I vote revised, but I've never read the original. From what I've heard, it sounds like the changes were an improvement.
Original Gunslinger
Revised Gunslinger
I've probably sullied the vote by voting without ever reading the original. I base my vote on SK's argument/forward for revising The Gunslinger. He describes it as comparatively pompous in contrast to later works and of later DT chapters. I have to agree. Even the revised edition halts and stalls in its narrative flow. You can almost imagine young SK writing this stuff and stopping every paragraph to comb through his words with a thesaurus. (Really? was it the "Apotheosis of all deserts"?)
The narrative gets much better and you can tell when SK is not agonizing over which adverb to throw in. Those better passages seem more like an exercise in free-writing. Dialogue is smoother. We don't choke on detail. We allow the narrative to wash over us because dumbasses like me don't have to look up "apotheosis" in the dictionary. We can just enjoy the novel.
I say revised. But without ever reading the original. I don't even think I want to read the original.
Do You Folks Like Coffee?
Real Coffee,
From the Hills Of Colombia?
The Duncan Hills awake you
from a thousand deaths.
A cup of blackened blood.
(Die, Die)
You're dying for a cup.
Though I agree with your vote for revised....you DEFINITELY should read the original version.
I agree with Monte, about the advice to read the original. I prefer the original, but either way, I think if you can get a copy of the original it's worth a read. You may still prefer the revised, plenty of people do.
I don't think it has the same effect if you read the original first and then the revised or the opposite.. if you read the revised first and then the original. I don't think that the original can win you if you started with the revised one. I might be wrong.
Roland would have understood.
Letti, I'd be willing to bet that those people who started the series reading the revised and then at a later date picked up the original version ALL voted that the Revised is their preference. Shit...we've all heard from people that didn't even know there was an "original" until they came to this site.
I didn't vote because they don't compare. They're not the same book and they don't tell the same story so I actually take the original version as the starting point of a firstand the revised one as the starting point of anotherDT7.DT7
Last edited by Letti; 02-10-2009 at 01:08 PM. Reason: spoiler
Old thread I know, but here goes:
Man, that bugged me SO much that my search for a map of the world of The Dark Tower is what brought me to this forum in the first place. It annoyed the heck out of me and no matter how much I told myself that it must be intentional since the world is in drift, it still irked me.
That's a really good way to think about it. I'd love to have SKDT7
Okay, minor The Waste Lands spoilers:
I didn't see that as a problem at all as I don't think
Spoiler:
Back to The Gunslinger:
The whole east/west left right thing is weird though, something too drastic to just be put down to directions in drift I think. I agree it's a shame King didn't alter that part when he revised the book.
I have not read all the comics, so can someone answer this for me?
How do we know that Roland's ancestors didn't sail west across the Western sea to the land where we find Roland, thus making it the Western sea?
It'll take a lot more than words and guns,
A whole lot more than riches and muscle.
The hands of the many must join as one.
And together we'll cross the river.
Puscifer, "The Humbling River"
I own both the original and revised. I voted for the revised. I think that the original makes no sense at all! I am totally lost when I read the original version. Especially when you read the rest of Dark Tower volumes. For instance:
Spoiler:
My Library Obsession
http://www.librarything.com/catalog/pixiedark
When I was 12 or so I read the original in Hungarian and it blew my mind. It left tons of open questions but I didn't mind. Many years later I read the revised in English and I felt it.. so.. unnatural. All those extras.. a very bad example came to my mind but it's like when you have a beautiful daughter with blond hair and blue eyes but you tie damn big pink shiny ribbons into her hair to show how cute she is... all those extras feel like... sweaty, too much.
Just my two cents but I have written it down because it's the opposite of yours.
Roland would have understood.
It'll take a lot more than words and guns,
A whole lot more than riches and muscle.
The hands of the many must join as one.
And together we'll cross the river.
Puscifer, "The Humbling River"
I'm just glad that I DON'T have to choose. I can see the pros and cons of each, and very much like having both.
A hound will die for you, but never lie to you. And he'll look you straight in the face.
My Collection
I really don't think King should revise the rest of the series. It would be George Lucas and his "special editions" all over again.
I think the concept of revising DT1 to make it more accessible and linear with the rest of the series was a good idea (as it is harder to read than the rest of the series). I just think King just went the wrong way by making new changes to the continuity that end up contradicting 2-4 moreso than the original did. With the exception of the town being called "Farson" (which could have easily been fixed by saying that Farson's ancestors built it or something), a lot of the 'errors' were pretty small. I never once noticed that Roland's guns weren't the right weight, for example, when reading the book. And when Roland mentioned the rarity of paper in DT2, I had all but forgotten about him flipping through a magazine in Tull.
And 90% of the changes he made could have easily been introduced in books 5-7. For example, what point was there in changing the Beast to the Crimson King? Couldn't a later novel just make reference to the the Crimson King as the Beast? It's a pretty vague moniker that could easily have been applied to him. The guy has so many aliases as it is--Kingfish, Abballah, Los--that one more couldn't hurt.
A hound will die for you, but never lie to you. And he'll look you straight in the face.
My Collection
i totally agree with this, when I first picked up the Gunslinger, i loved it because of the difference in writing style. I think its the same in anything in life the first experience will always be the favourite, this is why there are so many arguements over remakes.
however i also think anyone who has read the revised, should also read the original, just because it is so different.
Letti i was coming to say that. For me the revised version with its 'additions' took away a lot of the mystique of the later books.Spoiler:and there is just so much that - to me - knowing whats coming takes the surprises and the changes in roland away.
! this is what i was trying to say ola
i must admit though, that i read the original years ago and lost it in my many house moves. i bought a Gunslinger book last year and it was very strange as you say Ola to read it again with such small and sometimes quite large additions.