The Stand in Overdue Podcast

Aug 30, 2011 Tracey rated it it was amazing

Shelves: fantasy

Slightly longer review: on my blog.

I knew the beginning of the story very well: top secret research facility + oops (I don't think we ever find out what that first oops was – simple butterfingers?) + second oops of unlocked gate + fleeing guard + third oops of inattentive guards = worldwide catastrophe. A monster flu, a mega-flu, an über-flu, resistant to all treatment (or, rather, adaptive to all treatment), spreading with horrifying swiftness – augmented, apparently, by release of the same str Slightly longer review: on my blog.

I knew the beginning of the story very well: top secret research facility + oops (I don't think we ever find out what that first oops was – simple butterfingers?) + second oops of unlocked gate + fleeing guard + third oops of inattentive guards = worldwide catastrophe. A monster flu, a mega-flu, an über-flu, resistant to all treatment (or, rather, adaptive to all treatment), spreading with horrifying swiftness – augmented, apparently, by release of the same strain in other areas of the world to level the playing field, or some such. And only something like 1% of the population immune. It's very realistic. It's too realistic. I can see a situation, a chain of catastrophes, in which every single "oops" – dropped phial or whatever it was, mechanical failure in the alarm system, mechanical failure in the door seals, human failure of the guards, who should have been the last failsafe protection, playing cards in their booth instead of paying attention to their duty - all of it, easily preventable, and still happening. That's why this is one of the scariest horror novels I can think of. Not because of Russell Flagg (as much) – I was mostly afraid of the man-made epidemic.

My respect for Stephen King grows with every book of his I read, and my remorse at my long-held prejudice against him grows proportionately. This is a masterful work. Yes, I have a couple of quibbles: it seemed to take forever to move from the plot arc of the illness spreading to the arc of the survivors' quest. There is a vulgarity of language that is off-putting in most books (another status update: " I think my only, only issue with The Stand is the sheer number of people who wet their pants ... And none of them ever just "pees" much less urinates - they make wee-wee, or just make, or their bladders give way, or some such. It just starts being funny after a while." That's pretty typical, really.) But those are just quibbles. The language is part and parcel with the story, with the points of view, and, of course, with the writing style. And it took as long as it took.

The ending might not have been as ... "explosive" is hardly the right word, but I'll go with that - as it might have been. But, really, the book could have ended with a pie-eating contest between the Good Guys and Randall Flagg, and it would still be an astounding, even important book. This is a keeper. ...more

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May 22, 2012 Shannon rated it it was amazing

I don't really know what I can say that would do this book justice. Anything I could write would be the ravings of a fangirl, and I try not to do that, but this book is definitely one of my favorites. It's such a modern classic, and seems to be the kind of book that folks who read what I do have generally skimmed through at least once. It's been imitated, too, and there seems to be a lot of post-apocalyptic novels getting written lately, but this is one of the best.

I love everything about this b ...more

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Mar 13, 2013 Kate Sherrod rated it liked it

OK, we've pretty much established that Stephen King drives me batdung insane, but one of my best web-sisters loves him,* and insists that, since I liked Randall Flagg in all those Dark Tower books I read last year, I'll like The Stand. Even though the miniseries was kind of risible.**

So did I? Well, yes and no. Mostly yes, but not for the reasons most people like it, I suspect.

Once again, I am in complete awe of King's ability to create amazing characters and to write about them quite beautifull OK, we've pretty much established that Stephen King drives me batdung insane, but one of my best web-sisters loves him,* and insists that, since I liked Randall Flagg in all those Dark Tower books I read last year, I'll like The Stand. Even though the miniseries was kind of risible.**

So did I? Well, yes and no. Mostly yes, but not for the reasons most people like it, I suspect.

Once again, I am in complete awe of King's ability to create amazing characters and to write about them quite beautifully, even lyrically. Even in his mid-book series of slapstick vignettes in which a series of people who have survived the apocalyptic "superflu" (aka "Captain Trips") which is King's chosen instrument of world-ending destruction turn around and succumb to more banal and stupid ways to die like drug overdoses, electrocution, getting locked in a walk-in freezer, etc., the characters he kills off with such hilarious glee are vivid and believable and sometimes even sympathetic, even though some of them only live and die in a single paragraph. This is totally remarkable.

And his more important characters, whose stories he spins out over a good thousand and some pages, are just as stunning a set of creations. Trashcan Man, Frannie, Stu, Larry, Nadine, Lloyd, Glen, Ralph, Harold, Tom... they're all people you can believe really exist in the world, whole and flawed and trying to get by in the aftermath of the superflu. Watching them (well, most of them) trying to rebuild a democratic society when (again, most of them) finally come together in mid-novel is fascinating, believable and would come over as well-imagined even without the convenient sociological wisdom of Glen, who was, that's right, a sociologist before the superflu. Indeed, the rebuilding of the mini-America in the Free Zone of what used to be Boulder, CO is the best part of the book, for me. I would gladly have read a whole novel just about that. But alas, this is Stephen King, writing for his fans, and Stephen King fans demand horror and gore and big time morality play-flavored Good versus Evil. Which he more than delivers, ruining these great characters in the process in the way I have complained about before -- not letting them be themselves in all their awesome, complicated glory***, preferring to send them dreams and divine/infernal messages and mysterious knowledge he can't narratively justify so just punts and calls "intuition" or "gut feeling." Barf. And telegraphing fates way in advance of their actual occurrence, so we know, hundreds of pages ahead of time, that so-and-so won't ever see such-and-such again. Double barf.

But I knew I'd be running into that going in, since it was, after all, the miniseries of The Stand that first really rubbed my nose in how crassly King characters get manipulated into executing his plots. Fortunately, that wasn't all that was going on in these 1100+ pages; what really kept this book interesting for me, in addition to the rough and ready civics, was its status as a complete love letter to the geography of America, from Maine to the midwest, from Arkansas to Colorado, from Indiana to Las Vegas, even when the country is transformed into a giant graveyard of dead cars and deader people, King's love for the landscape comes through on every page. The man has obviously made a joyous, directionless road trip or two in his day.

And I'd love to have someone like him as a traveling companion, with or without the obstacles of a million stalled out cars on the highways. But the second he started talking about how he "just knew" we had to take a certain turn, or to try to talk me into feeling that way, boot. Outta the car. My life is my own, Jack. Er, Steve.

*Who else could I be talking about here but EssJay, the @PopQueenie?

**How risible? We had us one of our infamous drinkalongs recently.

***And seriously, the glory of some of these characters is awesome in its complexity. Two of these in particular come to mind: Larry Underwood and Harold Lauder. Larry, a recovering rock star, spends a lot of the novel wrestling with a dual identity/morality crisis with its roots in a childhood in which he was dismissed as a "taker" who is "missing something" essential to his development into a fully trustworthy, capable adult, in his mother's opinion. Thrust into a positions of ever increasing responsibility, he struggles with this outdated and inaccurate version of himself through early failings right on through his selection as one of the Free Zone's leaders and, ultimately, heroes. Harold is barely out of his teens and still bears all of the wounds of a youth in the shadow of a pretty and popular older sister; a whip-smart nerd blessed with none of his sister's gifts, his own struggle is with an equally outdated self image as the eternal outcast. It's pretty near impossible not to see Harold in terms of Eric Cartman in the South Park episode in which Dog Whisperer Cesar Milan almost succeeds in turning Cartman into a decent human being. Harold has all the potential in the world, and all the opportunity, but his own lack of confidence in himself defeats him. For me, The Stand is a study in contrasts between these two young men; ultimately a lot of what brings about their divergent fates is the quality of the women they encounter on their journeys -- and whether or not they get to leave certain other women behind. Larry's negatively projecting mother dies at the beginning of his journey, and he moves on to meet Rita (a helpless older woman who forces him into a caretaker role early on), Nadine (a troublesome figure with an evil destiny who chooses it over him) and finally Lucy, who loves him unconditionally and believes in him no matter what. Larry is lucky. Harold? Poor Harold is stuck with Fran, his sister's best friend, who knew him when and can't forget his nerdy fat boy origins, won't let him forget them, either, and is not a very nice person anyway (cue Fran partisans screaming for my blood, but dude, she is a popular girl who never got over herself, no matter how she kind of sort of sucks it up and grows up later on).

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Nov 06, 2008 Mia rated it liked it

Shelves: 2008-books

Not bad... a couple friends told me that you either love or hate this novel, but I kinda just thought it was okay. Not my favorite King, but not his worst either. I don't know, it was just okay. ...more

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