Стивен Кинг: The Dark Tower

Mere ugly heights and heaps now stolen in view.

How thus they had surprised me—solve it, you!

How to get from them was no clearer case.

XXIX

Yet half I seemed to recognise some trick

Of mischief happened to me, God knows when—

In a bad dream perhaps. Here ended, then

Progress this way. When, in the very nick

Of giving up, one time more, came a click

As when a trap shuts—you’re inside the den.

XXX

Burningly it came on me all at once,

This was the place! those two hills on the right,

Crouched like two bulls locked horn in horn in fight;

While to the left a tall scalped mountain . . . Dunce,

Dotard, a-dozing at the very nonce,

After a life spent training for the sight!

XXXI

What in the midst lay but the Tower itself?

The round squat turret, blind as the fool’s heart,

Built of brown stone, without a counterpart

In the whole world. The tempest’s mocking elf

Points to the shipman thus the unseen shelf

He strikes on, only when the timbers start.

XXXII

Not see? because of night perhaps?—why day

Came back again for that! before it left

The dying sunset kindled through a cleft:

The hills, like giants at a hunting, lay,

Chin upon hand, to see the game at bay,—

‘Now stab and end the creature—to the heft!’

XXXIII

Not hear? When noise was everywhere! it tolled

Increasing like a bell. Names in my ears

Of all the lost adventurers, my peers—

How such a one was strong, and such was bold,

And such was fortunate, yet each of old

Lost, lost! one moment knelled the woe of years.

XXXIV

There they stood, ranged along the hillsides, met

To view the last of me, a living frame

For one more picture! In a sheet of flame

I saw them and I knew them all. And yet

Dauntless the slug-horn to my lips I set,

And blew. ‘Childe Roland to the Dark Tower came.’

Sometimes I think I have written more about the Dark Tower books than I have written about the Dark Tower itself. These related writings include the ever-growing synopsis (known by the quaint old word Argument ) at the beginning of each of the first five volumes, and afterwords (most totally unnecessary and some actually embarrassing in retrospect) at the end of all the volumes. Michael Whelan, the extraordinary artist who illustrated both the first volume and this last, proved himself to be no slouch as a literary critic as well when, after reading a draft of Volume Seven, he suggested—in refreshingly blunt terms—that the rather lighthearted afterword I’d put at the end was jarring and out of place. I took another look at it and realized he was right.

The first half of that well-meant but off-key essay can now be found as an introduction to the first four volumes of the series; it’s called “On Being Nineteen.” I thought of leaving Volume Seven without any afterword at all; of letting Roland’s discovery at the top of his Tower be my last word on the matter. Then I realized that I had one more thing to say, a thing that actually needed to be said. It has to do with my presence in my own book.

There’s a smarmy academic term for this—“metafiction.” I hate it. I hate the pretentiousness of it. I’m in the story only because I’ve known for some time now (consciously since writing Insomnia in 1995, unconsciously since temporarily losing track of Father Donald Callahan near the end of ’Salem’s Lot ) that many of my fictions refer back to Roland’s world and Roland’s story. Since I was the one who wrote them, it seemed logical that I was part of the gunslinger’s ka. My idea was to use the Dark Tower stories as a kind of summation, a way of unifying as many of my previous stories as possible beneath the arch of some über- tale. I never meant that to be pretentious (and I hope it isn’t), but only as a way of showing how life influences art (and vice-versa). I think that, if you have read these last three Dark Tower volumes, you’ll see that my talk of retirement makes more sense in this context. In a sense, there’s nothing left to say now that Roland has reached his goal . . . and I hope the reader will see that by discovering the Horn of Eld, the gunslinger may finally be on the way to his own resolution. Possibly even to redemption. It was all about reaching the Tower, you see—mine as well as Roland’s—and that has finally been accomplished. You may not like what Roland found at the top, but that’s a different matter entirely. And don’t write me any angry letters about it, either, because I won’t answer them. There’s nothing left to say on the subject. I wasn’t exactly crazy about the ending, either, if you want to know the truth, but it’s the right ending. The only ending, in fact. You have to remember that I don’t make these things up, not exactly; I only write down what I see.

Readers will speculate on how “real” the Stephen King is who appears in these pages. The answer is “not very,” although the one Roland and Eddie meet in Bridgton ( Song of Susannah ) is very close to the Stephen King I remember being at that time. As for the Stephen King who shows up in this final volume . . . well, let’s put it this way: my wife asked me if I would kindly not give fans of the series very precise directions to where we live or who we really are. I agreed to do that. Not because I wanted to, exactly—part of what makes this story go, I think, is the sense of the fictional world bursting through into the real one—but because this happens to be my wife’s life as well as mine, and she should not be penalized for either loving me or living with me. So I have fictionalized the geography of western Maine to a great extent, trusting readers to grasp the intent of the fiction and to understand why I treated my own part in it as I did. And if you feel a need to drop in and say hello, please think again. My family and I have a good deal less privacy than we used to, and I have no wish to give up any more, may it do ya fine. My books are my way of knowing you. Let them be your way of knowing me, as well. It’s enough. And on behalf of Roland and all his ka-tet—now scattered, say sorry—I thank you for coming along, and sharing this adventure with me. I never worked harder on a project in my life, and I know—none better, alas—that it has not been entirely successful. What work of make-believe ever is? And yet for all of that, I would not give back a single minute of the time that I have lived in Roland’s where and when. Those days in Mid-World and End-World were quite extraordinary. Those were days when my imagination was so clear I could smell the dust and hear the creak of leather.

Stephen King

August 21, 2003

Photo by David King