According to Stephen King's Dark Tower series, that would be Roland Deschain of Gilead, affectionately known as "old long tall and ugly", by his friend Eddie Dean of New York.

According to this node, a gunslinger was a freelance killer in the old American West. How such a low life became the noble knight of Stephen King's tale is just a continuation of the process by which the dirty, often illiterate laborer known as the cowboy became a dashing character in American history.

Roland is the last of a breed of men who acted as law enforcers in a world that looks a bit like the one in A Canticle for Leibowitz. However, they were not just cops, they were (sort of ) knights as well, or such was the impression I got from the books. Experts in all sorts of weaponry, their most distinctive weapons were big revolvers. I have never seen, much less handled a revolver but I imagine the famous Colts or Smith & Wessons of cowboy movies would fit the description perfectly.…

Janis Joplin is singing with Big Brother in the Panhandle and almost everybody is high and it is a pretty nice Sunday afternoon.

Joan Didion, Slouching Towards Bethlehem

It’s raining outside and Janis is missing

she pours Southern Comfort into a cup

she smiles

she speaks of ambition

it’s not about money, she says,

or…

The first thing that came to mind was Brookings, Oregon. Actually, that was the second thing that came to mind, the continuation of an even more vague idea. All the books I had bought or found on a whim, that I had read the first few pages of, and set down somewhere. Sometimes those books become part of the boxes: the things I shuffle from place to place. I have a stack of them next to my bed right now. I have a garage full of books, somewhere, each one a little afternoon or weekend adventure that…