Read: The Gungslinger (revised)–“The Oracle and the Mountains”
In reading The Gunslinger again (for the first time), I’ve discovered part of what made The Drawing of the Three feel so lame by comparison. In Book One, the gunslinger (calling him Roland in this book’s context doesn’t feel right) reacts to any tenderness he feels toward Jake with shock bordering on horror. Eventually he allows himself to love the kid, but puts it aside the second the man in black makes it clear that he will face a choice between saving Jake and chasing the Tower. Finding and then killing Jake adds another log on the simmering fire of the gunslinger’s guilt, but it doesn’t change him in any fundamental way. As we’re constantly reminded, he’s got a lot of dead friends, many of whom ended up that way thanks to him.
But along comes Book Two, and by the end the guy’s a changed man, using the idioms of, genuinely caring about and taking risks on behalf of other people. Two of the most irritating people of all time, by the way–a junkie who never shuts up and a woman with a split personality, half of which is psychotic, who also never shuts up. We’re supposed to buy that these clowns peel away Roland’s layers to find the still-warm heart within, but not Jake? Bullroar.