The Dark Tower IV: Wizard and Glass (1997)

Think first, fight afterwards – the soldier’s art…

Susan is captured by Reynolds who brings her back to the townfolk of Hambry. Source

And then? They Lived Happily Ever After, of course. Like folk in a fairy tale.

Except. . .

Stephen King, The Dark Tower IV: Wizard and Glass

I can’t imagine being a Dark Tower fan as these books come out.

First of all, most authors of a series spend their whole time writing the series until it’s done, and hope the audience follows them onto their next book. King drops a new Dark Tower book every five or six years, but still writing many other things in the mean time. He then ends one book on a massive cliffhanger, leaves his readers desperate to know more, and waits six years before dropping the next one. And then, after all that, King gives them a book that yes, has horrific moments, is set in a fantasy world, but instead of the next thrilling instalment in the tales of the gunslinger is actually a capital ‘R’ Romance novel.

Romance is not something unknown to King, though it hasn’t been the focus of a novel since arguably The Dead Zone, and even then, that didn’t have the same depth of focus King gives to Roland and Susan Delgado in this novel. For some, this is a juddering halt to the momentum built up over the last few books, where our main characters literally sit down and listen to Roland tell them a fairy tale, romantic tragedy. Then, no sooner has the book began to rebuild another head of steam is it over and we are forced to wait another few years until King decides to revisit his ka-tet!

The wait is important though. King hints at it in his notes at the end, but for a man who has written horror, thriller and science fiction, romance is not something that one typically associates with King. This book is a pivotal point in the tale of The Dark Tower, without which Roland’s monomania has little meaning. It is only be taking a night of storytelling (or around six hundred pages) that we get to know this story. I don’t think King could have written this book even five years prior to when it was published. It is a difficult book to write, and without the experience of his woman protagonist books such as Dolores Claiborne, giving voice to Susan Delgado would not have had the same impact. By writing those books, King had a better grasp of his writing, and now had the confidence after his new found sobriety to begin to tackle a difficult point in the series’ story. Of course, this is looking back retrospectively over his body of work so far. For a fan, I still would be dying to know what happened next after that cliffhanger.

Funnily enough however, I can sympathise with that position. Though all the books have now been released, I hadn’t actually read all the Dark Tower series yet before I decided to read all of King in publishing order. In fact, this is the last Tower book I had read before I decided to start this little project. So though I won’t have to wait quite as long as fans did from 1997 until 2003, I have still have a number of books to read first!

But until then, let’s take the time to examine the story being told here.

Throughout the Dark Tower essays so far, I have stressed the importance of telling stories as a theme. That the main meat of the book is Roland telling a story is perhaps the best example so far. It turns Roland into a character, more than the collection of humourless tics we have learned of him so far. Each of the rest of the ka-tet have been introduced with strong stories, and though we have learned of Roland in many ways over the last three books, it isn’t until this one that we can say he becomes human, fallible in a way we understand beyond his obsession with the Tower. It seems true to Eddie and Susannah also, who are shocked when Roland cracks a joke at the end of his story. Another layer of Roland has been peeled away, getting him to be open with his friends and firmly establishing the ka-tet as a group.

The framing narrative of the book, with its Wizard of Oz ending, is black parody of the storytelling we’ve seen so far, and in its way foreshadows the way the worlds of fiction are collapsing. Our five intrepid heroes become Dorothy and company, though it is hard to draw much of one-to-one comparison beyond saying Oy is Toto with each member of the ka-tet having arguments for and against comparisons to Dorothy’s gang. On a metatextual level, it’s telling the reader that what we’ve come to know of the Dark Tower books no longer will necessarily be true (and considering the circumstances under which the final three books were written, this is more true than King could have suspected); we’re not in Kansas anymore. It also plays along the ideas introduced in the last book with Shardik the Bear. King is playing with the expectations of narrative convention, invoking previous stories and archetypes and then breaking them. He is letting us know that we cannot expect things to work out well.

I’ve been thinking about the villains of the book as well. Up until this book, the villains have generally been mindless monsters; the inhabitants of Tull, driven mad by the Man in Black, the lobstrosities, Shardik. But if a villain is present in this book, they represent different deficiencies of Roland. Rhea of the Cöös is an obvious example. Her obsession with Maerlyn’s grapefruit, how it slowly eats away at her body, is representative of Roland’s obsession with the Tower. The Big Coffin Hunters, particularly Eldred, represent failures in Roland’s standing as a gunslinger, almost a ‘what if’ had Roland not succeeded against Cort. Blaine shares his lack of imagination with Roland, and Tick Tock’s brief reappearance serves to remind us that strength is not necessarily everything. Even the return of Randall Flagg is a bitter reminder of Roland’s failures in saving Gilead.

Yet Roland does win out. Even when his own talents fail him, he does have a degree of awareness about him to recognise that his ka-tet, old and new, can help him achieve his goal. But considering how those other villains were brought down by their respective obsessions, especially Rhea, would it not be wiser for Roland to change course slightly, lest his compulsion to reach the Tower doom him?

It is that element of inevitable tragedy that I think makes this a stronger entry in the Dark Tower series, provided you’re aware of what you’re getting into when you start the book. The jump in genre, tone and direction of the story can be off-putting for someone who is just looking for the next exciting instalment of the Dark Tower, but the tragedy of Susan and Roland plays out with Shakespearian emotional weight. Everyone knows that Romeo and Juliet’s fate is written in the stars (and a lot of characters spend a lot of time looking at a lot of stars in this book, as if to remind us of ka’s inevitability), but that doesn’t make their deaths any less impactful. We know early on that Roland and Susan’s long love cannot survive, and yet even to the last we wish that weren’t so. Reading the book again, King manages to invoke the feelings I had the first time reading. Sometimes, it’s not the first reading, but the rereading the reveals what a master King is at his craft.

His ka-tet, learning of Roland’s past and of his knack of laying waste to everything he knows and loves, stick by him. They have set the course, and no matter what adventures may follow for the plucky group, his ka-tet have really only one destination they are travelling to.

Long days and pleasant nights.

Observations and Connections

A lot of the things that have been bubbling under the surface are starting to make themselves known now. For Constant Readers, this is the book where things start turning from fun references to a feeling this is building to something bigger.

Firstly, the first location of the book is Topeka, Kansas. This is a version of Topeka that has been decimated by Captain Trips, the killer flu from The Stand. The newspaper found dates it 1986, which doesn’t match the hardback version released in 1978 (set in 1980) or the expanded release in 1990. Maybe it’s the version of the book that was published in paperback in 1980, which changed the dates to 1985? Or maybe it’s the one from Night Surf in Night Shift? Or maybe even another version of the world, one where Randall Flagg succeeded and built an Emerald City instead of taking over Vegas? Other worlds than these and all that. In any case, it’s lucky none of the ka-tet encounter a live version of the virus during their brief stay.

Speaking of Flagg, the mysterious stranger who cropped up in the last book under the name of Richard Fannin makes himself known to the ka-tet, aka Marten Broadcloak, aka the Man in Black. The RF should have been a big giveaway. Flagg has been in lots of King books, having first appeared in The Stand. His other major notable appearance was in Eyes of the Dragon, presumably an earlier incarnation of the same character who would go on to torment Roland in Gilead. Flagg has also appeared in the poem The Dark Man, which was collected in Skeleton Crew. I’ve also speculated about his appearance in The Talisman, and others have done similar for The Long Walk and Children of the Corn short story from Night Shift. Don’t worry too much about creating a Flagg chronology – it just about makes sense if you squint.

Another villain referenced early doors is the Crimson King, who first appeared in Insomnia. Much like Flagg, it is suggested that he is a greater scope villain who will have much to do with the future of the Tower.

Rhea of the Cöös appears for the first time in the flesh, but was actually mentioned for the first time back in The Eyes of the Dragon in a throwaway reference.

The glass of the title, Maerlyn’s Grapefruit (which sounds like something a wizard would shout if they stubbed their toe) sounds incredibly similar to the talisman from The Talisman. I don’t think they’re the same, but it wouldn’t take too much to give them the same provenance.

This book also introduces the concept of a thinny, a patch in the world where things have gotten thin and can leak into another world. However, we have definitely seen similar ideas explored in The Mist, Mrs Todd’s Shortcut, and perhaps a subtle version called an ini in Desperation. However, as seen in It, Rose Madder or The Talisman, there are multiple ways to slip into other universes or the spaces in-between.

Finally, King in his author notes at the end of the book mentions how the Tower itself is sort of seeping into other books. A couple of mentions of things already mentioned above, but also Ralph Roberts, the protagonist of Insomnia, and an intriguing mention of Father Callahan from ‘Salem’s Lot. Though it isn’t written yet, King does know the journey he wants to take.

UP NEXT: Dipping a toe into the world of The X-Files with Chinga.

OR

Continue to the Tower in The Dark Tower V: Wolves of the Calla.