In this book, the Man in Black tells Allie that, if she says the word 'nineteen' to Nort the Weedeater, Nort will tell her what he saw while he was dead, and it will drive her insane. The one other book in which '19' appears in a meaningful way - the revised version of The Gunslinger - was also published in revised form in 2003: the same period as books V-VII. As such, new ideas - including an obsession with the day and year in which he almost died, (the 19th of June in 1999) and his age when he first came up with some ideas that would end up in the Dark Tower series (19 years old) - entered King's thought process in that period. Six years passed between the publication of book IV, Wizard and Glass, in 1997, and book V, Wolves., in 2003. This makes some sense, since King wrote books V-VII over the course of a year or two after the accident that nearly killed him (on June 19, 1999), whereas the other books were written years apart from one another. Although it is featured in the revised version of book I, The Gunslinger, the obsession with '19' pops up rather suddenly in book V, Wolves of the Calla, and mostly disappears by book VII, The Dark Tower.

The reason I ask this is because the introduction hints it is important, but I haven't experienced that until book 5. I'm not asking about what the number 19 could mean or how it is referenced in books 5–7/8 I don't want to spoil the fun.

Through books 2–5 I noted the whole introduction chapter was same as in book 1, while the following 'Foreword' or 'Argument' was more like an introduction to the book in question.Īnd hence I disregarded 'in the stories you are about to read' as a reference to the series and thought of it more as a reference to the stories in the introduction (King writes about being 19 years old, and how we was at 19, and how 19 is an important age, and how he found out that 'Pride goeth before a fall' at around the age of '19 × 2' etc.).įast-forward to book 5: Wolves of the Calla, which I'm reading right now at about 10%, the references to number 19 are rather in-your-face and I immediately recalled and reread the introduction chapter… which raised my question:ĭid I miss references to number 19 in the books 1–4? Or is it more or less happenstance the introduction mentions the importance of number 19-because Wolves of Calla was first published on and the introduction was written on, so King was probably working on WoC on some level while writing the introduction to the series. I tried to keep that in mind while reading the book 1: The Gunslinger, but the idea faded quickly as I didn't stumble onto 19-references. Hobbits were big when I was nineteen (a number of some import in the stories you are about to read). They all (1–5 at least) feature the same introduction, written by King on Janubeginning: I'm currently reading the Dark Tower series in editions which are published in 2003/2006/2012 ( Specifically these).

Dark tower book four