In Progress: The Stand

Thanks to vacation and other fun things, The Stand, Stephen King's magnum opus, is coming up quicker than expected! If you were disappointed to not yet see an excoriation of Lawnmower Man or one of the other not-yet-seen movies from Night Shift, don't worry. I'll be watching and reviewing as I track them down. Admittedly I'm not putting much effort into this, but just think of future reviews as little surprises down the road.

June 4 (page 93): Even in its original shorter version, this book clocks in at over 800 pages, nearly double that of The Shining. Therefore, what would normally be considered good progress barely makes a dent here. The plague is getting started, but nothing serious outside of the army base where it burst out from. Especially impressive in this section are the character back stories, even the ones that are early Captain Trips fodder, and in particular the chapter sections describing the wild vectors the virus is taking through the country.

June 20 (page 260): I've been juggling some other books this month, so the updates aren't exactly copious. However, I finally reached the end of Book 1 ("Captain Trips") and figured it was time for some quick reflection. Stephen King has managed to kill off 99.4% of the world's population in the space of a short novel, inadvertently making the previous three books substantially less scary. So far the book has read more like a warped version of Earth Abides, but the Dark Man has appeared twice now and the dreams are beginning, which will sort out the survivors. The next book ("On the Border") will physically bring the groups together, something that has barely started at this point. The last sentence ominously portends the conflict ahead between Harold and Stu.

July 3 (page 428): Maybe my recall of the long version, which I read years ago, is not so great, but much of the focus has been on the "good guys" in Boulder. Randall Flagg has been pretty infrequent and Lloyd has been minimized. True, Trashy has gotten quite a bit of coverage, probably more than the rest of the baddies put together, which I don't really consider a good thing. Trash Man makes me feel dirty just reading about him. As I continue through Book 2 ("On the Border") it feels like King is wrapping up the scientific part of the book and getting a lot more theological and/or paranormal. While I don't prefer the supernatural, I understand it comes with the territory when reading Stephen King, and therefore the narrative is actually becoming more engaging. Yet, here we are halfway through the book, and no sign of confrontation yet. Harold's on the edge though. Just add Nadine and....kaboom. (I've also moved this post back to the top so it isn't buried by Graveyard Shift and Children of the Corn....you're welcome.)

July 9 (page 621): I've been picking up speed, and reached the end of Book 2 last night. For about the last 300 pages, the focus has stayed entirely in the Boulder Free Zone, but I sneaked a peak at the beginning of Book 3 ("The Stand"), and we're finally going to get a look at how the other half lives. While I still contend that King's theology is nothing special, it certainly is driving the second half of the book. Those we think of as marginalized in regular modern society have inherited the Earth, as represented by society in Boulder. Nobody was really powerful before the plague. Stu was just one of the guys, Fran was thinking about what to do with her life, and (looking to the other side), Trash and Lloyd were in and out of jail. Nick (deaf and mute) and Mother Abigail (108 years old) by their very conditions were not valued in the previous world. Only Larry, who had the dubious honor of performing the last hit (?) song of the old days, carries any modicum of fame with him, and he has been pretty good at denying that ever happened.

July 13 (page 747): This will probably be the last update and I'm now reaching the part where the pages fall out. Since all copies of this version are old and this is a mass-market paperback, even with heavy tape, the last few pages are literally falling out. Unless this version is drastically different, I continue to be surprised by how little I remember from my first reading of the novel. For such a giant book, the real confrontation doesn't even get underway until the last 100 pages. Also, where Book 2 was almost entirely about the Boulder Free Zone group, Book 3 hasn't even devoted one page to how things are going since Stu, Larry, Ralph, and Glen took off. Only Stephen King could write a book longer than all his other previous books combined (eh...maybe half anyway) and still have me feeling like he is rushing the narrative. No wonder he gave the world the unabridged edition 12 years later.