Just Finished Rereading The Gunslinger by Stephen King

Having gone through a number of revisions over the course of years, The Gunslinger is the first of seven books in Stephen King's fantasy/science fiction Dark Tower series.  Here's an excerpt of my blog article about the series from January, 2009:

But let’s go over now to Stephen King’s history of writing a series. He conceived of the Dark Tower series during the late 1960s, beginning writing on the first installment, The Gunslinger, in 1968. The finished first volume was published in 1982. He built up a loyal readership with this series although the next three books were relatively spaced apart in publication: 1987, 1991, and 1997. Then, following the fourth book of the series, The Wizard and Glass, no more books came out for a while. Finally, after King was almost killed by a distracted motorist while walking down a Maine road in 1999, he resolved to complete the series. And in a torrent of writing, he rushed out the last three (lengthy) volumes in 2003 (#5), 2004 (#6), and 2004 (#7)!

Back then I didn't mention that King in 2003 made a number of revisions to The Gunslinger to bring it more in line with the rest of the series narrative...I think I must have read an earlier version the first time I read it fourteen years ago, but this time around it's clear that it had been updated.  The setting to the story is an alternate (but similar) universe set some time in the future, after the world has "moved on"...but is it really the future?  There is a sense of everything having run down, including civilization and the clues of a technology-based society destroyed by a past cataclysm.  Roland Deschain is the protagonist, the Gunslinger who in his boyhood was a young noble whose world was turned upside-down in a revolt...he is now on a quest to find and catch the "Man in Black" behind it all.  Along the way he encounters oracles and a boy, Jake Chambers, who claims he was in a completely different reality, in a big modern city, and was pushed into the street to his death by none other than the man Roland is pursuing.  There is a lot of prophecy and symbolism here...part of Roland's problem is that he doesn't really know yet what he's after, and meeting with the Man in Black is his hope to find some answers.  Much of the story is spent in flashback...there's even a flashback embedded within another flashback...of Roland's childhood experiences, family and friends as well as that of the doomed town of Tull that Roland had earlier encountered on his journey.  Stephen King is known for his ability to draw out the depth in his characters' personalities, and The Gunslinger is no exception.  Now I've begun rereading the second book, titled The Drawing of the Three...I'm already past the opening section about those darn lobstrosities...