Searching for magic realism in Stephen King's The Gunslinger (Dark Tower #1)
The Gunslinger is a Western fantasy fellowship of fantastic potential.
The man in black fled across the desert, and the gunslinger followed and I wish Stephen King would have followed their story with its original charm of magic realism and pervading mystery. King may have partially denounced The Gunslinger as a somewhat juvenile exercise, but it remains one of his more imaginative works.
There's a fit setup for a hero and companion journey: the lone rugged wanderer shaped by a dramatic past, trekking through desert and decrepit towns in search of a larger-than-life antagonist, a magic realist world with weird elements. And sexually-charged encounters with every single woman in the story to delineate The Dark Tower from classic fantasy.
Mystery surrounds the gunslinger and his travels, as it should a story of magic realism. The Western setting is enticing because Westerns bring the allure of controlled chaos, no-man's-land mixed with the creaky march of civilization. The Dark Tower plays the trope by adding fantasy feats, seemingly without restraint for logic, but mostly bearable in this first book.
The gunslinger, later named Roland, begins the same, as a mystery ripe to unfold. King describes his gear - water bag, guns detailed with lurid adverbs. There's a case to be made for how many cool protagonists are author self-inserts. Here, the case is not clear: King himself appears later in the series in a quirky dismantling of the fourth wall and Roland may as well be any rugged Western hero.
The world's not much of a place in this first book, a wasteland of desert and decrepit towns, but the dearth of characterization fuels the mystery. More than fantasy and sci-fi, surrealism and magic realism thrive on feeding details gradually, on resolving the mystery through symbolism. The Gunslinger achieves this through sparse physical worldbuilding, intentional or not. Later books resolve or add to the mystery in equal parts, not always satisfying.
The fellowship of the gunslinger
The ingredients are classic, but made effective by not wasting time and staying brief - King works with brevity in a way which many of his other books do not. Details are fed in pulpy bursts, through dialogue, lore bits or intriguing flashbacks (minus the one in our world).
A gruff cowboy, not easily startled, emotionally distant at first, questing for an elusive villain, "his body, festooned with guns and water." A fellowship springs up when Roland meets a young boy just as secretive as the hero and the antagonist at first. Roland takes a liking to the boy fast, becoming mentor and companion.
The world is barren, an offshoot of Earth, but laden with mystery and fantasy bits not always explained. Liking this world may depend on your openness to fantasy and keeping secrets secret. King seems to be making some details along the way - then again, this approach keeps the intrigue. This first story does well to not mix more than basic ingredients - the hero, the protege, the antagonist and his minions, the barren world, the trippy and sexual encounters.
The antagonist shares the mystery, is sensuous in his malefic presence, and may as well be the devil. For most of the story we don't know who this elusive man in black is, and why Roland scours the desert for him. But the threat is present from start to end - everywhere Roland arrives, the villain has been and seems to draw the hero to their ultimate fate like complementary principles caught in a roundabout.
More so, as befit good stories of heroes and villains, the two meet eventually and palaver - discuss - their conundrum. The antagonist's monologue about science and ineffability may seem trite and likely solve nothing, but it works to enrich the shroud of mystery and make the reader pine for sequels.
Western fantasy realism
On the Western hero's journey, the series began with a promising trek, but never reached something as momentous as, say, Lord of the Rings. In defense, writing something like TLOTR implies massive planning, a feat which The Dark Tower lacks. Unfortunate is not that TDT pales by comparison - most fantasy does - but that later books vary so much in quality and vision, while TLOTR went full steam ahead on a hero and companion journey which became a classic.
The potential fits: a James Bond-like protagonist, a magic world of mystery at every turn, fantasy and surrealist elements which King sometimes inserts without care for logic or consistency. But a consistent hero's journey may require careful planning and a plot less meandering, shaped on events through which the protagonists find the opportunity for wisdom.
The mood is enticing, a fantasy magic realist blend of Western, gothic and horror which King revisits in later books, but rarely as sweet as in The Gunslinger and Wizard and Glass. I consider this the heart of the series: a mystery unfolding across a world like ours but not quite, symbolism and metaphor which don't always find a reasonable explanation.
I can't fault King for the narrative style - I prefer the chaotic lack-of-planning approach to writing myself - but the first and fourth books of The Dark Tower deserved a better series, especially with the advantage of magic surrealism. The Gunslinger thrives on King's more interesting prose, less prone to modern literary trends, more poetic. The following books retain the lyricism in various amounts when adventuring through the fantasy multiverse.
The writing balances showing and telling, while adverbs abound, though King has technically denounced them. Action scenes are fiery, keeping momentum, rarely overstaying their welcome, with a flow which I don't remember from any other King books, save this series.
The princess is in another Dark Tower
The book is pricked by standard issues: women characters are a bit incidental - one exists to screw around with the gunslinger and help him shape his past, then perish by his guns; the second, an intriguing villain, introduced by describing her breasts, a shadow of religious dogma and villainy looming over the foreign gunslinger.
The third, a succubus which divines the future for Roland in a sexually-charged encounter, where they both extract something from the other - a fortune teller bargaining for sexual favors. All three of Roland's encounter's read as fantasies, and only one is likeable. The women in Roland's past which are likeable perish in terrible ways. Women characters get better in following stories. Here, they read a bit like the remnants of fetishes. Say what you will about social sensibilities, this is a book where only one woman gets by after forcefully extracting pleasure from the hero.
A pity The Dark Tower began with a bang and ended with a whimper. Alongside Wizard and Glass, The Gunslinger is more limited in scope, but focused and better for it. The rugged hero, the mysterious villain, the desert and its towns, the trippy fantasy and mentions of our world made a story that understood its scope.
At the same time, it's commendable that King wanted to expand this world in the sequels. No telling how much he wrote the series for himself and how much was fan pressure, but more structure could've transformed The Dark Tower into a Western fantasy classic. It had everything needed except for King's indecision about the ending and questionable fourth wall shenanigans.
If this book holds the potential of a magic realist land where I was comfortable with not uncovering the mystery, the fourth book is where the potential reaches apex. That should have been the culmination of the magic realist adventure. Wizard and Glass took the formula of The Gunslinger and created its own world, less reliant on ours as the other sequels may be. The fourth book is also where King proved he could write a good Western, a feat which he wouldn't repeat in most books.
Even through its failings to challenge more robust works - like TLOTR - I agree how often the joy of experience and stories stands in the journey, not the end. Except when the end appears so undecided and unsatisfactory as the whimper of this story.
Though I enjoy the lack of more traditional narrative structure, this is what the series needed. Focus on what made it particular - magic realism, a world close to ours but never so. The first and the fourth book do it best, keeping the weird fiction in check with its own logic. The other books meander loosely between standard Stephen King modern fiction, fantasy and haphazard weird elements which eschew logic, not always relevant as metaphor and symbolism.