Kevin's Watch

i thought for sure he'd talked about knowing the ending when he first wrote Gunslinger a hundred years ago. i could be wrong about that.
i'll check in my books (altho i'm missing Drawing and Wastelands cause i've loaned them out to friends)...

a few minutes later...

well, i checked the afterwords of both versions of The Gunslinger and the last three books and i think you're right, Warmark. it may have been something in the afterward of the first edition of The Gunslinger that made me think that he had always known the ending.

or maybe it was just the ending itself. maybe i felt like i always knew how it would end, because...that's how i felt when i got there. it was like an "Aha! of course!" moment.

Yeah, King didn't know the ending at the beginning, but there's no other way the story could've concluded.

Though I dearly wished I'd stopped when King told me to.

About this stopping when King tells you to...

It strikes me as similar in concept to Annie being told to say '19' to the guy who gets reanimated in The Gunslinger?

Or am I totally misreading the intent of this 'epilogue before the Coda' thing in the last book? I am still a long way away from there, but it seems like an interesting similarity...

Menolly wrote:It strikes me as similar in concept to Annie being told to say '19' to the guy who gets reanimated in The Gunslinger?

I don't remember that, it must be in the "new" Gunslinger.

The edition I read is 'revised and expanded throughout.'

Sorry, not Annie, Allie...

On page 48 of the paperback edition, Nort hands Allie a note from Walter O'Dim that reads:

Allie

"How'd he know my name?" she asked Nort, and Nort only shook his head.
She opened it and read this:

You want to know about Death. I left him a word. That word is NINETEEN. If you say it to him his mind will be opened. He will tell you what lies beyond. He will tell you what he saw.
The word is NINETEEN.
Knowing will drive you mad.
But sooner or later you will ask.
You won't be able to help yourself.
Have a nice day!
Walter O'Dim
P.S. The word is NINETEEN.
You will try to forget but sooner or later it will come out of your mouth like vomit.
NINETEEN.

And then when the whole town turns on Roland, Allie is shouting that she finally said NINETEEN to Nort and she can't stand what she learned...

Gotcha. I bought it but never read it.

So that whole thing wasn't in the original TGS?

I believe the "19" was added after the fact. I haven't compared the two books, and it's been a while since I read it.

But luckily, someone else has....

www.thedarktower.net/gunslinger/index.php

Yeah, King pulled a George Lucas on the original. personally, I find it sorta offensive. (More offensive than Lucas' own attempts in fact.) I won't be reading it as a matter of principle.

--A

well i read it. i had to just to see what he'd done.

i'd rather he hadn't. i like it that the tone of the books change from Gunslinger. i like The Gunslinger in its original form. as a writer i understand why he did it but as a reader, i wish he hadn't.

I am such a geek that I loved the change.... it made the works as a collection work better.

Bah.

here's just something dishonest about it. "I hadn't made this up back then, so let me go and change it so it looks like I did."

Nah, TGS was raw. It shoulda stayed that way.

--A

Avatar wrote:Bah.

here's just something dishonest about it. "I hadn't made this up back then, so let me go and change it so it looks like I did."

Nah, TGS was raw. It shoulda stayed that way.

--A

i quite agree!

(Your turn in the trivia thread.)

--A

oh

heh


ok


be right there

We agree to disagree. I love you fellow Tower geeks!

<--- doesn't know the difference as I haven't read the original except for possibly the original serialized first part in TMofF&SF.

I've never read the origonal version either, although all the stuff about Legion and the Beast would have been good if it had happened.

Avatar wrote:Bah.

here's just something dishonest about it. "I hadn't made this up back then, so let me go and change it so it looks like I did."

But, isn't that what he did with The Stand? And everyone seems to love the redone version.

NO. what he did in the stand was to put BACK stuff that had originally been edited out of The Stand.

what he did to The Gunslinger was to REVISE the story to make the language and some of the connections more closely match the tone of the rest of the series.