It's a constant feature of his writing that is perhaps best on display in books like Salem's Lot, The Shining, and It. When those books reach their peak moments, it's as if King has found a way to turn any given narrative passage of the typical American Gothic setting (such a dry and barren farmer's field, or the inside of a haunted dwelling, or even just a surveyors description of an entire town, or a single corner street in that same setting) into the kind of description that sometimes mirrors, or even rivals any possible segment of Middle Earth and its environs. I suppose a better way to put it would be that King has found a way of taking the usual description reserved for Tolkien's Blakean backdrop, and found a way to make it apply to the average, modern suburban American main street.
Like I say, though, I'm probably going to have to always be in the minority on this reaction. Even if that's the case, then I can't say I mind all that much. Nor do I care to retract that statement. One of the main reasons why is because I'm sure those readers who do know at least something of what I'm talking about can go through their favorite books in the King canon, and point to any number of passages that would help support this idea. In the second place, the real good news is that we don't have to just sit around, theorizing in a vacuum. It turns out the author himself has managed to oblige us on this point. He does so with the help of a simple essay entitled "On Being Nineteen: (And a Few Other Things)". If you've never heard of, or even read the piece before, then it's not going to surprise me. It only appeared in print once a long time ago, and hasn't really been seen since. In fact, I don't think they include it anymore in the current reprints of the series in which it originally formed a (to me) vital part.
"But although I read the books in 1966 and 1967, I held off writing. I responded (and with rather touching whole-heartedness) to the sweep of Tolkien's imagination - to the ambition of his story - but I wanted to write my own kind of story, and had I started then, I would have written his. That, as the late Tricky Dick Nixon was fond of saying, would have been wrong. Thanks to Mr. Tolkien, the twentieth century had all the elves and wizards it needed. In 1967, I didn't have any idea what my kind of story might be, but that didn't matter; I felt positive I'd know it when it passed me on the street (ix-x)".
It was this shared sense of Romanticism that catapulted Tolkien and his books toward an international stardom that hasn't really gone away since then. And King was right there when it first happened. Much like his peers of that time, it's not too much of a leap to say that King found himself caught up in that Romantic ethos, along with everybody else. He dug it enough, anyway, to get the notion into his head that he ought to try and match a story such as The Lord of the Rings, one that would be just as big, and yet in his own voice. The question was just what that kind of story would be. Tolkien supplied the first spark of inspiration, and yet something more was needed. According to King, that something more came in the form of an old, semi-low-budget Italian film import.
"Then, in an almost completely empty movie theater (the Bijou, in Bangor, Maine, if it matters), I saw a film directed by Sergio Leone. It was called The Good, The Bad, and the Ugly, and before the film was even half over, I realized that 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. If you've only seen this gonzo Western on your television screen, you don't understand what I'm talking about - cry your pardon, but it's true. On a movie screen, projected through the correct Panavision lenses, TG, TB, & TU is an epic to rival Ben-Hur. Clint Eastwood appears roughly eighteen feet tall, with each wiry jut of stubble on his cheeks looking roughly the size of a young redwood tree. The grooves bracketing Lee Van Cleef's mouth are as deep as canyons, and there could be a thinny (see Wizard and Glass) at the bottom of each one. The desert settings appear to stretch at least out as far as the orbit of the planet Neptune. And the barrel of each gun looks to be roughly as large as the Holland Tunnel.
"What I wanted even more than the setting was that feeling of epic, apocalyptic size. The fact that Leone knew jack shit about American geography (according to one of the characters, Chicago is somewhere in the vicinity of Phoenix, Arizona) added to the film's sense of magnificent dislocation. And in my enthusiasm - the sort only a young person can muster, I think - I wanted to write not just a long book, but the longest popular novel in history. I didn't succeed in doing that, but I feel I had a decent trip (xiii)". This is how we got the story known as the Dark Tower series. The whole thing seems to have been one long strange trip for King. He claims it all got started in 1966-67, and it didn't stop until roughly 2012. At least that's as far as his memory could take him at the time he wrote those words. The catch is that it's not the whole story. There's still one element, or missing piece of the puzzle, that King has sort of unintentionally neglected. That's the exact bit of reading he did that seems to have given him the final ingredient needed to set the gears of his imagination into full drive.
Vincent then goes on to make a very interesting observation. "Browning, in turn, borrowed his title from a line in Shakespeare's King Lear uttered by Edgar during his mad ravings while disguised as Poor Tom: "Childe Rowland to the Dark Tower came, His word was so still - Fie, foh, and fom/I smell the blood of a British man"...Tom was likely referring to an old Scottish ballad titled "Childe Rowland and Burd Ellen (ibid)". So what we've been describing and uncovering this whole time amounts to little more than a line of literary descent. We've been following the circuitous paths and byways of the initial inspirations that King used in constructing the longest story out of his career. It's the kind of exercise that won't matter to anyone else except English Majors, and King fans. My only excuse for doing this is because I like stories, and I have a natural curiosity to know where they come from. If there's a chance that it can help us learn a bit more about King, Browning, the history of the Dark Tower narrative, and what it all means, then it's just the kind of opportunity that I, as a book geek, just can't turn down.
With that said, even those who are be willing to follow me down this particular rabbit hole might look on the whole idea with a more than decent amount of skepticism. Their question might be whether there is really anything left to know about King's infamous book series, even in terms of its sources? My answer to this is that there could be at least one avenue that has been left unexplored, and Vincent just told us what it is. In the passage quoted above, he makes mention of an old ballad known as Childe Rowland. It's treated as something to be noted in passing, and not given any consideration beyond that point. I'm starting to wonder if that might have been a mistake, however. Part of the reason for saying this is because I had a chance to read the actual legend itself. I came across it in a children's anthology of stories, known as The Hamish Hamilton Book of Other Worlds, edited by Roger Lancelyn Green.
It's a collection whose purpose is to look at a very specific fictional trope. A good term of description might be to call it the Other World narrative, or any work of fiction dealing with journeys through through a fantasy reality that is different from, yet somehow connected, or related to ours. What's interesting is to discover that one of the entries in this collection happened to be the very same legend that Vincent believes might have acted as a direct source for Shakespeare, and later on as an indirect one for both Robert Browning, and Stephen King. I guess this makes it something of a lucky find. At least I found it interesting enough to crack open the spine of Green's ancient anthology (the copyright page lists its initial date of publication as 1976 in Great Britain) and see what it has to say. Who knows? We might just get lucky and learn a thing or two about, King, Browning, Roland, and the Tower that have often gone overlooked. "All things serve the Beam", after all.
The Story.
All of the brothers were kept busy as novices, each having to devote a great deal of time every day to being put through their paces. If they had it in them to become a knight, then they had best be able to prove it. And that is where the real challenge always lies. In spite of these obvious demands, they were a close knit family. Each of the brothers always made sure that one of them was always watching out for the other. Indeed, it was argued in the court that it was this familial bond which helped the three siblings make their slow, yet steady advance closer their collective goal. However, the soldiers and various denizens of the court had it just half right, at best. They assumed the brothers' future potential was a result of their easy ability for teamwork. There was some truth in that surmise, yet not the whole of it. The whole fact that each brother knew, was none of them could have gotten even this far, if they hadn't learned long before that it's how much you're willing to give an actual tinker's damn about those who are closest to you, that counts the most. Nor were they alone in this assessment.
Instead, she was more like the unacknowledged glue that both held each of them together, while also spurring them on to better themselves as best they could. Because of this and more, the brothers doted on their older sister. Even when their plates were full, they would still take the time to drop everything and devote themselves to each other as a family. That's sort of how the whole problem got started, really. Burd Ellen was out playing an ancient version of kickball with her brothers one day. Then one of the poor, dumb saps decided to put the full force of his physical strength into the target, and sent the ball flying clear over the steeple of the nearby church. Burd Ellen merely laughed, shook her head at the lot of them, and told them all to wait right there, she'd be right back with the ball in a minute. She disappeared round the corner of the church and a minute went by. After a second minute had passed, the brothers apprehension made them all decide to go and have a look for themselves.
On rounding the corner of the church, they found the red ball lying in a thatch of faded grass right next to one of the side entrances of the chapel. It didn't look as if it had been touched. Burd Ellen was nowhere in sight. They noticed one of the stable-hands nearby, and asked if she'd seen their sister. She allowed as how she'd heard them all playing together, on the other side. Then she saw the ball come sailing clear over the steeple, and landed right in the middle of the same thatch, where it still was now. The stable-hand was most emphatic, however, that the brothers were the first persons she'd seen after that. The worker was certain, because she'd been keeping an eye on the ball, in case anyone should decide to retrieve it. She never saw hide nor hair of Burd Ellen at any time since the arrival of the ball.
"So at last her eldest brother went to the Warlock Merlin and told him all the case, and asked if he knew where Burd Ellen was. "The fair Burd Ellen," said the Warlock Merlin, "must have been carried off by the fairies, because she went round the church 'widershins' - the opposite way to the sun. She is now in the Dark Tower of the King of Elfland; it would take the boldest knight in Christendom to bring her back." "If it is possible to bring her back," said her brother, "I'll do it, or perish in the attempt." "Possible it is," said the Warlock Merlin, "but woe to the man or mother's son that attempts it, if he is not well taught beforehand what he is to do (4)". Burd Ellen's eldest brother was not put off by these councils, however. So, after properly arming himself, as he thought fit, the oldest brother set out to find the hiding place of the Fair Folk, and their King. The trouble was that he kept on not being seen or heard from, ever again after that. Once this bit of insanity kept going long enough, the second youngest brother took up arms, mounted his own steed, and likewise set off in search of his siblings. He to never stuck his head into the kingdom after that. And at last, one brother was left.
The youngest brother's name was Rowland (or Roland, if you prefer). The fact that neither of his brothers, or his sister ever returned to the kingdom was perhaps more than enough to do a number on his piece of mind. When this type of situation occurs, it is just possible for the person's psyche to become a kind of mental pressure cooker. The psychological tension becomes just enough to make the sufferer decide to seek out some means of getting rid of the headache, and that was the situation Roland soon found himself in. It wasn't long before he found himself making his own plans to seek out his missing family. Like the others, he first paid a visit to the court magician for advice on what to do.
There were those who were anxious not to see him go, of course. His mother, for instance, begged Roland not to make the same mistake as his older brothers had made. It was more or less a litany, or catechism of familiar complaints. Who would she have left? What would she do if he never came back? He was all that she had left, etc. Roland knew and understood everything his mother had to say on the matter. It didn't change his mind on the subject, however. That had been made up some time before this conversation, and Roland felt sure that he could make his mother acquiesce to his decision, provided he gave her one vital piece of information. He told her as much, and she was very silent for a long time afterwards. Finally, when she could look him in the eye once more, she gave him her permission.
The young knight (or Childe as those of his novice rank were sometimes called) thought it might be an easy thing to accomplish. And now, here he was, setting out on his journey, wherever it may take him, as final proof. You see, Roland had another reason for wanting to find his missing siblings. It was all a simple question of guilt. He was the one who sent the red ball flying over the church steeple, and his family into the clutches of Nowhere in Particular. So, with a heavy, yet determined heart, Childe Roland began his search for the path into that other world. As he went, he made his way through tree, leaf, and other lands. All the time his focus remained the same, to look for the lost pathways, or an maybe an unfound door, something, anything that would point the road to the Dark Tower.
Excavating the Story Fossil.
"I have included the tale of Orpheus as that of a purely mortal man visiting the Land of the Dead, while Heracles and Psyche ended among the Immortals of Olympus. But most ancient tales of another world deal with one which is, we might say, halfway between Earth and Heaven (ix-x)"
This is the context that helps explain the nature, origins, and type of legend that we're dealing with. This is the ultimate identity of the legend of Roland (or Rowland) as it was originally told. It might seem like a tangent from the main point. However, the truth is more like one of those situations where two authors sound like they're discussing entirely different subjects, when in actual fact, they both are talking about the same thing. It's just that they were approaching it from different angles, and that's what fools the eye into seeing double, when in reality, it's really all singular. Because King is the premiere Horror author in America, he sort of doesn't have that many options open to him in the way he approaches a story. He either has to look at it from the perspective of either the Gothic or Romantic genres, or else he can always pack up his corner magician's display case and get the hell out of dodge. Roger Green, on the other hand, is afforded a wider scope in which to view things. He approaches the story of Roland and the Tower from the general perspective of the Fantasy genre. It's what allows him to view the archetype with a greater range, and a more encompassing vantage point.
The funny thing is how it looks as if both perspectives are needed to get a clearer idea of what's going on with the story, or myth of Roland and the Dark Tower. Right now, the best place to start is probably with a close examination of the original legend itself, and then work our way back toward King's take on the material. This approach has several advantages. For one thing, it starts out simple, and is able to build on from there. This allows the reader to see how an idea, even a mere literary concept, can start out small, and then sometimes just grow bigger over time. It's an odd phenomenon, yet it does happen. The best case in point would have to be that of Arthur and his Knights. Everybody knows something about it, yet it had very humble beginnings. The same looks to be true about Roland and the Tower, who appears to have begun life as a tangential branch broken off from the much larger family tree of Arthurian myth.
A second value in starting with just the original folktale itself is that it allows a greater chance of understanding how this creative idea evolved and changed over the course of the history of literature itself. It also enables us to see how later authors, such as Browning and King were inspired by this particular archetype, and how their own modes of artistic expression wound up helping to give the myth it's more familiar, modern shape that we know now.
This is the way the Bard of Middle Earth once opened with a famous, and somewhat influential essay on a subject that was of some importance to him as an author. According to Tolkien, the folktale of Childe Rowland would have qualified as a decent enough example of what he referred to as a Fairy Story. In a literary sense, Tolkien believed that "Faerie is a perilous land, and in it are pitfalls for the unwary and dungeons for the overbold...The realm of fairy-story is wide and deep and high and filled with many things: all manner of beasts and birds are found there: shoreless seas and stars uncounted; beauty that is an enchantment, and an ever-present peril; both joy and sorrow as sharp as swords. In that realm a man may, perhaps, count himself fortunate to have wandered, but its very richness and strangeness tie the tongue of a traveler who would report them. And while he is there it is dangerous for him to ask too many question, lest the gates should be shut and the keys be lost (3)".
When we read those words, the first thing that strays through the reader's mind might be that of Tolkien's most famous sub-creation (as he preferred to term it). The curious part, however, is just how much a lot of what he says seems to match up with the description of Roland, and his search for the Dark Tower. Statements such as the warning that "it is dangerous...to ask too many questions, lest the gates should be shut and the keys be lost", sound very much like the sort of advice that Merlin gave to Roland before he started on his quest. The similarities are enough to make me wonder if Tolkien might have been familiar with the legend himself in some capacity? While I'm not sure anyone will be able to answer that question definitively, I do know there is at least one vital (and criminally overlooked) source from which Tolkien could have gained all the information he might have needed. It's the same source that Green chose to include in his anthology. He mentions that his text is a retelling from Joseph Jacobs.
"Joseph Jacobs contends that it was from the line 'Childe Roland to the Dark Tower came' from King Lear that Browning drew his poem, for 'he little thought he was dealing with a fragment of a fairy tale' (p.188). More important, Jacobs draws our attention to the form of the original tale 'Childe Rowland,' known as (a) cante-fable. This form - which mixes poetry an prose - typically 'begins with verse, then turns to prose, and throughout drops again at intervals into poetry in a friendly way,' and was well known in the East: "The verses embedded in the Arabian Nights gives them something of the character of a cante-fable, and the same may be said of the Indian and Persian story-books (Jaouad, 78)".
Jacobs further notes how the presence of this line in the legend is a sure sign that the story of Rowland is probably far older than its original incarnation, and that it was in existence way before the days of Shakespeare. Jacobs notes, however, that the trope seems to go even further than that. He goes so far as to argue that the Bard of Avon wasn't just a one-off, in terms of borrowing the Tower legend as a source of inspiration. Jacobs contends that there might been at least one other famous literary name out there who found ways of putting the underlying structure of Childe Rowland to surprising good use.
A "still closer parallel is afforded by Milton's Comus. Here again we have two brothers in search of a sister, who has got into the power of an enchanter. But besides this, there is the refusal of the heroine to touch the enchanted food, just as Childe Rowland finally refuses. And ultimately the bespelled heroine is liberated by a liquid, which is applied to her lips and finger-tips, just as Childe Rowland's brothers are unspelled by applying a liquid to their eyelids, nostrils, lips, and finger-tips. Such a minute resemblance as this cannot be accidental, and it is therefore probable that Milton used the original form of "Childe Rowland", or some variant of it, as heard in his youth, and adapted it to the purposes of the masque at Ludlow Castle, and of his allegory. Certainly no other folk-tale in the world can claim so distinguished an offspring (web)". Beyond that, there are a few technical details worth mentioning.
Jacobs notes for instance, the old folk belief that to travel counterclockwise around a church meant that one was traveling "against the Church" (Jacobs' words). This in itself, however, is part of a much older belief. Boiled down to it's basics, it all seems to do with a common narrative situation. The author (or authors) are saddled with having to figure out how to get the protagonist out of his world, and into the Perilous Realm. The idea of traveling, or doing things in a way counter to normal use, i.e., by going about it all "backwards", seems to have evolved into its own trope out this simple question of narrative construction. It all seems to have been caught up with the idea that the Fair Folk are both like, and unlike normal human beings. Therefore, the narrative logic runs that since they sometimes do things "backwards" from how normal people conduct their lives, it only makes sense that one possible way of entering their realm is to mimic them by performing even the simplest of menial tasks "in the opposite direction". There's no other explanation for this trope except the peculiarity of what is considered to be normal, or well within the norm, according to the lights of human nature (whatever that is).
A lot of this is down to the way that theories and ideas about ghosts and elves tended to to get blurred and blended together in the mind of popular, folkloric belief. This is something Tom Shippey talked about at length in works like The Road to Middle Earth. It was there he noted the ambiguity in ancient people's beliefs about the nature of the elves. Some felt them to be malicious, while others considered them friendly. The final result was for the literary idea to wind up occupying a permanent middle ground, or moral gray zone. It may be possible that some of the Folk can be helpful at times. Yet even if this is the case, their assistance can sometimes be just as much trouble as the problem they are there to help solve. In this notion, we see the development of a reaction to the more negative aspects of a debased form of literary Romanticism. It's an idea that Tolkien was able to put to great use in all of the writings contained in his Legendarium. One other aspect of the folk belief was that the elves might be the spirits of the departed. As I've said, this is what happens when literary concepts start melding and blurring together. They seem to wind up creating a rich brew from which the artist can draw on.
Conclusion: The Long, Strange Legacy of the Dark Tower.
What I mean is that while I'm not sure King succeeded in the goals he may have had for the series, the broken fragments he leaves us with are still able to fascinate because of how well most of them point toward a sense of greater concepts and ideas that the writer seems to be struggling with. When you hear a phrase like "The Tower in the Waste Land", your mind can sometimes be filled with an image that is able to create or generate all kinds of fantastic and Surrealistic associations in your imagination. That's probably because it's not the same as an empty picture devoid of meaning. A rose red city, half as old as time makes for an intriguing image. It also stops at being just that. The Tower concept, on the other hand, looks and acts like it wants to go farther. It's a mystery that invites both artists and audiences to try and solve. I'm not sure King ever got that far. Robert Browning, on the other hand, seems to have gone quite a ways toward capturing the alluring, Gothic mystique of such an image, even if he could never get anywhere past the front door. That's why I'm able to encourage readers to try and seek it out, if they're willing for a literary challenge. That just leaves the anonymous tale of Rowland.
How does it fair in comparison with both of these more famous versions of the story? Well, for starters, it's the easiest read out of the whole bunch. The narrative fast paced. The description is direct and to the point, with little in terms of stylistic frills or flourishes to get in the way of things. Another thing the story's got going for it is the inherent simplicity of its setup. Unlike a book such as The Gunslinger, Childe Rowland doesn't begin in any kind of suspended state of confusing delirium. Whoever wrote or first told this legend doesn't spend the first half of the narrative having to cast about for where things are going. Instead, we are treated to the setting of King Arthur's Court, and the characters who will serve as our main cast, and it's all laid out, right up front, just as you turn to the first page. After the strange oddity of King's series, coming across a more straightforward version of the story feels like stumbling upon an unexpected luxury. A lot of that seems down to the specific type of narrative the anonymous storyteller has left us with. It's a proper fairy tale, first and foremost.
However, it needs to be stressed. This is not the same as saying the more restrictive way that the Rowland Author tells his story is in any sense inferior to the updated tools and techniques used by sophisticated types such as James Michener or John Updike. In fact, it is just possible to reach an understanding of why this older way of telling stories can be so appealing. Part of it has to do with the necessity of both artist and audience needing to reach a mutual understanding of the story that's being told. When that happens for real, when the artist and his or her audience have managed to become so much "on the same page" that there comes a point where one is doing the work of the other with a seamless looking ease, then that's got to be one of the high points in both the creation and taking in of a work of well done art. One of the most trusted ways to accomplish this (even today, it seems) is to resort to this tried and true fairy tale mode of writing. I do not say that this is the best or only way of telling a story. Merely that this is what the Rowland Author had to work with, and that it was all put to good use.
It's this economy of style that also accounts for the way the main narrative unfolds. I never get the sense that the Rowland Author was ever in any kind of a hurry to get things rolling. Instead, it's more that the limitations he had to work under means the events of the story follow with a rapid succession that some might not expect. How your react to this older sense of pacing will probably vary. Those looking for a conventional approach will wish for more. Others may wind up applauding the story for getting to the point so quickly. I find I have no real problem with it at all. It's just that this older formatting can sometimes leave the attentive reader aware of the unintentional quirky sounding nature of the story proper, or at least however much is left to us now. What I'm saying here is not a slight against the story. Nor am I suggesting that it is in anyway incomplete. We are not dealing here with unfinished symphonies like The Faerie Queene, or The Canterbury Tales. The legend is able to take its audience from start to finish in as complete a whole as it was possible to make out of it.
It's the type of bench-warming scene we've viewed or read before. The brief rest spot before the narrative kicks into high gear. In a modern telling, this would be the part were a bit of "Roland's" character is revealed. We'd find out just how much of a novice he really is. Maybe he's a bit of a hothead who needs to learn to control his temper in order to succeed, or else he really is still too green under the gills, and is fundamentally unprepared for the journey ahead, and the only reason he's going at all is because of the unspoken, yet hinted at sense of guilt he has for the disappearance of his siblings.
All of these scenarios can at least come off sounding like what you might expect to encounter in a story like this. And to be fair, there is a sense in which the original legend itself is hinting at all or both of these ideas. It's just like I said above, the Rowland Author was working in a format that meant the artistic compression of a great deal of story information, in the shortest amount of space possible. The longest scene of dialogue we even have in the original narrative is the moment where Roland visits Merlin for advice, and even then it seems as if the legendary Magician is the one who does most of the talking. That's because he's the one in this scene with the vital information that's necessary to make all the others come out right. As a result, instead of the usual following moments of character building and drama that we might expect, the audience instead gets treated to this (italics mines): "So Childe Rowland...thanked the Warlock Merlin and went on his way. And he went along, and along, and along, and still further along, till he came to the horse-herd of the King of Elfland feeding his horses. These he knew by their fiery eyes, and knew that he was at last in the land of Faery (6)".
Okay, now stop and ask yourself this very simple question. How does all that sound for a dramatic transition, seriously? The best answer I can arrive at is this. On the one hand, for the relatively primitive level of an original folktale, it just might work. It goes back to what I said about the story's anonymous author having to work within a constricted narrative format. The curious part is how a case can be made that such an abrupt transition does little or no real harm to the story proper. It might come off as a bit truncated, at worst. However, the basic outline and overall point are left intact. At the same time, it's possible to imagine a novice member of the audience looking at that same passage, and thinking: "Sounds interesting, but this guy's gonna have to work real hard if he wants to get a book deal out of all this". And it' should be pretty easy to understand where a judgment call like that is coming from. The simple fact is that what works for a simple, folkloric fairy tale might not go over quite so well in terms of the modern novelistic approach. The transition between the normal world and an enchanted realm is so sudden and abrupt that it's impossible to tell when the switchover happened.
It is precisely here, among the trees, leaves, and stones, that the Gunslinger Young Knight should be permitted to finally stumble an unfound door, hidden among the thickets. You can, if you want, add a further bit of business here about Roland trying to figure out how to make the door open (maybe have him trying out various "Open Sesames" on the damn thing), however this should be the real focus. The whole point is what happens once that door finally swings open. Even then, there's still much to be done from a narratological standpoint. There should be just enough, or however much space is needed to immerse the reader in this new landscape. You have to let everyone know we've gone from Mid-World to an Elvish World. These, then, are the necessary steps in a chain of narrative reasoning that have to be filled in if you want a modern audience to get on your side. The funny thing is how it is just possible to argue that there is one author who can help the reader to fill in at least some of the story gaps in the original legend. I'm thinking, here, of none other than Robert Browning.
As was demonstrated above, Browning based his whole poem around a line from Shakespeare. Who, in turn, wrote it down based on a familiarity with the original Childe Rowland fable. As a result, Browning's poem became this strange bit of additional description added on to the original narrative. The Dark Tower poem itself is a first-person-limited description of the sights Roland is seeing as he makes his way to the titular black turreted edifice. I've said before that the poem has been described as a sort of precursor to Eliot's The Waste Land, and once you read the poem itself, it's sort of easy to see why. It's tone matches the sense of aimlessness that's found in its more famous, Modernist ancestor. In that sense, it can be argued that Browning was creatively "Seeing Ahead" in this work. He managed to embed the first hint of cultural ambiguity into his poem, and that note would grow until it became a main focus of a great deal of the most famous writings of the 20th century.
The point to remember, however, is that the Roland of Browning's metrical narrative isn't (or at was wasn't, initially) the same character of King's novels, but rather the figure at the heart of the original Childe folktale. In the strictest sense, what this means in practice is that Browning (perhaps quite unintentionally) has done us modern readers a favor by coming as close to filling in the gaps of the initial, ancient legend itself. This can be seen if we superimpose Browning's verses onto the original narrative. A good example can go as follows:
"So Childe Rowland...thanked the Warlock Merlin and went on his way. And he went along, and along, and along, and still further along.
...
That hoary cripple, with malicious eye
Askance to watch the workings of his lie
On mine, and mouth scarce able to afford
Suppression of the glee, that pursed and scored
Its edge, at one more victim gained thereby.
"What else should he be set for, with his staff?
What, save to waylay with his lies, ensnare
All travelers who might find him posted there,
And ask the road? I guessed what skull-like laugh
Would break, what crutch ’gin write my epitaph
For pastime in the dusty thoroughfare.
"If at his counsel I should turn aside
Into that ominous tract which, all agree,
Hides the Dark Tower. Yet acquiescingly
I did turn as he pointed, neither pride
Nor hope rekindling at the end descried,
So much as gladness that some end might be.
(Browning, web)".
It might not amount to as much as most reader or viewers would probably ask for. Though at least it's some kind of start. We're no longer being sold a bare-faced myth, with all its rough edges still showing. For better or worse, we have taken at least one step closer to the kind of narrative that many today would expect from this type of fantasy setup. Indeed, it is possible for Browning's poem to take us a great deal of the way in presenting us with a smoother flowing sequence of imaginary events. It sounds jarring for contemporary ears to go from straightforward prose to poetry. However, the curious reply there is that the legend itself has come to down to us as just such a mixed brew. It's a pointer to just how antique the original story is. The fact that there are fragments of poetry mixed into the prose is a very probable sign that there was a point in time when the entirety of Childe Rowland really was nothing but poem, from start to finish. It is just that the rest of the verses have been lost to the passage of years, the way it's been for a lot of these older folk accounts.
Even Joseph Jacobs admitted that the version he set down was the survival as it was recalled by an old, Scots merchant. Bear in mind, that all happened in the 1890s, on the cusp of a new century. The legend itself was probably around long before a lot of more famous works. Such as, to take for instance, The Song of Roland. It seems as if the figures of various narratives have become entangled over the years, just a memories can often be confused and blurred by time. It has to be one of the most fascinating chronicles of literary development out there. And I'll have more to say on it, later.
The trouble is that Browning also makes the same mistake as the legend, in that we are not told at what point the main character has stepped out of reality, and into the fantastic realm. I mentioned earlier that a smoother sense of transition could be achieved by placing Roland first through a Waste Land, and then second through your stereotypical Enchanted Forest, where he finds an unfound door waiting for him in the middle of it all. Browning does a pretty good job of illustrating the Waste Land, however he seems to have bypassed that necessary door in the process. Though, as was observed, all he had to go on was a dream. He can be excused here. The truly interesting part is that even at this juncture, we're not left without the resources required to help fill in the final missing pieces of the narrative. All we need to do is turn from the genre of literary poetry, to one of music. Here is the most ironic part. For it really does seem as if it is possible to turn to one of the other unremarked sources that Stephen King was able to draw on when it came time to write his own spin on the legend. I'm talking here of the work of Robert Fripp and his band, King Crimson, with a specific emphasis on one particular song.
Here is where it is possible to find inspiration from the title track of King Crimson's debut album, In the Court of the Crimson King. If you'll recall , we have left Roland before an unfound door in the middle of an enchanted forest. Sooner or later, that door has got to swing open. Now what's the first thing he finds once he's on the other side of the door? If we are willing to resort to Peter Sinfield's lyrics, then the next thing Roland sees might run something like this:
Are shattered by the sun
I walk a road, horizons change
The tournament's begun
The purple piper plays his tune
The choir softly sing
Three lullabies in an ancient tongue
For the court of the crimson king
Put shutters on the dreams
I wait outside the pilgrim's door
With insufficient schemes
The black queen chants
The funeral march
The cracked brass bells will ring
To summon back the fire witch
To the court of the crimson king (web)".
"Canst thou tell me," said Childe Rowland to the horse-herd, "where the King of Elfland's Dark Tower is?" "I cannot tell thee," said the horse herd, "but go on a little further and thou wilt come to the cow-herd, and he, maybe, can tell thee."
What's interesting to note is the way he builds things up to that climactic moment. The only reason Roland is able to get away with it is because the author has run once more into one of his prototypical "Bad Towns". The settlement that this Roland finds himself stuck in at the beginning of things, is nothing less than a New England hellhole straight out of Hawthorne or Poe, and its made pretty clear that the place, and the people who live there are beyond redemption. It is, in fact, a trap laid by one of the series' main antagonists. It's by establishing all these rules that King is able to allow the reader to take in those final passages of blazing slaughter with a detached sense of catharsis. The point, however, is that King has to find the right narrative direction that would allow his audience to be able to take it in without growing disgusted, and maybe putting the book down wondering if their favorite writer hasn't finally flipped. It's to his credit that King is able to maintain the same fundamentally moral stance in these moments that he's carried over into all the rest of his other works. The point, however, is that King is smart enough to realize that he has to go out of his way as a writer in order to justify the audience's being on the side of a hero who starts out as little more than a lethal killing machine.
"A large and spacious hall, so large that it seemed to be as long, and as broad, as the green hill itself. The roof was supported by fine pillars, so large and lofty, that the pillars of a cathedral were as nothing to them. They were all of gold and silver, with fretted work, and between them and around them wreaths of flowers, composed of what do you think? Why, of diamonds and emeralds, and all manner of precious stones. And the very key-stones of the arches had for ornaments clusters of diamonds and rubies, and pearls, and other precious stones. And all these arches met in the middle of the roof, and just there, hung by a gold chain, an immense lamp made out of one big pearl hollowed out and quite transparent. And in the middle of this was a big, huge carbuncle, which kept spinning round and round, and this was what gave light by its rays to the whole hall, which seemed as if the setting sun was shining on it. The hall was furnished in a manner equally grand, and at one end of it was a glorious couch of velvet, silk and gold, and there sate Burd Ellen, combing her golden hair with a silver comb (9-10)".
I smell the blood of a Christian man,
Be he dead, be he living, with my brand,
I'll dash his brains from his brain-pan."
"And then the folding-doors of the hall were burst open, and the King of Elfland rushed in. "Strike then. Bogle, if thou darest," shouted out Childe Rowland, and rushed to meet him with his good brand that never yet did fail. They fought and they fought, and they fought, till Childe Rowland beat the King of Elfland down on to his knees, and caused him to yield and beg for mercy. "I grant thee mercy," said Childe Rowland; "release my sister from thy spells and raise my brothers to life, and let us all go free, and thou shalt be spared." "I agree," said the Elfin King, and rising up he went to a chest from which he took a phial filled with a blood-red liquor. With this he anointed the ears, eyelids, nostrils, lips, and finger-tips of the two brothers, and they sprang at once into life, and declared that their souls had been away, but had now returned. The Elfin King then said some words to Burd Ellen, and she was disenchanted, and they all four passed out of the hall, through the long passage, and turned their back on the Dark Tower, never to return again. So they reached home, and the good queen their mother and Burd Ellen never went round a church "widershins" again (11-12)". Annnnd, that's a wrap! No, really.
Am I saying here that King's Roland and the Britannic-Celtic character are one and the same? Well, let's put it this way. He's one of the few characters in all of fiction who won't shut up, for some reason. And so he keeps cropping up, every now and then. It's always in a different time and place, and often with the help of differing authors, who are often ages and worlds apart from each other. And yet still, Roland and the Tower persist. If they didn't we wouldn't even have the Gunslinger saga that a lot of Tower Junkies know by heart. So I guess this mean my answer is that what we're dealing with is the same archetype under a different looking mask. The face may look different, but the essential nature remains just enough of the same so that you can tell who it really is under the accumulated years of history, if you squint hard enough. The funny thing is the final question it sort of leaves me wanting to ask.
It's a narrative glamour that enchants as much as it can sometimes repel. Tolkien knew his way about those lands like an expert cartographer. He was even able to make some of it his own. Stephen King tried to do the same in his own way, and ultimately found himself defeated by the sheer strangeness of Roger Green's Other World. At the same time, one thing that King got right on occasion was the ability to capture that note of exhilarating strangeness that marks out the deepest and darkest parts of the realm of literary enchantment. It's a very specific, and almost forgotten charm that permeates a story like Childe Rowland from start to finish. It's for all these reasons that I'd like to urge the reader to maybe one day see if they might give it a chance, and let the story tell itself on its own terms. It might be a bit of a challenge getting used to this kind of storytelling, yet once you do manage to get the hang of it (you're either lucky, or just patient), you might discover the original world of the Dark Tower has its own rewards to offer those who can unlocks its doors.
(1) "I've always been able to see the ways in which Tolkien has impacted King's work to the point where there can be times (especially in his best work) where King almost seems to be copying the old Oxford professor without even trying." -- I don't think Tolkien's influence on King can be disputed; it's impossible to discuss his work fully without "Rings" coming up eventually.
ReplyDeleteThat said, they're incredibly different writers from a process standpoint, and that's interesting to me. All things considered, I'm glad that Tolkien did as much planning as he did, and I'm glad King did as much intuitively as he has. I think it served them both well to just be who they wanted to be in that regard. It served us all pretty well in both cases!
(2) "If you've only seen this gonzo Western on your television screen, you don't understand what I'm talking about - cry your pardon, but it's true." -- And it remains true even as big as tvs are nearly twenty years later. Any great-looking movie is going to look ten times better in a quality cinema.
(3) "It's the kind of exercise that won't matter to anyone else except English Majors, and King fans." -- And maybe only to King-fan English majors!
(4) "Some called him Maerlyn the Wise. Although he was also known as Merwyn, or Mervyn." -- Oh-ho, indeed? I'd been wondering whether it was at all likely that King would have ever encountered this pre-Browning Roland tale, but now...?
(5) "What I mean is that while I'm not sure King succeeded in the goals he may have had for the series, the broken fragments he leaves us with are still able to fascinate because of how well most of them point toward a sense of greater concepts and ideas that the writer seems to be struggling with." -- I think that's a fair assessment. It wouldn't be mine, but it's very fair.
(6) I've never read (nor know much of anything about) C.S. Lewis's "The Dark Tower," but its existence popped into my mind while reading this. Do you have any familiarity with it?
(7) I don't how I feel about the ennd of ol' Burd Ellen's tale. On the one hand, there's not much to it. On the other hand, it doesn't involve a dude who looks like Santa Claus being drawn/erased out of existence by a tongueless dude who's tired of having grenades shucked at him, so there's that. Then, too, it sounds as if this version of the Childe Ro(w)land story plays as much like a moral for kids as anything else. Teaching them ... not to wun around a church in the wrong direction? Sure, why not? Can't hurt to do it correctly, I suppose.
(8) If King's version is merely the newest in a lineage of Rolands and Towers, then it makes me wonder: what course should the next version take? The likeliest answer is that there won't be one anytime soon, simply because of the nature of media and storytelling consumption. But in a way, it almost becomes an argument for the story-changing weirdness of the movie being okay. Either way, I'd guess that it's King's version which will now be canonized as THE version of the Roland story for a long while. Adaptations might shift it a bit; but even those will be seen as being essentially beholden to King.
Almost seems like a shame!
(9) "The curious part is how even this doesn't entirely obscure the original well spring." -- If the issue at the heart of the matter really is Inspiration, then this absolutely tracks.
(10) Great work here, Chris!
(1) It's interesting about the process side of things. Tolkien once wrote a letter to his son, outlining a rough sketch for where the story of Lord of the Rings was going to go. Then he makes a very insightful bit of observation:
ReplyDelete"It will probably work out very differently from this plan when it really gets written, as the thing seems to write itself once I get going, as if the truth comes out then, only imperfectly glimpsed in the preliminary sketch ("Letters", 104)".
So the picture the writer gives of his own process seems doubled-edged. He might like to rely on what King calls "plotting", yet his actual practice, by his own admission, seems to fall more in line with what King says in the rest of "On Writing".
(3) More's the pity.
(4) That one is really just the result a long, slow realization about the way certain words, or names can shift in spelling and pronunciation over time. Based on the original Olde English, or possibly Welsh, Merlin could have been an ealry variant on the name Mervyn, or Mervin to give the name its current modern spelling. It's just an insight that's too comedic to not mention.
I mean imagine what it means to know the worlds most famous wizard can go by the name of Merv the Magician. It just casts him on a whole other light. Then again, it also probably doesn't help to realize you can also call him Merl.
(5) It's the best assessment I can arrive at, I'm afraid.
(6) Just barely, I'm told its about time travel (of a sorts?) to a pocket dimension containing an alternate version of an old university astronomy tower, which looks normal on the keystone world of the protagonist, but which takes on sinister associations in the alternate world. You know what, who knows. Maybe I just detailed another source of inspiration for King.
(7) Well, I guess that's the one thing all the variants have in common. The ending are a bit less than satisfactory to most readers, and it probably needs more work than its ever likely to get. Add that up, and you get is irony.
(8) Interesting question. I almost want to say the next person to try and tackle the concept should try and go back to the original folktale, and see if its possible to flesh it out into a more complete form. Like, I didn't notice any major retellings or fresh imaginings with this one, in the same way as we've been getting with other fairy tales such as "The Frog Prince", "Cinderella", and the like. Maybe it's time Roland and his brood had their turn. I guess the real question for such a hypothetical re-telling is this. Should the Tower be allowed to stand in this version, or just let it fall?
(9) Something tells the idea will occur to someone else somewhere down the line.
(10) Thanks. Believe it or not, I just finished using a work of King's to help explain another story by someone else. It's kind of whacked-out as well. Stay tuned, if you want.
ChrisC