Stephen King: Uncollected, Unpublished - Revised & Expanded Edition (4 page)

This combination of surging technology, deregulation, the change in marketing tactics by entertainment software “manufacturers” and the splintering of the media has had two major results – freedom of choice for the consumer, and an unprecedented demand for new product.

King sat at the epicentre of this change. Here was a man who was capable of, and interested in, creating large volumes of entertainment product. Here was a man in touch with cultural trends (brand names, popular and sub-culture music themes and other cultural iconography abound in King’s works). And here was a need. The perfect marriage was consummated, with King creating the raw material in droves and the publishing and filmed entertainment worlds providing it to the consumer in unprecedented quantities.

Today, anyone can easily find a King movie or mini-series on a television channel near him. Anyone can find a King movie on the big screen or dozens of them at ther local video store. We can all find all his mainstream books still in print at the local bookstore or on-line seller, at the library or second hand bookshop. Those who prefer the audiobook will find the majority of his works available in that form. The user of the Internet will find hundreds of websites and chatrooms dedicated to the world of King. Bands perform songs based on King material. With the general exception of the live stage and the musical it is hard to think of an entertainment mode that has evaded King’s successful reach.

It is the combination of King’s brilliance as a storyteller with his strong willingness to experiment with new modes of delivery and the fundamental change in the entertainment market that has resulted in the sheer size and impact of the phenomenon that is King.

The Proof

As any hard core King fan knows there are those who “refuse” to read King (one often wonders if some of these people are actually readers at all), writing him off as “that horror writer” or similar put-downs. Try surprising these doubters with the simple riposte;
Did you enjoy The Shawshank Redemption?
For the vast majority of moviegoers the answer is
Yes
.
How about
The Green Mile and Stand by Me?
Almost always
yes
again. Try informing the doubter that these are King stories, and highly accurate to the book versions. Jam in a bit of
The Shining
for the serious movie snob (the ones for whom Kubrick could do no wrong) and the doubter will be on the way to conversion, or at least may be left muttering, inanely.

In Conclusion

This book’s value lies firmly in providing King’s “Constant Readers”
⁷
with the latest information about 99 King works of fiction that they may not know of and, in the case of most pieces, have not read. These works of prose, poems and screenplays represent a significant portion of King’s output and a study of them contributes immensely to understanding how an obscure, hardscrabble Maine schoolteacher, with no more than talent, craftsmanship, dreams and determination, became the most popular storyteller of his time.

What is the Joy of Stephen King? Should the man answer the question himself but two words should suffice – “The Story”.

Let the telling begin…

Recommended Resources and Further Reading

1. On Writing, Stephen King, Scribner, 2000
   
2. Danse Macabre, Stephen King, Everest House, 1981
   
3. Light Behind the Shadow Trapped Within the Words in Horror Plum’d, Michael Collings, Overlook Connection Press, 2002
   
4. I Am a Hick, and This Is Where I Feel at Home by Elaine Landa, in Feast of Fear, Ed: Tim Underwood and Chuck Miller, Carroll & Graf, 1989
   
5. Prelude: An Anecdote to Illustrate How Stephen King’s Fans Feel About His Work, in The Essential Stephen King, Stephen J. Spignesi, GB Books, 2001
   
6. In the Matter of Stephen King by Tyson Blue in The Essential Stephen King, Stephen J. Spignesi, GB Books, 2001
   
7. The Complete Guide to the Works of Stephen King, Rocky Wood, David Rawsthorne and Norma Blackburn, Kanrock Partners, 2004
   
8. The Lost Works of Stephen King, Stephen J. Spignesi, Birch Lane Press, 1998
   
9. The Unseen King, Tyson Blue, Starmont House, 1989
   
10. The Stephen King Illustrated Companion, Bev Vincent, Fall River Press, 2009
    
11. Stephen King: A Primary Bibliography of the World’s Most Popular Author, Justin Brooks, Cemetery Dance Publications, 2008
    
12. Stephen King: The Non-Fiction, Rocky Wood and Justin Brooks, Cemetery Dance Publications, 2009
    

¹
In making these calculations the seven stories from
People, Places and Things
are classified as “unpublished” as they were produced in a self-published chapbook by King and Chris Chesley

²
Inclusive of
Under the Dome

³
Inclusive of
Full Dark, No Stars

⁴
See the Appendix

⁵
In an Q&A session for young readers at
www.weeklyreader.com

⁶
In
Secret Windows:
Essays and Fiction of the Craft of Writing
, New York, NY: Book-of-the-Month Club, 2000, page 400

⁷
King has used this term for many years to describe his loyal reader base. In
The Dark Tower VI: Song of Susannah
he went so far as to describe them in his imaginary Journal as ‘CRs’!

Linking Stephen King’s Realities

From his earliest writings, Stephen King has been engaged in the process of establishing various groupings, or “Realities,” in which his work can be placed; and in developing stories and story-lines within them.

It is now clear that King planned one of these Realities (that relating to the mythology of Roland Deschain’s travels toward the Dark Tower) from a time even before the day he typed the first words of
The Gunslinger
. He then “simply” continued to develop that Reality in the following decades! Another Reality, which is based in Maine, seems to have appeared naturally, as a series of King’s stories began congregating in the remote, beautiful part of America that happened to be King’s home state.

In fact, to any but the casual reader, it quickly becomes clear that all King’s works of fiction can be grouped into particular Realities. Arbitrary though any classification system may be, the authors of
The Complete Guide to the Works of Stephen King
⁸
have developed their own using five great, sweeping Realities and placing each of King’s Works of Fiction in one or more of them. The author of this book was one of those who developed those Realities, which we will now review.

For the purposes of this review we include all King fiction, published or unpublished, and poetry.

The five Realities are:

• The Dark Tower
  
• Maine Street Horror
  
• The Stand
  
• America Under Siege
  
• New Worlds
  

The Dark Tower

This Reality is officially recognized by King. A list of all King’s novels and collections included in
The Dark Tower V: Wolves of the Calla
first featured the highlighting of tales that, in King’s opinion, are connected to the Dark Tower mythology.

The author relates something of the origins of
The Dark Tower
cycle in his introduction to the Revised Edition of
The Gunslinger
–
On Being Nineteen (and a Few Other Things)
. From as early as his reading of J.R.R. Tolkien’s classic,
The Lord of the Rings
in 1966 and 1967 King had determined to write something as sweeping:

...but I wanted to write my own kind of story.

Then (in 1970), in an almost completely empty movie theater … I saw a film directed by Sergio Leone. It was called
The Good, The Bad and the Ugly
, and before the film was half over, I realized what I wanted to write was a novel that contained Tolkien’s sense of quest and magic but set against Leone’s almost absurdly majestic Western backdrop … And, in my enthusiasm … I wanted to write not just a
long
book, but
the longest popular novel in history
. I did not succeed in doing that, but I feel I had a decent rip;
The Dark Tower
, volumes one through seven, really comprise a single tale…

The first appearance of a Dark Tower story was of
The Gunslinger
in
The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction
for October 1978. However, King had been working on his magnum opus since 1970, taking Robert Browning’s 1855 epic poem
Childe Roland to the Dark Tower Came
as his inspiration. The various parts
⁹
that would become the first novel set in this Reality,
The Dark Tower: The Gunslinger
, each initially appeared in
The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction
, before being combined into the novel, first published in 1982. A mass-market edition of
The Dark Tower: The Gunslinger
was not published until 1988 and it was only from that point that King’s wider fan base
may
have begun to appreciate the importance of this Reality to his overall fictional output.

King slowly added to
The Dark Tower
cycle with these novels:
The Dark Tower II: The Drawing of the Three
(1987);
The Dark Tower III: The Wastelands
(1991);
The Dark Tower IV: Wizard and Glass
(1996);
The Dark Tower V: Wolves of the Calla
(2003);
The Dark Tower VI: Song of Susannah
(2004); and
The Dark Tower VII: The Dark Tower
(2004).

As time passed, King also published
The Bear
¹⁰
(1990), an “excerpt” from
The Dark Tower III: The Wastelands
, although it was heavily revised before being included in the novel. He also released a Dark Tower novelette,
The Little Sisters of Eluria
(1998); and began to refer explicitly to Dark Tower mythology in his mainstream stories. The major references were in
Insomnia
(1994),
Low Men in Yellow Coats
(1999),
Heavenly Shades of Night are Falling
(1999) and
Black House
(2001). He also provided a lifeline for Dark Tower junkies by giving them a free, on-line taste of
Wolves of the Calla
in an excerpt,
Calla Bryn Sturgis
, published on his web-site in August 2001 and later revised for inclusion in the novel; and allowed the publication of the short story,
The Tale of Gray Dick
(February 2003), excerpted from the same novel, although that too was revised for the novel’s appearance.

Then, in June 2003, King published a Revised and Expanded edition of the Cycle’s first novel,
The Gunslinger
. He explains the reasoning for the rewrite in his
Foreword
to the Revised Edition:

…although each book of the Tower series was revised as a separate entity, I never really looked at the work as a whole until I’d finished Volume Seven,
The Dark Tower
. When I looked at the first volume … three obvious truths presented themselves. The first was that
The Gunslinger
was 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 the 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
.

In October 2005 King and Marvel Comics announced
The Dark Tower
mythos would be extended with the publication of an initial six comic arc (to be collected in a hardcover edition). A series of arcs were published from 2007 and can be also purchased in collected hardback editions. Readers should note the original comic “arcs,” while collected in the hardcover graphic novels, contain a lot of background material about the Dark Tower Universe that are
not
included in those collections. This background is described by King’s former research assistant and writer of the comic series, Robin Furth. The comics and graphic novels may be purchased from specialist stores or on the Internet without difficulty.

The series released or announced to date (in reading order) are:

The Dark Tower: Gunslinger Born
;
The Dark Tower: The Long Road Home
;
The Dark Tower: Treachery
;
The Dark Tower: The Sorcerer
(one-shot comic, not collected);
The Dark Tower: Fall of Gilead
;
The Dark Tower: The Battle of Jericho Hill
and
The Dark Tower: The Gunslinger – The Journey Begins
.

King’s first story with strong Dark Tower connections in five years appeared in 2009, when
Ur
was first published, as a download for Amazon’s Kindle 2 e-reader. While it has yet to see a print publication the audio book was released on 16 February 2010 (King hand-picked the narrator, Holter Graham). This uncollected story is the subject of a chapter later in this volume.

Most Dark Tower experts also link
Eyes of the Dragon
(first published as a Limited Edition in 1984 and heavily revised for mass-market release in 1987) to
The Dark Tower
cycle. The following then, is a full list of
Dark Tower
stories.

Primary Setting:

The Bear

Calla Bryn Sturgis

The Dark Tower: The Gunslinger

The Dark Tower II: The Drawing of the Three

The Dark Tower III: The Wastelands

The Dark Tower IV: Wizard and Glass

The Dark Tower V: Wolves of the Calla

The Dark Tower VI: Song of Susannah

The Dark Tower VII: The Dark Tower

The Little Sisters of Eluria

The Tale of Gray Dick

Other Stories of Dark Tower Importance:

Bag of Bones

Black House

Desperation

Everything’s Eventual

Eyes of the Dragon

From a Buick 8

Heavenly Shades of Night are Falling

Insomnia

It

Low Men in Yellow Coats

The Mist

The Regulators

The Reploids

Rose Madder

‘Salem’s Lot

The Stand

The Talisman

Ur

As indicated,
The Bear, Calla Bryn Sturgis
and
The Tale of Gray Dick
all initially appeared in significantly different form from that in the novel from which they were excerpted. For more detail see the
Stories Swallowed by Monsters
chapter.

Dark Tower tales are primarily set in that Reality but there is also a deep and abiding linkage with our world (and, due to the nature of the Tower itself, all other Universes and Realities). There is a very important location off-World to Roland’s – a sometime vacant lot at the corner of 2nd Avenue and 46th Street in New York City (in this Reality, each New York City can seem slightly different from the one we know). And, significant events occur in the state of … Maine!

The Dark Tower
cycle is set in an alternate reality, Roland Deschain’s world. Roland is the last of the Gunslingers, a knight/warrior of sorts. Many years ago he embarked on a quest to find the Dark Tower and save it from destruction.

The geography of Roland’s world is somewhat obscure but some towns have featured strongly in his life, including the now lifeless Eluria (in Mid-World) and Tull; the urban jungle of Lud; Hambry in the Barony of Mejis (where he found and lost the love of his life); and Calla Bryn Sturgis (in End-World). Roland hails from Gilead, in New Canaan, a city-state that had gone out of existence 1000 years before he arrived in Calla Bryn Sturgis. In the Calla, Roland and his small band of followers met Pere Callahan, who had once lived in the town of Jerusalem’s Lot, in a wholly different world.

The Dark Tower itself is in End-World, a geographical location from which Jack Sawyer and Tyler Marshall rescued hundreds of kidnapped children, returning them to our world (
Black House
). Ted Brautigan and other “Breakers,” toiling under the slavery of the Crimson King, were reluctantly hard at work there, trying to break the Beams that secure all Universes and Realities to the Dark Tower.

In her Concordance to the Dark Tower
¹¹
Robin Furth defines the Dark Tower itself as:

…a looming gray-black edifice which is simultaneously the center of all universes and the linchpin of the time/space continuum. All worlds and all realities are contained within its many levels … The line of Eld, of which Roland is the last, is sworn to protect the Tower. Yet a terrible illness affects this structure, one that is often compared to cancer … The Tower is held together by a network of magical magnetic forces – rays, known as Beams … the Beams, Portals and mechanical Guardians are breaking down. If the weakening Beams collapse and the Tower falls, all creation will blink out of existence.