The Gunslinger

When I read this novel more than twenty years ago, I did not appreciate it. Clearly, Roland's story did not charmed enough my distracted and teenage mind. Therefore, I decided to prematurely stop the "The Black Tower" series. A few days ago in a bookstore I stumbled on a copy of the new edition of "The Gunslinger", and reading the preface I understood a couple of things. FIRST: not just myself, but also Stephen King was young when he wrote the same edition of "The Gunslinger" that I read eons ago. SECOND: to overcome the incomplete literary maturity possessed at that time, Stephen King thought to revise and enrich the original novel, publishing a new edition that for simplicity I will define "more mature". In fact, in that preface King confesses that when he starts writing a novel, he has no idea where he's going with this, let alone when he stars to write a multi-volume saga! In this light, the rearrangement of "The Gunslinger", done only after completing the last episode of "The Black Tower", was necessary.

The plot is simple. Roland is a gunslinger and chases the man in black. The deadly desert dominates on them. Some meetings take place along the way, new characters come into play, while flashbacks clarify the gunslinger's past. In my opinion the most beautiful parts of the novel are precisely Roland's memories, which begin to roughly make us understand the meaning of "The Black Tower". King give us the only hint about the time of the facts practically at the end:

«Gunslinger, our fathers conquered the-disease-which-rots, which we call cancer, almost conquered aging, went to the moon...»,

Although some details escape me at the moment, I expect a lot from this saga. I think this novel is a kind of introduction that I will fully understand after the next volumes, and probably I will return to these reflections once again in the future to update my personal judgment of "The Gunslinger". For now, I trust the positive reviews of the next volumes. Overall I trust the positive reviews of "The Black Tower" series. But above all I trust the author who, more than anyone else, always stimulated my imagination. And that's not a small thing!

My journey just started.

Vote: 7

Quando lessi questo romanzo più di vent'anni fa, non ne fui entusiasta. Evidentemente la vicenda di Roland non aveva colpito abbastanza la mia mente distratta e adolescente. Decisi pertanto di non continuare la serie de "La Torre Nera". Qualche giorno fa mi sono imbattuto in libreria in una copia della nuova edizione de "L'Ultimo Cavaliere", e leggendone la prefazione vengo a conoscenza di un paio di cose. UNO: non solo il sottoscritto, ma anche il buon Stephen era giovane, molto giovane, quando scrisse l'edizione dell'ultimo cavaliere che lessi eoni fa. DUE: per ovviare alla non piena maturità letteraria posseduta all'epoca, il buon Stephen ha pensato bene di rivedere ed arricchire il romanzo originale, mandando alle stampe una nuova edizione che per semplicità definisco "più matura". Difatti nella suddetta prefazione King confessa che quando inizia a scrivere un romanzo, non sa con precisione dove vuole andare a parare. Figuriamoci quando inizia a scrivere una saga di più volumi! In quest'ottica, il rimaneggiamento de "L'ultimo cavaliere", fatto solo dopo aver completato l'ultimo episodio de "La Torre Nera", è stato necessario.

La trama è semplice. Roland è un pistolero ed insegue l'uomo in nero. Su di loro domina il deserto, torrido e letale. Lungo il cammino avvengono degli incontri, entrano in gioco nuovi personaggi, mentre flashback di ricordi chiariscono il passato del pistolero. Sono proprio i ricordi di Roland le parti più belle secondo me, sono brani che cominciano grossolanamente a farci capire il senso della Torre Nera. L'unico indizio sull'epoca in cui avvengono i fatti lo si ottiene praticamente alla fine:

«Pistolero, i nostri plurisnonni debellarono il morbo che fa marcire, quello che chiamavano cancro. Quasi debellarono la vecchiaia, camminarono sulla luna...»,

Nonostante ci sono alcuni dettagli che mi sfuggono, mi aspetto molto da questa saga. Credo che questo romanzo sia una sorta di introduzione che comprenderò appieno dopo i volumi successivi, ed immagino che tornerò in futuro su queste riflessioni per aggiornare il mio personale giudizio de "L'Ultimo Cavaliere". Per ora mi fido delle recensioni positive dei prossimi volumi. Mi fido delle recensioni positive della serie "La Torre Nera" nella sua interezza. Ma soprattutto mi fido dell'autore che più di tutti ha sempre stimolato la mia immaginazione. E scusate se è poco.

Il mio viaggio è appena iniziato.

Voto: 7

From King’s 2003 foreword to the revised and expanded version:

“When I looked back at the first volume, which you now hold in your hands, three obvious truths presented themselves. The first was that The Gunslinger had been written by a very young man, and had all the problems of a very young man’s book. The second was that it contained a great many errors and false starts, particularly in light of the volumes that followed. The third was that The Gunslinger did not even sound like the later books—it was, frankly, rather difficult to read. All too often I heard myself apologizing for it, and telling people that if they persevered, they would find the story really found its voice in The Drawing of the Three.”

So he revised it, and apparently removed quite a few of the adverbs that he detests.

“The world has moved on,' we say... we've always said. But it's moving on faster now. Something has happened to time. It’s softening.”

“Do you believe in an afterlife?” the gunslinger asked him as Brown dropped three ears of hot corn onto his plate.
Brown nodded. “I think this is it.”

“Go then, there are other worlds than these.”

“Jake?”
“Uh-huh?”
“Do you want to remember this when you wake up, or forget it?”
“Forget it,” The boy said promptly. “When the blood came out of my mouth I could taste my own shit.”

“The universe (he said) is the Great All, and offers a paradox too great for the finite mind to grasp. As the living brain cannot conceive of the nonliving brain—although it may think it can—the finite mind cannot grasp the infinite.”

following a Man in Black you don't know, in a weird hot dry desert in hot August for one reason,

To reach a Dark Tower you don't know where..or why..detailed in too much adverbs and ambiguity.

“Stephen King, on the foreword;
The younger man who dared to write this book had been exposed to far too many writing seminars, and had grown far too used to the ideas those seminars promulgate: that one is writing for other people rather than one’s self; that language is more important than story; that ambiguity is to be preferred over clarity and simplicity, which are usually signs of a thick and literal mind. As a result, I was not surprised to find a high degree of pretension in Roland’s debut appearance (not to mention what seemed like thousands of unnecessary adverbs). I removed as much of this hollow blather as I could,...”

“Stephen King, on the foreword;
Although I’ve spent an inordinate amount of time writing these books in the thirty-three years between 1970 and 2003, comparatively few people have read them.”

“Stephen King, on the foreword;
The Gunslinger did not even sound like the later books—it was, frankly, rather difficult to read. All too often I heard myself apologizing for it, and telling people that if they persevered, they would find the story really found its voice in The Drawing of the Three.”