I have not forgotten my duties. In fact I am still reading, perhaps more voraciously than ever before. I just made it through the unabridged version of The Stand, all 1,152 pages in a little less than 3 weeks. Although 5 hours on a plane affords one a lot of reading time. So now I am left with the question of whether or not to go back in time and blog about the books that I have read. I may do that for some, like The Tommyknockers, or Misery, or Skeleton Crew. While others will fall away, like The Talisman - a great story, but one that grows foggy in my memory almost immediately. In fact, the one thing that stuck out so strongly in my mind about The Talisman was something from the last 10 pages of the book. In my mind "Run Through the Jungle" (from CCR) played an important role in the book - but not so much.
The Stand
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| Beloved and well-read |
Including the abridged version, I have read this story 5 times. [Given my capacity for rereading books that I love, it is a bit of a wonder that I have read anything other than Stephen King and Tolkein]. In the process of reading, I lost the front cover and the back cover, taped them both on and lost the back cover again because I got sand in the tape, I got chocolate on a couple of the pages and a grease stain in the middle of the book. Poor thing has been through the wringer.
I would love to give you impressions, but I feel that they would be fairly similar to my other posts on the abridged version: post 1, post 2, and post 3. The big question that I posed to myself was whether or not I would be able to notice the discrepancies. The answer is yes, all 500 pages of them. Characters were left out, intense scenes were left out, there are many more allusions to Lord of the Rings (many of them outright references to Mordor and the Eye of Sauron), but the thing that sticks out the most is how much more cohesive the story is. I cannot imagine that his publishers thought the edited version was better. Sometimes there is just no accounting for taste.
If you read Danse Macabre, King's thesis is that the works of fiction published represent the collective fears of the country/world. You can look to current works of fiction to know what it is that we are all terrified of. Generalizing of course: in the 1950's it was big bugs and nuclear war; in the 80's we were faced with rape (vampires) and aliens; in the 90's it was technology taking over (Terminator) and society breaking down (The Stand). Right now, we are faced with fears of viruses that will turn us into zombies and cause our society to break down. The Stand is a great study of society breaking down and rebuilding itself - as well as the classic struggle between good and evil.
Part of me is a little sad that I will not be reading this book again during the project. But, not to worry, the Dark Man comes back in The Dark Tower series. But 763 pages of 4 Past Midnight stand between me and Randall Flagg.
For those keeping track, I have now read 12,370 pages!
so far...
Like any good Stephen King novel, I was up until 2am, because I could not put it down. That has happened too many times to count. The Stand is one of my ultimate favorites - but I much prefer the unabridged version. There were many places where a hazy memory of 'something more' arose. The joy of this project is that I am going to get to read this book again. If I am lucky it will be in the next 6 months.
One final comparison to Lord of the Rings:
Most people have seen The Return of the King, the end of the journey. It is fitting point out that Bilbo Baggins is writing "There and Back Again, a Hobbit's Tale." This title tells us that we get to read the journey back home - which takes 30 minutes or so in the movie (I secretly laughed a bunch when people kept trying to get up at the end of the movie, thinking it was over).
The Stand has a similar ending [spoiler alert]
After Las Vegas goes up in a nuclear explosion, we are left with Stu in a ditch 300 miles or so from home. The eagles don't come for him, but Tom and Kojak do. The last 60 pages are devoted to Stu's journey home. There is of course the struggle for his life - he has pnemonia and a broken leg - there are high passes, wolves and snow, but he makes it home.
But in the end those last 60 pages are worth it.
Next up: The Long Walk
Well, I have reached Boulder, CO - the halfway point of The Stand. My intention when I started reading this version was to see if I could notice the discrepancies between the two versions. I have noticed a few, but more than that, I feel like I have missed things, like maybe I was not paying attention when I was reading. But, I know that is not the case.
Instead, my focus has been to notice the similarities between The Stand and Lord of the Rings. I would not have thought about it if not for reading King's inspiration. LOTR is such an iconic work, such an epic, that it is difficult to not pay homage to it. Yes, you can argue that it is the Hero's Journey and Tolkein was not writing an original story - that's fine. Either way, I love the little ways, overt and covert, that LOTR shows up in this book.
Let's start with the simple fact that both novels are happening in a time when things have collapsed - in both books, people are walking through cities that were once bright and shining. In this 'time after' there comes the epic battle between good and evil. Who will prevail? Mother Abigal, 108 years old, blessed with forsight, is Gandalf, the wizard, ancient and seemingly blessed with forsight. The bad guy, Randall Flagg, uses a black stone with a red flaw that often looks like an eye (the palantir frim LOTR). Not to mention the fact that people feel Flagg as a red eye that sees them from afar. There are many more instances, and I think that I love each and everyone!
A couple of other things to share:
- There is one mention of swine flu. I would not have caught this before, but last year when H1N1 was quite the subject, there was some discussion of the swine flu scare in the 70s.
- Page 122 is the first mention of Oswald (as in Lee Harvey) in a King novel. Interesting, because his latest book (at this writing) is 11/22/63 in which Oswald is featured heavily.
- Larry wonders at how clear the air seems and what "they had been doing to the planet." Notable because in September of 2001, there was an increase in temperature difference between night and day, due to all planes being grounded. Amazing how nature bounces back, after just a couple of days.
- I have a lot of irritation for the mini series that was created, because in my mind, Stu Redman is Gary Sinese and Frannie Goldsmith is Molly Ringwald. I wish that was not so.
It just would not be flu season without reading a novel about a plague!
The abridged version of The Stand. I have never read this version but I have twice read the unabridged, all 1100 pages. I have always wanted to read this version, mostly so I could explore the differences. Hopefully I will be able to do that - although with so many books in between it seems a little unlikely.
I love that he felt this is his fantasy epic, like The Lord of the Rings. I agree, up to a point, because The Dark Tower series is his LOTR epic. I feel qualified to make that statement since I have read his catalog and I have read LOTR ten times. [Why read new books, when there are so many brilliant ones to re-read?]
Stephen King's Inspiration:
For a long time--ten years, at least--I had wanted to write a fantasy epic like The Lord of the Rings, only with an American setting. I just couldn't figure out how to do it. Then, slowly after my wife and kids and I moved to Boulder, Colorado, I saw a 60 Minutes segment on CBW (chemical-biological warfare). I never forgot the gruesome footage of the test mice shuddering, convulsing, and dying, all in twenty seconds or less. That got me remembering a chemical spill in Utah that killed a bunch of sheep (these were canisters on their way to some burial ground; they fell off the truck and ruptured). I remembered a news reporter saying, "If the winds had been blowing the other way, there was Salt Lake City." This incident later served as the basis of a movie called Rage, starring George C. Scott, but before it was released, I was deep into The Stand, finally writing my American fantasy epic, set in a plague-decimated USA. Only instead of a hobbit, my hero was a Texan named Stu Redman, and instead of a Dark Lord, my villain was a ruthless drifter and supernatural madman named Randall Flagg. The land of Mordor ("where the shadows lie, according to Tolkien) was played by Las Vegas.
