The Gunslinger

The Dark Tower -
The Gunslinger

Author	Stephen King
Cover artist	Michael Whelan
Country	United States
Language	English
Genre(s)	Fantasy, Horror, Science fiction, and Western
Publisher	Donald M. Grant
Publication date	1982
Media type	Print (Hardback & Paperback)
Pages	224 pp
ISBN	ISBN 0-937986-50-X
Followed by	The Drawing of the Three

The Dark Tower Portal

The Gunslinger is a novel by American author Stephen King, and is the first volume in the Dark Tower series, which King considers to be his magnum opus. The story centers upon "the gunslinger", who has been chasing after his adversary, "the man in black", for many years. Chronicled is the gunslinger's quest through a large desert, and then a mountain, in search of the man. Along the way, he encounters various people, among them a boy named Jake, who is from another world.

Background and publication

The novel was inspired by the poem "Childe Roland to the Dark Tower Came" by Robert Browning, which King read as a sophomore at the University of Maine. King explains that he "played with the idea of trying a long romantic novel embodying the feel, if not the exact sense, of the Browning poem." In March 1970, while a senior at the university, King began writing the novel on bright green sheets of paper. The five parts that constitute the novel were originally published in The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction:

• "The Gunslinger" (October 1978)
• "The Way Station" (April 1980)
• "The Oracle and the Mountains" (February 1981)
• "The Slow Mutants" (July 1981)
• "The Gunslinger and the Dark Man" (November 1981)

In all, it took King twelve years to finish the novel. The finished product was first published by Donald M. Grant, Publisher, Inc. as a limited edition in 1982. In 1988, Plume released it in trade paperback form. Since then, the book has been re-issued in various formats and included in boxed sets with other volumes of the series. In 2003 the novel was reissued in a revised and expanded version with modified language and added scenes intended to resolve inconsistencies with the later books in the series.

Synopsis

The book begins, "The man in black fled across the desert, and the gunslinger followed." It tells the story of the gunslinger, Roland of Gilead, and his quest to catch the man in black, which will ultimately lead him to the Dark Tower. Roland is a Gunslinger, his world's answer to the knight-errant, and he follows the trail of his fatal obsession. The main story takes place in a world that is recognizable as the Old West but exists in an alternate time frame or parallel universe to ours; Roland exists in a place where "the world has moved on." This world has a few things in common with our own, however, including memories of the song "Hey Jude" and the child's rhyme that begins "Beans, beans, the musical fruit." Vestiges of forgotten or skewed versions of real-world technology also appear, such as a reference to a gas pump in a tunnel under a mountain that is worshipped as a god named "Amoco", and an abandoned way station with a water pump which is powered by an "atomic slug". It is at this way station that Roland first meets John Chambers (who goes by Jake), a child who died in the world that we know. Jake was pushed in front of a car by a fellow named Jack Mort, who he thought was the Man in Black (the name Jack Mort was never used in this novel), and woke up at the way station. Roland takes Jake with him on his journey across the desert and through the mountain. Jake becomes a symbolic son to Roland, but Roland sacrifices Jake when he is faced with a choice between saving Jake's life and catching the Man In Black. Before Jake dies, he says, "Go, then. There are other worlds than these." The importance of these other worlds, as well as some of their inhabitants, is revealed as the series progresses. The Gunslinger takes the form of a series of interleaved flashbacks, as Roland's quest is interrupted with dreamlike vignettes from his youth. By far the most stylized and enigmatic of King's longer works, the book is perhaps best seen as an introductory tableau or prologue to the entire series, the subsequent books of which are much more concrete and linear in their story-telling.

Editions

• ISBN 0-8488-0780-4 (hardcover, 1986)
• ISBN 0-606-04112-5 (prebound, 1988)
• ISBN 0-452-26134-1 (paperback Plume, reprint edition, September 28, 1988)
• ISBN 0-451-16052-5 (paperback reissue edition, 1989)
• ISBN 0-14-086716-3 (audio cassette with paperback, 1998, abridged)
• ISBN 0-670-03254-9 (hardcover, 2003)
• ISBN 0-452-28469-4 (paperback, 2003)
• ISBN 0-451-21084-0 (mass market paperback, 2003)
• ISBN 0-7865-3721-3 (e-book, 2003)

References

• King, Stephen (1989). Afterword. The Dark Tower: The Gunslinger. New York: Signet. ISBN 0-451-16052-5

External links

The Dark Tower Portal

• Comparison of the original text and the 2003 revised edition
• (French) LaTourSombre.fr : French encyclopedia