Of course, Hey Jude is one of the first real clues we get in the Gunslinger that Roldand's world is somehow a mirror of our world, or at least deeply connected to our world. (I'm being vague since the book is vague at this point.)
It's a strange mix: Roland's world is one of cowboys and the Beatles. There is a feeling that great technology once existed here, but things have returned to a simpler time.
The Guardian article notes:
you can find it in 55 books, from Stephen King's Wolves of the Calla ("The people are real. You … Susannah … Jake … that guy Gasher who snatched Jake … Overholser and the Slightmans. But the way stuff from my world keeps showing up over here, that's not real. It's not sensible or logical, either, but that's not what I mean. It's just not real. Why do people over here sing Hey Jude? I don't know")The Guardian article is HERE.
In a November 17, 1988 interview with King, Janet C. Beaulieu discussed the Dark Tower quite a bit. Here is what they said about Hey, Jude and the Gunslingers world:
SK: I see the gunslinger's world as sort of a post-radiation world where everybody's history has gotten clobbered and about the only thing anybody remembers anymore is the chorus to "Hey, Jude."
JB: Yes, that keeps coming back. And there was another one - it's not coming to me.
SK: Well, it's a different world; it's not our world, but it's obviously a world that's been influenced by our world. There are some little funny islands of the past like Atlantis that are still there hanging around.
JB: The idea of a honky-tonk "Hey, Jude" is kind of neat.
(Beaulieu's interview is HERE.)
Wow, I have only begun to read the King interview and haven't even finished yet. Dear gosh that was halfway all over the map!
ReplyDeleteA lot of what he says ties into my own thoughts about the series. I said in the last Tower journal that Mid-World, for me, was really just the world of The Stand several years down the road. This interview sort of strengthens that conviction, especially in light of his comments about the Vietnam era. Together The Stand and the Dark Tower make up the ultimate paranoid sixties doomsday scenario, complete with mescaline and rock soundtrack.
It’s also interesting to get a closer look at how King’s religious beliefs tie into it all. It still all reminds me, again, as I said before, of like the barbarism of ancient times that Judaism and then Christianity encountered as they both struggled to survive. In the end, the barbarism collapsed the ancient world and Monotheism took over. The whole idea of Cort and the test of manhood sounds like something a Roman Emperor would use to train a centurion in a way. Such ways of thinking caused a lot of problems for a lot of people way back when. It’s like Mid-World is what happens to our world if it slips back into that barbarism.
ChrisC