Book #24 The Stand by Stephen King

The Stand

Length Of Time In Possession Before Being Read : 2 years and 2 months

Upon reading The Stand, I had already read the following Stephen King books : Different Seasons, The Green Mile, Dolores Claiborne, and the first three (and a half) novels in The Dark Tower saga which I gave up on during Wizard and Glass. Generally speaking, I have been nonplussed by Stephen King's popularity over the years, but The Stand, because of its widely held reputation as the best of King's gargantuan output, has been on my "to read" list for some time.

In The Stand, a superflu decimates the US population, leaving a small percentage of people alive. These survivors begin to dream of two people : Mother Abigail, the eldest person left alive, a woman of strong religious conviction and Randall Flagg, a man "whose name is Legion" and is coincidentally also the destructive antagonist of The Dark Tower Saga. In a classic choice between good and evil, the survivors have to decide whether they will seek the path to Mother Abigail and her group in Colorado or follow Randall Flagg, joining his new society in Las Vegas.      


Since The Stand was first published in 1978, and re-released and re-set in 1990; (I had the 1990 version) post apocalyptic stories, which involve a virus of some kind decimating the population have become very popular. I've read several over the last few years.

Through the misfortune of reading a book which came first but proves similar to recent things, many areas of the plot feel samey, like tropes of what is expected from this kind of novel. Loss, confusion, banding together with fellow previously unknown survivors who become involved with each other, set backs on the journey, rebuilding a community. Yet this is unfair because King got there first, so others have imitated this, this and Day Of The Triffids. However, some writers have bettered this type of story, a particular example is Justin Cronin's The Passage.

For me, as is my general experience with King as a writer, I found the prose flat and felt no emotional connection to any of the imperiled characters which is a difficulty when it comes to enjoying a book. The Stand is 1,320 pages long which is a challenge for any reader, and it took me two weeks. But, it wasn't until page 700 that I engaged with the novel and started to get excited by what was happening.

In those first 700 pages there's a lot of inaction in terms of any kind of "Stand" between the two sides, just lots of council meetings and re-establishing law and order and government and utilities and stuff. Practical and honest, yet inactive: hardly a fight between good and evil. Flagg and Abigail for that they represent the polar opposites of morality are largely absent for massive chunks of the narrative.

In the second half things ramp up a bit, but the actual "Stand" between the parties ultimately amounts to a single showdown at which only a handful of the Colorado group are present. For all those pages it's a bit anticlimactical.

Though I generally dislike the tone he strikes with his prose, Stephen King does occasionally have his moments as a writer. I particularly liked these quotes :

"There is really nothing so comforting to the beaten of spirit or the broken of skull, than a good strong dose of 'Thy Will Be Done"

"God was a gamesman - If He had been a mortal, He would have been at home hunkering over a checkerboard on the porch of Pop Mann's general store back in Hemingford Home. He played red to black, white to black. She thought that for Him, the game was more than worth the candle, the game was the candle. He would prevail in His own good time. But not necessarily this year or in the next thousand....and she would not overestimate the dark man's craft or cozening. If he was neon gas, then she was the tiny dark dust particle a great raincloud forms about over the parched land. Only another private soldier - long past retirement age, it was true! - in the service of the Lord."    

However, controversially I don't concur this is his best book. Though I've only read seven (and a half) The Gunslinger, the first Dark Tower novel,  is a brilliant book, a true 10/10, only disappointment is that the novels which follow in no way live up to it. I will never read the entirety of the man's output, I don't like him enough, but I also have Under The Dome on To Be Read at the moment, but of those I have read The Gunslinger is the best one.

Verdict : 7/10

Destination : ebook storage

Book #49 Dolores Claiborne by Stephen King

Dolores Claiborne

I have been asking a variety of people to recommend me books and particularly their favourite books so I can, if I haven't already read them, include them in the blog. This was my friend Jimmy's pick, and he has insisted I read Dolores Claiborne to the point of harassment, I faithfully promised I would, and now, eventually, have fulfilled that promise.

My problem I suppose, and the reason I delayed reading it is from certain prejudices I hold against Stephen King. I'm not a horror fan, I think the real world is scary enough, I know a lot of people who read King read him because they want to be scared, but frankly it doesn't take a whole lot to scare me.
In my university years, a group of us watched shark B-movie thriller 'Deep Blue Sea', I jumped so often that afterwards my friends said watching me watch Deep Blue Sea was more fun than watching the actual film. Another problem with Stephen King is that many of his books have entered popular culture in such a way that you already "know" their story. How many people don't know the ending of Carrie? How many people don't know what Misery is about, or The Shining, or know that when you say a dog is like 'Cujo' that you mean he resembles King's canine? It's almost like you don't need to read the books, even if you haven't seen the adaptations.

I'm a little bit prejudiced too against his output, he has in his 38 year career written 49 novels, more than one a year, it seems a case (maybe) of quantity over quality, the unfortunate consequence of popularity being high demand for new material...despite not being a fan, or really a regular reader, I had somewhat labelled him in my mind as a 'churns them out on a conveyer belt for the cash' writer. Perhaps I have no right to say so having read so little of his work, but one of my best friends who has read nearly all of his books assures me that the quality of his recent work pales in comparison to his early novels.

Prior to Dolores Claiborne, I had read 'The Green Mile' (later a Tom Hanks vehicle) and 'Different Seasons' - a non horror short story collection which gave birth to the films: The Shawshank Redemption, Apt Pupil and Stand By Me. My overall verdict was that each film adaptation was better than the writing it came from, and I'm pretty much somebody who says the book always beats the film (with certain exceptions like The Godfather, and, somewhat controversially, The Lord Of The Rings)

It was many years later that I started the Dark Tower Series, a series of seven books with a legion of ardent fans. It begins with The Gunslinger, a dark post apocalyptic novel which is beyond a doubt a fantastic book. If a book, or its imagery lives in your mind long afterward then it is a fantastic book. Unfortunately, I was less impressed with the second and third novels The Drawing Of The Three, and  The Waste Lands, and the fourth book Wizard and Glass lost me entirely, on the grounds that I felt it was over-blown and given that from the first three novels we already knew much about the fall of Gilead,  I felt that venturing into Roland's past was to tell a story with an already established outcome.
Stylistically, I felt that the flashbacks should perhaps have been punctuated by the ongoing journey story with the four main leads, as it would have prevented the book from dragging as much.

I haven't entirely written Stephen King off, the book I hear people most praise is The Stand, and I have that book ready and willing to be read. I came to Dolores Claiborne (through Jimmy)  first though, and with no real idea of what to expect.

The book is written in monologue form, its protagonist Dolores, is being interviewed by the police regarding the death of her employer, and the words are entirely "her own". There is no descriptive prose and it features no dialogue from the three people in the room with her. Dolores is the storyteller, they, are her audience.

The narrative voice succeeds well, an elderly housekeeper who though not particularly educated is wily, bitchy, and has a don't-give-a-fuck attitude. The kind of cantankerous old biddy you wouldn't want to cross. It sounds authentic and effortless, as though King has a good ear for picking up the rhythm of the older woman who likes to tell a good story.

The story itself is pretty simple, told in the present and the past Dolores talks of the difficulties of working for a demanding and bitchy boss, and of how the two came to be kindred spirits in more ways than one. The story flicks between the two, when Dolores first began working for Vera as a pregnant young wife, and her days as her carer and companion at the end of her life.  It is really two stories as well..the story of how demanding it is to be a carer and the story of how suffocating a bad marriage to a bad husband can be. Despite this, the story holds few surprises, the problems in Dolores's marriage are the usual cliches and Vera's early characterisation as the wealthy domineering boss is cliched too.
What is quite heartwarming is the way in which these two women become the glue that holds the other together, and the way in which they keep each others secrets.

It's a short book, and an easy read. I enjoyed it, but I don't think it's a extraordinary book. I'm glad I read it, it has a potboiler quality that sort of drags you in. It's a page turner, but it doesn't make waves with any originality, except for perhaps in the very well executed use of the monologue form.

Can't decide between a 6/7 out of 10