Dark Tower Re-Read, Book 7: The Dark Tower

The Dark Tower on the porch with a beverage

I started a Dark Tower re-read in June, and I've come to the end of the series (not counting The Wind Through the Keyhole, which I read in story order this time rather than publication order).

Book 7 is to the Dark Tower series as Jupiter is to our solar system. It's not separate from the larger system, but it has enough of its own gravitational pull to form a system of its own. You couldn't read Book 7 without having read the previous books, but there's enough going on to fill a series of its own. It's not just the longest book in word-count, it leads the others in sheer goings-on, not to mention emotional impact. Seriously, I challenge any fan to get through this one without tearing up at least a little.

It took me a long time to read this one, partly because I had a lot going on, partly because it's just a long-ass book, but mostly because ending another trip to the Tower was a little melancholy for me.

But I, for one, find the ending completely satisfying. More on that later.

We start with Jake and Callahan entering the Dixie Pig, a den of vampires, taheen, can toi, and other assorted baddies. And...

I can't really write most of this review without spoilers, so be forewarned. I will be as merciless with spoilers as King is with character deaths in this book.

<spoilers ahead><spoilers ahead><spoilers ahead>

Callahan dies fairly early. A little earlier than I remembered from the first time, in fact. And it just gets harder from there. After an attack on the Algul Siento, Eddie is killed. And Jake not long after in Maine as he saves Stephen King... Even Walter meets an untimely end. We get a reprieve for several hundred pages (some of which are a bit grueling to get through to be honest, but I suppose that matches what the characters are going through). But then Mordred (remember him?) catches up and Oy dies. Oy! Susannah leaves to a New York in some Earth: King has a rare moment of pity on us Constant Readers and she meets versions of Eddie and Jake (with, we are told, a canine version of Oy coming soon). 

Roland approaches the Tower at long last with a mysterious boy Patrick... and after a weird encounter with the Crimson King that I actually liked (an epic battle wouldn't work in my opinion), Roland says the names of all those who have died during/because of his quest and enters the Tower. He sees scenes from his life on each level, finally arriving at the top... where he steps through and... finds himself in the Mohaine desert with no memory of his previous life chasing the man in black who fled across the desert. 

That's .... a lot. And I'm barely scratching the surface. Seriously, it feels like a third of the series happens in this book: painful deaths, the weirdness of the Breakers, almost everything with the Crimson King, Mordred's entire sad/dangerous character arc, a bunch of weird stuff in End-World (including a Lovecraftian horror of the depths), Roland's road trip from Maine to New York with a random woman named Irene, etc.

Some people don't like this series and/or this book, especially the ending and the fact that King is a character in his own books. It's not everyone's cup of tea. But for my part, I love every minute of it. The whole series is weird, but I love the extra-dimensional, self-reflexive, expectation-bending weirdness of the last three books, which all reaches fruition in this one.

I've written about the metafictional aspects of the series, which start in Book 5 and get more developed in Book 6. I like this sort of thing. Maybe you don't. To each one's own. But it's not an egocentric exercise, it's a brilliant way to make the points about the creative process that King wanted to make. And it raises some philosophically delightful paradoxes: If King didn't write Roland and co., how could they have exited to save him? But if they didn't save him, how could he have lived to write them? Fun times!

A deeper question that gelled in my mind this time: People usually assume that Keystone Earth is "our world," i.e., the one in which a dude from Maine named Stephen King published some Dark Tower novels and in which I read them and in which you are reading these very words. This is the assumption Robin Furth makes in her Dark Tower Concordance (p. 499), and it seems like King himself assumes this. Bev Vincent's Dark Tower Companion is more circumspect (p. 289). (Yes, I have Dark Tower reference books. I'll review them soon.)

But here's the thing: King also tells us he deliberately changed some details (like the location of his house), and others note discrepancies often due simply to King's memory or mistakes (e.g., 2 Hammerskjold Plaza, the building where the Rose is, is much shorter than 99 stories, whether Co-Op City is in Brooklyn or the Bronx, etc.).

So... the original world of Eddie and Susannah in the books is NOT our world (Jake's worldly whereabouts are even more complicated). If the world in the books is Keystone Earth, then our world is not Keystone Earth. If our world is Keystone Earth, then the world in the books is not. Whoa.

Or maybe the books are merely an inaccurate representation of Keystone Earth, which is our world. After all, not every story in King's multiverse gets its own world, right? But that would seem to belie the whole point of the self-referential multiverse! 

Every work of fiction in some sense takes place in a different world. Even "mimetic" fiction is an imperfect reflection of our real world (something snooty fans of "realistic" fiction always seem to forget!). For example, Holden Caulfield can't read The Catcher in the Rye, but the mind-bending fun of the Dark Tower is that Stephen King can read about himself, just as Callahan reads about himself when he picks up a copy of 'Salem's Lot. 

So, if you take the self-referential narrative and the multiverse equally seriously, then either you and I don't live in Keystone Earth, or "Keystone Earth" in the books is not really Keystone Earth.

Okay, I'm not completely convinced myself, but I think it's at least an open question where you and I fit into all this (assuming you're not a walk-in!). But if my speculation is right, then there could be intriguing questions for Constant Readers about how "our" Stephen King is related to the one in the books. 

Or more deeply, I wonder whether there's any metaphysical sense of giving ontological priority to one "Keystone Earth." Setting aside how useful it is for the plot of the last two books, I don't think there's much reason to believe that even Keystone Earth is "more real" than other worlds, at least if you take anything like many-worlds or modal realism seriously. In fact, given everything going on in this world now, the idea that there are other worlds than these just as real as this one is quite comforting

Speaking of this world, the whole death cult of the Crimson King around which the very fucking weird society of Devar-Toi revolves made more sense this time. Compare it to the death cults of the more virulent strains of extreme right wing politics these days (like, what is the end goal of anti-maskers or climate-change deniers?).

One point about the ending: I see why really goal-oriented readers might dislike it. I love it. But c'mon, it couldn't have ended any other way (as Bev Vincent argues). Ka is a wheel, do ya kennit?

The ending has a philosophical depth of its own about meaning and goals and life and... maybe I'll leave some of my thoughts on all that for my next trip to the Tower. I have the boxed set, reference sources, and the will to do this all again. And again. 

<spoilers over>

This re-read honestly helped me through the pandemic (so far). I learned that the Dark Tower is part of my life now, and I'm better for it.

I'll end this re-review with the words that began my re-review of Book 1: "Becoming a huge fan of Stephen King's Dark Tower series is one of the stranger things that has happened to me in the last few years."

See also my Goodreads review.

Appendices

Argument

• Dark Tower Re-Read: Books 1 and 2
• Dark Tower Re-Read, Book 3: The Waste Lands
• Dark Tower Re-Read, Book 4: Wizard and Glass
• Dark Tower Re-Read, Book 4.5: The Wind Through The Keyhole
• Dark Tower Re-Read, Book 5: Wolves of the Calla
• Dark Tower Re-Read, Book 6: Song of Susannah

Historical appendix

• Four Reasons Why I Love Stephen King's Dark Tower Series (And You Might, Too)
• No Sleep 'Till Derry: Insomnia by Stephen King
• Wars Internal, International, and Interdimensional: Hearts in Atlantis by Stephen King
• Phantasmagoric American Myth: The Stand by Stephen King
• Vampires and Philosophers: 'Salem's Lot by Stephen King and Stephen King and Philosophy, edited by Jacob M. Held

Other sources than these

• Dark Tower Bot on Twitter
• Dark Tower Palaver: my favorite Dark Tower podcast!
• Charlie the Choo Choo by Beryl Evans (a real book from some world or other that is sitting on my shelf)
• (Also check out Robin Furth's Dark Tower Concordance and Bev Vincent's Dark Tower Companion, both of which I'll review soon)
• (I may write a follow-up: "How Re-Reading Stephen King's Dark Tower Series Helped Me Through the Pandemic (So Far)." Look for that in a where and when near you!)
• I didn't hate the 2017 movie (see my review here). Since it's supposed to be a sequel to the books, I may watch it again soon.

Photographic evidence

Like many editions of The Dark Tower, mine includes excellent artwork from Michael Whelan. Here's a sample, along with other random pictures. Enjoy!

19 .... 99... Dark Tower fans will understand

The Hieronymus Bosch bookmark I used for this whole re-read with a mention of Hieronymus Bosch in the book!

I read The Dark Tower in line to vote early on Oct. 15, 2020

My Dark Tower collection in its current place in my "home office" (aka, the cats' dining room). After I read all the books, I couldn't get them all back in the box of the boxed set (see before picture below). Likewise, ever since I became a Tower junkie, my love of this series has me thinking outside the box! 

The boxed set before reading. Note all eight books are in there. (Later I put The Wind Through the Keyhole on the outside because it's the odd book out as the later addition.)