Madi > Recent Status Updates

So here is The Stand, Constant Reader, as its author originally intended for it to roll out of the showroom. [...] And the final reason for presenting this version is the simplest.
Although it has never been my favorite novel, it is the one people who like my books seem to like the most. When I speak (which is as rarely as possible), people always speak to me about The Stand.

On having to remove roughly 400 pages from the original manuscript:

I was asked if I would like to make the cuts, or if I would prefer someone in the editorial department to do it. I reluctantly agreed to do the surgery myself. I think I did a fairly good job, for a writer who has been accused over and over again of having diarrhea of the word processor.

When asked, “How do you write?” I invariably answer, “One word at a time,” and the answer is invariably dismissed. But that is all it is. It sounds too simple to be true, but consider the Great Wall of China, if you will: one stone at a time, man. That’s all. One stone at a time. But I’ve read you can see that motherfucker from space without a telescope.

"If this expansion is something you want, I invite you to come along with me just a little farther. I have lots to tell you, and I think we can talk better around the corner.
In the dark.”

From the Preface (part 1)
If this is not what you want, don’t buy this book. If you have bought it already, I hope you saved your sales receipt. The book-shop where you made your purchase will want it before granting you credit or a cash refund.

If this expansion is something you want, I invite you to come along with me just a little farther. I have lots to tell you, and I think we can talk better around the corner.

Despite the tremendous amount of material generated by Exploration A, no one has ever commented on the game Daisy wants to play with her father, perhaps because everyone assumes it is either a request "to play always" or just a childish neologism.
Then again, "always" slightly mispronounces "hallways."
It also echoes it.

In that one brief moment, I actually wondered if “okay” or something like it might still be possible. But that is how a tragedy like ours or King Lear breaks your heart—by making you believe that the ending might still be happy, until the very last minute.

When I spent the night downstairs with Meredith she lay cool and quiet beside me, but always kept one hand on my arm or my back or my chest while she read (sometimes for hours without ever turning a page), perhaps just to be certain I was there.

“Clever man,” Colborne said, after a moment’s consideration. “You know, I remember reading Caesar in school. They never told us any of that, just dragged us through it. I must have been about fifteen and I thought I was being punished for something.”
“Anything can feel like punishment if it’s taught poorly.”

In the normal course of things, editors flatter writers into seeing everything that's wrong with their book. Every compliment hides a criticism. It's a diplomatic way to proceed, meant to improve a book without crushing its author's spirit.

Acknowledgments:

Vince Gilligan. For giving me the role of my life—that also changed my life.

On filming for the show "Brooklyn South":

I was never comfortable. Never relaxed. No one can do good work if they’re not relaxed.

On playing Tim Whatley in Seinfeld

An electrician was adjusting a light, and he called down, “Hey, you know what would be funny?”
I was a bit confused. Was he talking to me? “What?” I asked.
“It would be funny if before you put the laughing gas mask on Jerry, you took a hit off it yourself.”
I thought about it and realized he was right.

I so clearly remember hearing these comments reworked and recited back to me as admonishments whenever my parents disapproved of my behavior. If I were a kid today, I'd probably be diagnosed with mild ADHD. Back then, the only descriptor for my condition was: Bryan needs to pay more attention.

[2/2]

I got adequate grades, but the teacher comment section of my report card was always filled with ominous statements: Bryan needs to apply himself. Bryan is often goofing around and disruptive. Bryan spends too much time daydreaming.

[1/2]

Even after the Dodgers moved to their permanent home at Chavez Ravine in 1962, and even after things at my house started to fall apart, I knew I could depend on the smell of fresh-cut grass, Vin Scully's dulcet voice calling the game on the radio, and the clean symmetry of the baseball diamond. The sense of hope you could dare to have with runners at the corners and no outs.

Since she’d started teaching and become a mother, she’d felt old, but that night, she realized she wasn’t old at all. You couldn’t be old and still be wrong about as many things as she’d been wrong about, and it was a kind of immaturity to call yourself old before you were.

The work had been hers, yes, but it had equally been his. It had been theirs, and it wouldn’t have existed without the both of them. This was a tautology that had only taken her the better part of two decades to understand.

Why wouldn’t you tell someone you loved them? Once you loved someone, you repeated it until they were tired of hearing it. You said it until it ceased to have meaning. Why not? Of course, you goddamn did.

No matter how good an MMORPG was, gamers eventually did leave. They moved on to other games, other worlds, sometimes even the real one.

“A headstone for Emily was placed in Friendship Cemetery. The inscription read:

EMILY MARKS DAEDALUS
1875–1909
SHE HATH DIED OF DYSENTERY.”

As a wedding gift to Ms. Marks, Dr. Daedalus created a topiary hedge maze in the garden by her house. When asked why she had decided to make such a gift, the doctor replied cryptically, “To make a game is to imagine the person playing it.”

“And what is love, in the end?” Alabaster said. “Except the irrational desire to put evolutionary competitiveness aside in order to ease someone else’s journey through life?”

“If nothing has an effect, then why bother smoking and drinking?” Emily asked.
“Aren’t you a prickly one? My seventh wife was like that. A rogue and peasant slave to reality,” Alabaster said. “I suppose we drink and we smoke for the same reasons it is done elsewhere. We must fill our infinite days with something.”

Bong Cha narrowed her eyes at Sam, deciding if her grandson was trying to trick her into appearing foolish. “Yes, in my mind, she did. I knew your mother so well I could play her part. The same with my own mother and my grandmother and my childhood best friend, Euna, who drowned in the lake by her cousin’s house. There are no ghosts, but up here”—she gestured toward her head—“it’s a haunted house.”

[2/2]

Sam thought she was finished entertaining the subject when she added, “Sometimes, I spoke to Anna anyway, and this helped a little.”
“Do you mean like a ghost?” His grandmother was the least likely person in the world to see ghosts.
“Sam, don’t be ridiculous. There are no ghosts.”
“Okay, so you spoke to her. She was definitely not a ghost. Did she ever reply?”


[1/2]

“It’s okay, Marx,” Sadie says. “You can let go.”
As the brain is detaching from the body, you think, How I will miss the horses.”

The game is only over if you stop playing. There is always one more life. Even the most brutal death isn’t final. You could have taken poison, fallen into a vat of acid, been decapitated, been shot a hundred times, and still, if you clicked restart, you could begin it all over again. Next time, you would get it right. Next time, you might even win.
But it cannot be denied.

[2/2]

“Some hours, days, or weeks later, you are listening to a doctor tell your mother and father, in an outrageously serene voice, that you, Marx Watanabe, citizen of the world, are going to die.
You are a gaming person, which is to say you are the kind of person who believes that “game over” is a construction.

[1/2]

Simon’s eyes were moist. “I know I’m impossible, and I know you don’t care about German words or marriage. All I can say is, I love you and thank you for marrying me anyway.”

[2/2]