywise, I felt that this was the weakest of the Dark Tower books. This is perhaps unsurprising; as King himself acknowledges, endings are hard, and they're never really happy. Now that I think about it, it's rare that the final chapter of any TV series or series of books is better than the chapters that have come before. It's easy to build a story up with a beginning and a middle that hook the reader, but perhaps harder to pay it all off in the end. Also, since most readers tend to make up their own ideal ending as they go along (and readers certainly did this with The Dark Tower; the website http://www.malakoff.com/sking.htm features a large section of readers' theories as to how it would all end; it makes for fun reading for the DT-obsessed), the real ending tends to disappoint a lot of people. With all that in mind, however, I still feel that this book had some flaws, especially with regard to the way in which some character's stories ended. Most prominent of these was the swift demise of one of the primary villains of this series as well as several other King novels (most prominently The Stand and Eyes of the Dragon), the being known alternately as Randall Flagg, Walter O' Dim, or the Ageless Stranger. This character had been built up through so much of King's work as a super-powerful, possibly-immortal villain (in The Stand, for example, he apparently survived a nuclear bomb blast!) as well as an especially personal enemy of Roland (he seduced Roland's mother, killed his father, and played a key role in the civil war that destroyed the Gunslingers); I felt as many fans did that the series would end with the final showdown between Roland and Flagg, and while I did not doubt that Flagg would be killed, I could not imagine how it could be done. As it turns out, however, Flagg, who as it turns out is not that powerful after all, appears briefly in this novel and is quickly and unceremoniously devoured by Mordred the spider-baby. Now, I kind of get the point that King was trying to make with this anti-epic death; all of Roland's external enemies prove to be less powerful than they appear, and his greatest foil proves to be his own obsession with the Dark Tower, but…c'mon, killing off Flagg in that way at that point in the story is tantamount to having say, Jabba the Hutt eat Darth Vader at the beginning of Return of the Jedi! It's just a supremely unsatisfying way to get rid of such an apparently important character. The argument could be made that having Mordred kill Flagg was a great way to build up Mordred as an even more powerful villain, but King drops the ball here by having Roland kill Mordred fairly easily in another disappointing final confrontation (as unbelievable as it sounds, Mordred is already dying of food poisoning when Roland finishes him off; this is just goofy). The final battle with the Crimson King-and indeed the way the Crimson King is handled in comparison with the way that he has been built up in previous books-also underwhelmed me; again, he's meant to be this all-powerful being with a huge empire of minions, and he's dispatched with such relative ease as though he was just some old evil guy. The only villain in this book whose character I thought really worked was that of Dandelo, a previously unmentioned villain who crops up near the book's end and is basically an insectoid empathic "vampire" who, in his disguise as a loveable old stand-up comedian almost makes Roland die laughing. It sounds ridiculous, but it works, and King fans will recognize this character as having many similarities with one of King's scariest creations, the killer clown Pennywise from It. This allusion to It works well because it is understated but clear, and Dandelo is a much more original and menacing villain than any of the other major villains.

The heroic characters' stories are generally handled better than the villains's; having Roland be the only one to actually reach the Dark Tower makes sense, since this was always his quest. The tragic irony is that he has had to sacrifice all of his loved ones to reach the Tower; in the end, both he and the reader are left wondering if it was all worth it, and the reader is also left not sure whether to love this well-written, powerfully-drawn character who is both superhuman in his abilities as a warrior and all too human in his irrational obsession with the Tower, or to hate him for what seems like a foolish obsession that has led to the deaths of those that were loved by both him and us. Speaking of those that were loved by him and us, the deaths of Eddie and Jake are both heartbreaking but generally well-handled, and it does make sense that they should have to sacrifice themselves to save the Tower. Jake's death is somewhat paradoxical, however, as he dies saving the life of Stephen King (there were those who suggested that the implication that King dying would destroy the universe was just a bit egotistical, but King's portrayal of himself is not especially flattering, and this section of the book is as well-written as the rest, so I'll just about let it slide), without whom Jake (and all of the other characters) would not exist; however, I (along with many other readers) was so upset by Jake's death that I would have preferred Stephen King-his creator-died in his place! Pere Callahan's death and redemption is also well-handled, although I was disappointed to lose this great character so early on in the book. Likewise, I was surprised that Eddie and Jake's deaths came as relatively early as they did, leaving Roland and Susannah alone for much of the novel; while this seemed a bit odd, it did have the effect of making the reader feel their loneliness and grief during the long second half of the novel, and it made Susannah's reunion with Eddie and Jake (in the final section, King hints that Oy will also be resurrected in their world) that much more joyful. One of the only characters on the "good" side (or the side of the White, to use the series' own parlance) whose story I felt was not satisfactorily resolved was Sheemie, a friend from Roland's past who returns in this book as one of the "Breakers" only to die quickly and randomly; my major problem with his death was that it happened so soon after the deaths of major characters Eddie and Jake that it lacked the emotional impact that it should have had. I was also frustrated with the way that King ignores so much of the huge backstory that he has built up in the fifteen-odd books of his that are not directly part of the series but are "Dark Tower-related", especially Insomnia, the book which introduced both Patrick Danville and the Crimson King and appeared to be a sort of key to understanding the Dark Tower universe but in this novel is quickly discounted as having been written by the fictionalized Stephen King and having little if any real importance to the series. Patrick Danville does make his long-prophesized appearance, but the specific prophecy concerning him is not fulfilled (it was said that he was going to save the lives of two men, one of whom must not die, and then die himself; this certainly did not happen), and it is never even made clear what this Patrick Danville's connection is to the boy who appears in Insomnia! This may be because Insomnia is not King's favourite novel of his (in his book On Writing, he dismissed it as a "stiff, trying-too-hard" novel) and so he did not want to revisit it my incorporating it too much into this book. Unfortunately, I don't share his low view of his own novel, as I thought Insomnia was a great read and was hoping that it was going to play more of a role in the Tower series! Obviously, it's King's book, so he can choose what story elements he regards or disregards, but I felt that the disregarding of Insomnia (as as several other "connected" books) was a mistake, as I loved the idea of all of King's work relating to the Tower; it gave the series a feel of being part of a huge, perhaps limitless universe. This book still has that feeling, but it's not as powerful. It should have been the biggest book of the series, but in some ways it feels like the smallest.

This book, then, was not quite what I was expecting, and I felt that the story had its share of flaws and disappointments. It's still a good read, and fantastic in places, but it is easily the weakest of the seven Tower books. In spite of all of its flaws, however, I still voraciously read it, loved reading it, and am glad that such an intriguing and epic series actually had a conclusion (especially given King's near-fatal accident, which almost left the series painfully unfinished). If nothing else, this final chapter makes the terrific earlier books more "whole" than they would be as part of an unfinished series, which is reason enough for its' existence. I'm also still hungry for more Dark Tower stories, and will not be disappointed; King and Marvel Comics recently announced a series of Tower comics for 2007 (King also apparently has two more novels coming out soon, despite having claimed that he was "retiring" with the last Tower book. The new books sound good, especially Cell, about cell phone signals turning people into zombies; so I won't begrudge the fact that he appears to be turning into the Michael Jordan of books.) These will tell more tales of Roland's early adventures before we met him in The Gunslinger; I had hoped that one of the last books in the series would tell some of these tales (I was especially hoping for another appearance by Roland's childhood friend Cuthbert Allgood, who's a great character) so I'm excited about those.

Conclusion: This final book has its flaws, but the series as a whole is still great, and I heartily recommend all seven books to anyone who's looking for a unique read.

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