Kemper's Reviews > Wizard and Glass

Stephen King ended the third book in the Dark Tower series on a wicked cliffhanger in 1991. By 1994 my patience had grown thin, especially after King had delivered 787 pages of pure crap with Insomnia. Even worse was that he actually had the nerve to tease some of the DT stuff in that overstuffed abomination. I was relatively sure that King was sitting on pile of money somewhere and laughing at me as he wrote page after page that was NOT the fourth DT book.

So in October of ‘94 when I read that King was going to make an appearance in Manhattan, Kansas, as part of a cross-country motorcycle tour he was doing to promote independent bookstores, I scored a ticket and then drove over two hours to confront that rat bastard. However, my plan to demand the next book in a fierce voice of righteous indignation was derailed when one of the first things King* said was that he’d save someone a question, and that he was very close to starting the next Dark Tower. He also told us that it would definitely be a tale of Roland’s past. The crowd cheered. Three years later after suffering through Rose Madder and Desperation, we’d finally get Wizard & Glass.

* King’s appearance in an auditorium on the K-State campus had several hundred people in it, and it took place on a foggy night. When he took the stage, King noted that it was spooky weather, like one of his novels. Then he started speculating that it was the kind of night that a homicidal escapee from a mental asylum might be running around in. The crowd laughed. King continued that the maniac was probably out in the parking lot, checking cars to see if any were unlocked. The crowd loved it. Stephen King was telling us a creepy story on a foggy October night. How cool was that? King kept talking, adding details about the maniac and the knife he picked up somewhere. The crowd grew a bit uneasy but was still chuckling.

Then Uncle Steve started in on asking us if we were sure, REALLY sure, that we had locked our cars. You thought you did, but do you actually remember doing it? By then, the crowd had fallen silent. By the time King described the maniac finding an unlocked car, everyone was on the edge of their seat. Say what you will about the man, he took a brightly lit auditorium full of laughing cheering people and creeped the living shit out of everyone in it in about two minutes. And when I left, I checked my backseat before getting it, and I wasn’t the only one in the parking lot who did.

So I was more than a little anxious to read this when it was finally published in 1997. I was delighted that King delivered a thrilling and satisfying outcome to the cliffhanger that had me on pins and needles for six goddamn years. I was even more thrilled when the gunslingers crossed from Mid-World to Topeka since I’m a Kansan, and we don’t get a lot of fiction set here. The idea that a Dark Tower novel was going to at least partially take place in my neck of the woods had me bouncing in my chair as I read. It was even cooler when the Topeka that Roland and company were in was apparently the Topeka from The Stand, my favorite King novel.

When Roland and his friends headed east on I-70, I remembered the ‘94 tour, and I realized that King had very probably been inspired by his motorcycle ride after that appearance when he had told us that he’d be starting the new book soon. I theorized that I’d seen the man himself the night before he’d taken that drive and probably come up with that scene. It felt like I’d been near the blast zone of his inspiration, and I got a remarkable kick out of that.

And then the whole book went to hell.

This was several years before George Lucas would impart his painful lesson to all of us regarding prequels, and King made some of the same mistakes first. Fifteen year old Roland has been sent out of Gilead to a rural community called Majis by his father along with his friends Cuthbert and Alain after passing his early manhood test. We’d already gotten glimpses of a very young Roland in The Gunslinger so setting a tale shortly after this didn’t really tell us anything new about Roland's history.

Plus, King decided that Roland needed a tragic love story in his background so most of the book is filled with the young passion of the gunslinger and Susan Delgado, a beautiful girl who has agreed to be a kind of concubine to the mayor. Roland and his friends stumble across a conspiracy among the locals to help John Farson, the leader of a the opposition of a civil war that is distracting everyone to the larger problem of how time and space have started going adrift in Roland’s world.

If King wanted to do a flashback novel, I would have much preferred to get more information about any of the many other numerous events that he only touched on or teased in the rest of the books. (Like the Battle of Jericho Hill for example.) Instead, we get a drawn out cat-and-mouse game between Roland and a failed gunslinger as he and Susan sneak around to see each other on the sly.

I probably wouldn’t have been quite so disappointed if King hadn’t gone and done the one thing I can’t forgive: he incorporated The Wizard of Oz into the ending.

I HATE the goddamn Wizard of Oz.

It’s a Kansas thing. When you’re from here and particularly when you had a job where you traveled a lot and every single freaking person you meet has to say things like, “Oh, I guess you’re not in Kansas anymore! Yuk yuk!” or “Where’s Toto? Yuk yuk!” and then you spend a couple of nights in jail for punching some of those fucktards in the throat…. Well, let’s just say you tend to flip through the movie when you see it on TV.

So my Wizard and Glass experience went kind of like this:

- “It’s finally here!

- Wow, that was awesome!

-Holy shit! It’s Topeka!

- Holy shit! It’s Topeka from The Stand! Even better!

-Oh, flashback time. We’re going to see younger Roland whip some ass and get some answers.

- Love story?

-Well, I guess those guys are kind of evil.

-Love story??

- They’re just going to sit around waiting?

- Love story???

- Why do they all talk so stupid?

- Love st.ZZZZZZZZZZ

-Urk.. What’s going on? Oh, finally! Shooting! Battle! Killing!

- Back to I-70 outside of Topeka. Maybe this is getting back on track.

- Wait…. No… Seriously. The Wizard of Oz??…. Really? I mean, I know it’s Kansas, but that’s all you could come up with….For fuck’s sake you aren’t really going to have the goddamn dog put on ruby shoes too are you? Oh, you are. Suck my….”

And then I had to wait another six goddamn years for the next book.