The gunslinger - By Stephen King Page 0,3

Roland’s tale in that time just for her, she wanted to know if I couldn’t please (please) just tell her how it came out. The line that wrenched my heart (although not quite enough to start writing again) was her promise to “not tell a Single Soul.” A year later—probably after the accident that landed me in the hospital—one of my assistants, Marsha DiFilippo, got a letter from a fellow on death row in either Texas or Florida, wanting to know essentially the same thing: how does it come out? (He promised to take the secret to the grave with him, which gave me the creeps.)

I would have given both of these folks what they wanted—a summary of Roland’s further adventures—if I could have done, but alas, I couldn’t. I had no idea of how things were going to turn out with the gunslinger and his friends. To know, I have to write. I once had an outline, but I lost it along the way. (It probably wasn’t worth a tin shit, anyway.) All I had was a few notes (“Chussit, chissit, chassit, something-something-basket” reads one lying on the desk as I write this). Eventually, starting in July of 2001, I began to write again. I knew by then I was no longer nineteen, nor exempt from any of the ills to which the flesh is heir. I knew I was going to be sixty, maybe even seventy. And I wanted to finish my story before the bad Patrol Boy came for the last time. I had no urge to be filed away with The Canterbury Tales and The Mystery of Edwin Drood.

The result—for better or worse—lies before you, Constant Reader, whether you reading this are starting with Volume One or are preparing for Volume Five. Like it or hate it, the story of Roland is now done. I hope you enjoy it.

As for me, I had the time of my life.

Stephen King

January 25, 2003

Foreword

Most of what writers write about their work is ill-informed bullshit.* That is why you have never seen a book entitled One Hundred Great Introductions of Western Civilization or Best-Loved Forewords of the American People. This is a judgment call on my part, of course, but after writing at least fifty introductions and forewords—not to mention an entire book about the craft of fiction—I think it’s one I have a right to make. And I think you can take me seriously when I tell you this might be one of those rare occasions upon which I actually have something worth saying.

A few years ago, I created some furor among my readers by offering a revised and expanded version of my novel The Stand. I was justifiably nervous about that book, because The Stand has always been the novel my readers have loved the best (as far as the most passionate of the “Stand-fans” are concerned, I could have died in 1980 without making the world a noticeably poorer place).

If there is a story that rivals The Stand in the imagination of King readers, it’s probably the tale of Roland Deschain and his search for the Dark Tower. And now—goddamn!—I’ve gone and done the same thing again.

Except I haven’t, not really, and I want you to know it. I also want you to know what I have done, and why. It may not be important to you, but it’s very important to me, and thus this foreword is exempt (I hope) from King’s Bullshit Rule.

First, please be reminded that The Stand sustained deep cuts in manuscript not for editorial reasons but for financial ones. (There were binding limitations, too, but I don’t even want to go there.) What I reinstated in the late eighties were revised sections of preexisting manuscript. I also revised the work as a whole, mostly to acknowledge the AIDS epidemic, which blossomed (if that is the word) between the first issue of The Stand and the publication of the revised version eight or nine years later. The result was a volume about 100,000 words longer than the original.

In the case of The Gunslinger, the original volume was slim, and the added material in this version amounts to a mere thirty-five pages, or about nine thousand words. If you have read The Gunslinger before, you’ll only find two or three totally new scenes here. Dark Tower purists (of which there are a surprising number—just check the Web) will want to read the book again, of course, and most of them are apt to do