Book Report: The Stand

1. Stephen King, The Stand (1978/1990) (2/15/19)

Although my last book report was over two weeks ago, I have been reading—the longest book I will ever read in my life.

The Stand isn't just a "read." It's a full-on experience. Apocalypse and the rebuilding of civilization; good versus evil; integrity versus weakness; survival versus sacrifice; letting go and looking forward; the logical and the irrational; love and hate. As King himself says in his new introduction, it is "a long tale of dark Christianity." And the vast majority of it takes place over only 100 days or so, the whole of it over the course of a year. A lot can happen fast when things go really haywire.

I first got the notion of reading this book after a conversation I had with a deputy on my search & rescue team, Ken Owen. We'd just finished a weeklong winter search management class and were driving home, talking about this and that. Our life experiences—and life orientations (read, politics)—are very different, but we're friends. We like each other. I don't remember how the topic of books came up, but he mentioned that his favorite book hands down is Stephen King's The Stand. I filed that bit of information away.

That was five years ago. In the meantime, I bought the book—the "complete and uncut edition," at 1,153 pages. Now I had something concrete to file away, because heck: I don't read books that long! And not only were there lots of pages, but the type was small and the leading tight. (The last long book I read, Neil Gaiman's American Gods—a not totally dissimilar story, btw—was 724 pages, but there were a lot fewer words on a page. Indeed, it was a lot less work.)

I started this book at the end of January, the same day I finished the last book of last year's challenge. I have been plugging away at it ever since. On Monday I was on page 700 and had to whine a little on Facebook: to the effect of, if I'd been reading the 1978 version, which was only about 500 pages long (thanks to King's publisher), I'd've been finished 200 pages ago. I got more responses than I usually do, very many of them saying essentially, "One of my favorite books!" "Love that book!"

And I can see why. It as as immersive a book as I've ever read—and no doubt would have been much less so at "only" 500 pages. And no, I never wanted to skip over anything—every word, every scene, every individual, right down to every wolf and weasel, seemed important. It's amazing writing, and King is a preposterously good storyteller and character weaver. I found the third section especially riveting as the climax played out. But I also enjoyed the first two parts, where the basic cast of characters, good, not so good, and downright bad (one guy in particular), are introduced, survivors of a deadly (you can say that again!) plague that kills off 99.4 percent of humanity. There are several weaving road trips that eventually bring the good guys (and a few bad ones) to Boulder, Colorado, via the Nebraska home of an ancient wise black lady, Abagail Freemantle, known as Mother. Everyone has had dreams of Mother—and also of a sinister "dark man," aka "the Walkin' Dude." It couldn't be much plainer than that. Choose your sides. Meanwhile, Las Vegas emerges as the not-so-good counterpart to Boulder. Spies are sent. Shit happens. There are explosions.

Yeah, it's hard to summarize 1,153 pages. Suffice it to say, it's a darn good story. Epic, for sure. And it ends on a positive note. Well, almost. There is an epilogue . . .

I don't know that I will call this one of my favorite books ever. Right now, though, I will say it's the best—most impressive—book I've read in quite a while. 

Here's a paragraph early on that seems to predict some of what will happen, uttered by one of the good guys, a sociologist and philosopher, as he's deciding whether to join a few others in their search for the woman in their dreams:

If you come back this way and renew your invitation to "jine up," Stu, I'll probably agree. That is the curse of the human race. Sociability. What Christ should have said was "Yea, verily, whenever two or three of you are gathered together, some other guy is going to get the living shit knocked out of him." Shall I tell you what sociology teaches us about the human race? I'll give it to you in a nutshell. Show me a man or woman alone and I'll show you a saint. Give me two and they'll fall in love. Give me three and they'll invent the charming thing we call "society." Give me four and they'll build a pyramid. Give me five and they'll make one an outcast. Give me six and they'll reinvent prejudice. Give me seven and in seven years they'll reinvent warfare. Man may have been made in the image of God, but human society was made in the image of His opposite number, and is always trying to get back home.

And now, even something several hundred pages long will strike me as "short," so I'd better use this momentum while I have it.