by Vincent, Bev
In an unpublished essay14 called “The Dark Tower: A Cautionary Tale,” King says, “I had recently seen a bigger-than-life Sergio Leone Western,15 and it had me wondering what would happen if you brought two very distinct genres together: heroic fantasy and the Western.”
After graduating from the University of Maine at Orono in 1970, King moved into a “skuzzy riverside cabin” and began what he then conceived of as a “very long fantasy novel,” perhaps even the longest popular novel in history.16 He wrote the first section of The Gunslinger in a ghostly, unbroken silence—he was living alone—that influenced the eerie isolation of Roland and his solitary quest.
The story did not come easily. Sections were written during a dry spell in the middle of ’Salem’s Lot, and another part was written after he finished The Shining. Even when he wasn’t actively working on the Dark Tower, his mind often turned to the story—except, he says, when he was battling Randall Flagg in The Stand, which is ironic since both Flagg and a superflu-decimated world became part of the Dark Tower mythos many years later.
In Song of Susannah, the fictional Stephen King claims that by 1977 he had given up on the story, daunted by its magnitude. It had become “too big. Too complicated. Too . . . outré.” Roland also concerned him. His hero seemed like he might be changing into an antihero.
DONALD M. GRANT released The Gunslinger in 1982. The first printing—then envisioned as the only printing—sold out based on word of mouth and their limited advertising in specialty magazines.
Then came Pet Sematary the following year17 and the ensuing deluge of letters. The mail King received concerning The Gunslinger was occasionally rancorous, especially from readers who felt they had the right to read anything King published. “You must trust me about one thing: I did not include The Dark Tower on the ‘other works’ [page] in a mean spirit—picture if you will, a man teasing a hungry person with half a hamburger and then gobbling it himself. The inclusion was the result of complete naivete. It took the resulting flood of mail to make me uneasily aware that I had either wider responsibilities in the matter of my completed work, or people thought that I did.”18
This was probably King’s first indication that he and his readers might not always see eye to eye on the relationship between a writer and his audience. As Paul Sheldon in Misery learned, readers could be demanding, fans—fanatics—single-minded in their pursuit of all things King. The fictionalized version of himself is less restrained on the subject. “On the other hand, God and the Man Jesus, people are so fucking spoiled! They just assume that if there’s a book anywhere in the world they want, then they have a perfect right to that book. This would be news indeed to those folks in the Middle Ages who might have heard rumors of books but never actually saw one.” [DT6]19
Several times over the next two decades, King labored to clarify his position—that he’s not Scheherazade, a captive storyteller, subject to the whims of his audience, spinning tales to save his life. Ultimately, he decides how and if he will present his creations. “To write and to make has always been an act of necessity to me; to show has always been an act of need, and may express some deep insecurity in myself.”20
Recent reports of King’s impending retirement underlined this schism by highlighting the difference between writing and publishing. When asked to confirm these rumors, King usually responds that he might retire from publishing, but couldn’t imagine not writing.21
But in 1985, King still saw publication as a necessary part of the creative process. “A novel in manuscript is like a man with one leg and a novel which has been printed and bound is like a man with two. . . . To not publish is to see the book as a creation which has been willfully crippled.”22
Even at this relatively early point in his career, King didn’t need to publish for financial reasons. But he had dangled the hamburger in front of hungry readers and learned, to his chagrin, that some of them were angry. “I tried to find a middle ground between publishing in a trade edition where I would be unable to control the number of copies printed, and not publishing at all, which I find an offense to the work.”23
King had less sympathy with booksellers who claimed that his decision to not publish The Gunslinger in a widely available trade edition deprived them of income. If the book had been released traditionally, it would have generated a “rolling gross” on the order of several million The Road to the dark tower dollars.24 This money would have profited King and his publisher but also printers, secretaries, salespeople, distributors and booksellers.
If the idea of a writer having an economic responsibility to publish what he writes seems absurd to you, I can assure you it does not seem at all absurd to the booksellers of America, or to a writer himself after he has been told that his seemingly whimsical decision to publish a book in a small-distribution format had actually taken the bread out of children’s mouths or might have been a contributing cause to the closure of an independent small-town bookstore that might otherwise have turned the corner . . . or at least staggered on a while longer before collapsing.25
After discussing the situation with Donald M. Grant, King authorized a second printing of The Gunslinger equal in size to the first. He sent out a form letter (see next page) to people who had mailed him seeking the novel.
The second printing shipped in January 1984 and was out of print by the end of the year. The book’s text and layout remained unchanged from the original printing. Other than the copyright page information, the only difference was that a four-color process was used for the endpapers of the first printing, and for the second printing a single-color process was used.26
Starting in 1985, the Castle Rock Newsletter, published by King’s assistant and sister-in-law, Stephanie Leonard, was readers’ main forum for up-to-date information about King in the mid-to-late 1980s. It also served as a place for them to vent. In letters to the editor, they advocated for a mass-market edition of The Gunslinger. Some thought fans were paying too much for the limited edition on the secondary market, and many weren’t able to read the book at all because they couldn’t afford it or were unable to locate a copy.
Even the second printing was fetching as much as $100 by early 1986. It was the first King item to penetrate beyond the book market, showing up in comic book stores, displayed under glass. Some experts speculated that—with so many carefully preserved copies in print—The Gunslinger would eventually lose its “inflated” resale value.27
I was a little bit horrified by what happened afterward when the book became a collector’s item and the price jumped. It hadn’t been my intention to see these books climb from $20 to $50 to $70 to whatever. I wanted to do something about it, and Don Grant, who was upset, wanted to do something about it. We talked on the phone one night and I said, “What if you publish another five hundred or five thousand?” Don sighed. And I said, “That would be like pissing on a forest fire, wouldn’t it?” Don agreed.28
KING HAD ALREADY WRITTEN SECTIONS of the next cycle of stories, originally titled Roland Draws Three, by the time The Gunslinger appeared in 1982. The first forty handwritten pages of the book vanished, and he still doesn’t know what happened to them.29
He confessed in the afterword to The Gunslinger that his vision of the overall arc of the epic was unclear. He didn’t yet understand exactly what had befallen Roland’s world, the nature of Roland’s confrontation with Marten, how Roland’s friends Cuthbert and Jamie died or who Susan was. But he hadn’t forgotten entirely what was on the missing pages or what he intended for the story.
King fictionalizes this stage in his development of the story in Song of Susannah when Eddie and Roland visit him in 1977. His character knows Roland, but he hasn’t created Eddie yet. He doesn’t know about Blaine or the implications of nineteen. “Except somewhere I do. Somewhere inside I know all of those things and there’s no need of an argument, or a synopsis, or an outline. . . . When it’s time, those things—and their significance to the gunslinger’s quest—will roll out as naturally as t
ears or laughter.” [DT1, afterword]
Once the world at large knew about the Dark Tower and a small percentage of King’s readership sampled The Gunslinger, clamoring for the next installment began, a tune that would haunt the author for the rest of his career. “When are you going to write the next book?” became one of his Frequently Asked Questions,30 posed at virtually every public appearance. The Castle Rock Newsletter reported that the top two questions in his fan mail were: 1) what is the Dark Tower and how do I find it? and 2) when will the next installment be published?31
Before his appearance at Cornell University in 1994, King told one of the organizers, “Every one of [the five thousand people present] is going to raise their hand during the question-and-answer period and say, ‘When’s the Dark Tower going to go on?’ ” When King established his official online presence in 1998, “When will the next Dark Tower book be released?” was near the top of his FAQ.
King told an interviewer, “I have three women who work in this office that answer the fan mail, and a lot of times they don’t tell me what’s going on with fan mail except for the stuff I pick up myself. But they put every Dark Tower letter on my desk. This is like a silent protest saying, ‘get these people off our backs.’ ”32 King calls these “pack your bags, we’re going on a guilt trip” letters.33
Still, in the mid-1980s, many of King’s readers were unaware of The Gunslinger and most of those who did know about it either couldn’t find or afford a copy.
In late 1985, the Castle Rock Newsletter announced a tentative 1986 publication date for The Drawing of the Three. It’s hard to imagine how King had the energy to delve back into Roland’s world after finishing the behemoth novel It, published in 1986, but he wrote the novel during the course of that year and had it in the hands of his publisher by early 1987, a productive year for him with the trade publication of The Eyes of the Dragon, Misery and The Tommyknockers, in addition to the Dark Tower book.
Michael Whelan wasn’t available to illustrate The Drawing of the Three, so Phil Hale—who had previously contributed to Grant’s limited edition of The Talisman—did the artwork, starting a tradition of having different artists for each novel except for The Dark Tower, which was also illustrated by Whelan.34
Donald M. Grant started taking orders for the book early in 1987, with ads in specialty publications such as the Castle Rock Newsletter. The book was delayed slightly when Hale asked the publisher to correct the color of the book’s internal plates, which gave King time to do a last-minute rewrite of several sections.35
The book was printed on thick buff-colored paper made in a mill in Brewer, Maine, across the Penobscot River from Bangor.36 Learning the lesson of supply and demand from The Gunslinger, the print runs of both editions were increased: eight hundred signed and thirty thousand trade. Unsurprisingly, the cost had increased as well ($100 and $35 postpaid, respectively), given five years’ worth of inflation and the fact that, at four hundred pages, The Drawing of the Three was nearly twice the length of The Gunslinger.
Grant offered matching signed/numbered editions to anyone who had previously purchased copies of The Gunslinger. Unclaimed numbers—and numbers 501–800 that had no counterpart in the first volume—were sold on a lottery basis to people who sent in their names for consideration.37
The book’s dedication reads, “To Don Grant, who’s taken a chance on these novels, one by one,” mirroring the dedication to The Gunslinger, where King paid tribute to F&SF editor Ed Ferman for taking a chance on the stories making up that novel one by one.
The Castle Rock Newsletter published the first chapter of The Drawing of the Three in April/May 1987, accompanied by some of Hale’s artwork, and the book shipped shortly thereafter. By September the signed edition was out of print and being offered for resale at prices in excess of $500.
In early 1988, King recorded The Gunslinger for NAL Audio using the studio at his Bangor radio station, WZON.38 The six-hour, four-cassette package was the first of King’s novels to be released on unabridged audio, and the first to be recorded by the author. He repeated the process for the next two Dark Tower books before turning over the reins to professional audiobook narrator Frank Muller, who rerecorded the first three books as well as performing Wizard and Glass.39
In September 1988, The Gunslinger finally became available to the masses in trade paperback from Plume. The large format allowed the publisher to include Michael Whelan’s illustrations without shrinking them to the size of a mass-market paperback. The Drawing of the Three followed in the same format in March 1989.
The five-year gap between publication of The Gunslinger and The Drawing of the Three set a precedent that would be followed for the next three volumes. In 1989, King announced that The Waste Lands was still two or three years away from release. “Of everything I’ve written, The Drawing of the Three is my kids’ favorite book, and they’re pestering me. . . . That’s the best incentive I know. Tell somebody a story who really wants to hear it.”40
In the Overlook Connection winter 1990 catalog, King contributed his New Year’s resolution, which said, “I resolve to get down to business and write the third novel in THE DARK TOWER series, The Waste Lands. It will be the only fantasy novel of 1990 (I hope) to feature a talking train.” Before starting to write, King reread the first two installments, taking notes and marking pages with highlighters and Post-it notes.41 He finished the final draft and revisions early in 1991.
[F]inding the doors to Roland’s world has never been easy for me, and it seems to take more and more whittling to make each successive key fit each successive lock. Nevertheless, if readers request a fourth volume, it will be provided, for I still am able to find Roland’s world when I set my wits to it, and it still holds me in thrall . . . more, in many ways, than any of the other worlds I have wandered in my imagination. And, like those mysterious slo-trans engines, this story seems to be picking up its own accelerating pace and rhythm. [DT3, afterword]
With the demise of the Castle Rock Newsletter in 1989, King fans no longer had an inside source of information concerning upcoming publications. The first indication that King had returned to Mid-World came in the December 1990 issue of F&SF. Billed as the Stephen King Issue, it contained a new short story (“The Moving Finger”), an author appreciation by the magazine’s book review editor, Algis Budrys, a bibliography organized by King’s assistant, Marsha DeFilippo, and “The Bear,” an excerpt from The Waste Lands.
It also featured an ad from Donald M. Grant stating that the book would be published in early 1991. King was less optimistic. In his introduction to “The Bear,” he says The Waste Lands may appear in 1991 or 1992.
The limited editions from Grant came out in August 1991, with the trade paperback from Plume coming close on its heels the following January. Because of this narrow window of exclusivity, the Grant trade hardcover didn’t sell out.42
In the afterword to The Waste Lands, King apologized for ending the book with a cliff-hanger and said the fourth volume would appear in the “not-too-distant future.” Years passed with no sign that he had returned to the series. However, the Dark Tower began to insinuate itself more and more into his nonseries books. While on a promotional tour in 1994, King responded to the inevitable question “When is the next Dark Tower book coming out?” by calling Insomnia the next Dark Tower book. It was the first of three books published in consecutive years with conspicuous ties to the series.
In mid-1994, King said for the first time that once he got his next novel out of the way, he would write the remaining four books back-to-back to finish the series.43 In a fanzine essay, Stephen Spignesi, author of the Stephen King Encyclopedia and The Lost Works of Stephen King, suggested that this strategy might encourage readers who hadn’t yet tried the Dark Tower series to start because there would be no other new King material for a couple of years.44
Rose Madder appeared in 1995 with references to elements from The Waste Lands, but King’s plan to tackle the rest of the series that year di
dn’t materialize.
He had a highly publicized and successful six-month run with the serialized publication of The Green Mile in 1996. All six installments appeared simultaneously on the New York Times best-seller list in September. In the first book’s introduction, he compared the serial release to his ongoing work with the Dark Tower and discussed some of the fan reaction the series had inspired:
I liked the high-wire aspect of [the serial publication process], too: fall down on the job, fail to carry through, and all at once about a million readers are howling for your blood. No one knows this any better than me, unless it’s my secretary, Juliann Eugley; we get dozens of angry letters each week, demanding the next book in the Dark Tower cycle (patience, followers of Roland; another year or so and your wait will end, I promise). One of these contained a Polaroid of a teddy-bear in chains, with a message cut out of newspaper headlines and magazine covers: RELEASE THE NEXT DARK TOWER BOOK AT ONCE OR THE BEAR DIES, it said. I put it up in my office to remind myself both of my responsibility and of how wonderful it is to have people actually care—a little—about the creatures of one’s imagination.45
The author’s alter ego writes, “I still get a ton of letters about the cliff-hanger ending. They fall into three major categories: People who are pissed off, people who want to know when the next book is coming out, and pissed-off people who want to know when the next book is coming out.” [DT6]
In April 1996, King told participants in an AOL chat that he was going to try to write Wizard and Glass during the coming summer. “I know a lot of what happens. Mostly now it’s a matter of gathering my courage and starting.” To prepare, he returned to the first three books, armed once again with a highlighter and sticky notes. He started writing in motel rooms while driving from Colorado to Maine after finishing work on The Shining miniseries. Ads announcing the book’s upcoming publication appeared in the back of the final four Green Mile installments.