Customer Reviews

The Stand: The Complete and Uncut Edition

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2 star:		(43)
1 star:		(46)

 

 

Before I get to the meat of my review, I feel I should provide a little bit of perspective. First, I am not a die-hard Stephen King fan. In fact, aside from "The Stand", I have only read collections of his short stories, so I can assure you my review isn't the rabid defense of an overly loyal admirer. Second, I am not a fan of horror and I wouldn't classify "The Stand" as such. Finally, I am a big fan of the "apocalyptic fiction" genre, and I believe I have a pretty good basis for my evaluation of this novel.

That said, "The Stand" is an incredible novel; perhaps one of the best I have ever read, by any author or in any genre. The story is predicated on the accidental release of a "super-flu" that wipes out 99% of the humans on the planet. The survivors find themselves drawn into a battle between good and evil that will determine the future of the entire planet.

As one might expect, a novel with such an ambitious plot and of such prodigious length touches upon numerous themes. In order to simplify my review, I am going to break down the novel's strengths into the following categories, and then consider them one at a time: world-building, plot, characters and themes.

First is world-building. In most apocalyptic fiction, one (if not both) of two things will be true: 1. The characters stay in one place or 2. The action picks up after the disaster. An example of the first is "Earth Abides" and of the latter "On the Beach". There's nothing wrong with either plot device, but in "The Stand" King injects a remarkable level of detail into his novel by covering the super-flu from start to finish. The novel starts at the very beginning of the outbreak, and many key plot lines are developed before the epidemic ever rears its head. King charts the breakdown and eventual destruction of civilization, and then offers a short, but remarkable, picture of the survivors in the immediate days after the flu has run its course. He makes the subtle observation that many survivors would die in a second wave of suicides, accidents and depression that would weed out many of those unequipped for an empty world. Finally, as the story progresses, King makes remarkable (but not overbearing) predictions about how nature would reshape the U.S. in the absence of man.

Second to consider is the plot. As I alluded to earlier, King has used the emptied United States as a battleground between good and evil. Soon after the flu has run its course, the survivors begin having dreams about an old woman (Mother Abigail) who seems to be marshalling the forces of good, and a malign presence (Randall Flagg) who is gathering those who would serve him and his ends. Insofar as the reader knows, the choice is clear-cut, irrevocable and mandatory. It is very much a "are you with us or against us" type of situation. That said, much of the book is devoted to the characters traveling across country to Boulder or Las Vegas (guess which side is where), no mean feat in a world without mass transit, hotels, etc. In fact, King's writing is so effective, the novel would be fascinating if the characters did nothing but travel around and attempt to reestablish society. The second, metaphysical, layer just makes it all the more interesting.

Thirdly, we have the characters to consider; I'll won't name names or speak in specifics to avoid ruining the plot, but there are a few general points worth mentioning. To start, the cast of characters in "The Stand" rivals that of "Lord of the Rings", and King handles it every bit as well as Tolkien. One might expect that a novel with a story this complex would skimp on character development, but the opposite is actually true. King took a huge idea (good vs. evil) and reduced it to a human element that the reader could digest. His characters show an incredible range of emotion, and even their flaws serve to enhance the reader's view of them. They struggle and fail and are rarely sure of themselves, in other words, they are human. As such, their actions take on a level of realism that is astonishing.

Finally, we come to the themes of the book. The way I see it there are three: the dualistic nature of good and evil, redemption and hope. The first is the most obvious, King correctly points out that good cannot be appreciated or striven for in the absence of bad. We can strive to limit the effects of evil, but it will never be overcome, as King sees greed and hate as intrinsic to the human condition in general, and civilization specifically. The second theme, of redemption, is subtler and offsets the first. King does not paint anyone is irretrievably lost, and along the same lines, he considers how good intentions are frequently misdirected through ignorance and fear. King seems to believe that given the opportunity and support, anyone can salvage their lives. Which brings us to the final theme of hope. As the novel ends, the reader knows that evil has not been vanquished, but also that it can never triumph because within its very nature are the seeds of its destruction. Over time, evil empires have gained power because they have torn down their enemies (see Nazi Germany), but as the saying goes, live by the sword, die by the sword. There is always hope, because evil cannot win.

There are so many other points to touch on, I could write indefinitely, but what it all comes down to is this: if you're looking for a novel that will entertain you even as it makes you think, "The Stand" is for you.

Enjoy!

The Stand, in my opinion, marks Stephen King's progression from horror to literature. Consistently voted fans' favorite King novel ever since its initial publication in 1978 (although I personally consider the novel It his finest work), The Stand delivers an archetypal conflict pitting good against evil against a backdrop of civilization itself. In this extraordinary novel, King fully unleashes the horrors previously contained in the microcosms of an extraordinary person (Carrie), a single town ('Salem's Lot), and a haunted hotel far removed from civilization (The Shining).

This is how the world ends: with a human-engineered superflu which escapes containment in the form of a terrified guard who unwittingly spreads death over a wide swath of southwestern America in his bid to escape infection. Captain Trips, they call it - until they die, and people die in droves within a matter of days. In almost no time at all, well over 99% of the American population have suffered an agonizing death. Those that are left all alone begin to dream: comforting visions of an ancient black lady called Mother Abigail in Nebraska rising up alongside nightmares of a faceless man out west. Many find their way to Las Vegas to serve under Randall Flag, the Walking Dude of their night visions, but many others flock to Mother Abigail in Nebraska and eventually Boulder, Colorado. As the citizens of the Boulder Free Zone attempt to reform society and make a new life for themselves, they are forced to come to terms with the fact that they are caught up in a struggle defined by their spiritual leader in religious terms. They must destroy Flagg or be destroyed by him - in a word, they must make their stand.

I could not begin to describe the dozens of richly drawn characters King gives life to in these pages. They are ordinary people called to do extraordinary things in a world reeking of death and fear. Some are not up to the challenge, and betrayal has awful consequences in this new reality - to the betrayer as well as the betrayed. These are real human beings, flaws and all; there is good to be found even among those serving the greatest of evils, and at the same time, the good guys don't always behave in ways you think they should. Nick Andros, Nadine Cross, Larry Underwood, Glen Bateman, Stu Redman, Harold Lauder, Mother Abigail, Tom Cullen, Randall Flagg, Trash Can Man - these are characters you will never forget. I must admit the climax of the great struggle just doesn't seem to be all it might be, but the first 1000 pages of this novel are so good that even Stephen King could hardly be expected to top what he had already accomplished in the framing of this ultimate conflict.

I find it slightly odd that religion plays such a small part in this visionary apocalypse. As far as Mother Abigail and, eventually, the novel's heroes are concerned, this is a religious fight between the imps of Satan and the servants of God, but you won't find any theology apart from a few misplaced references to Revelations by frightened characters, and no preacher of any faith seems to have survived the superflu outbreak itself.

I wouldn't call this a scary novel, but it certainly does have its moments - best exemplified by one character's journey through a dark tunnel surrounded by invisible but very dead and decaying bodies caught in an eternal traffic jam. The real horror, of course, is the all-pervasive atmosphere of a world decimated by man's self-imposed destruction. Death is literally everywhere these characters turn - in the silent houses and cars all around them, in the streets upon which they travel, in the terrifying nightmares they have of the Walking Dude, and even in the future they try to avoid thinking about, as no one knows whether the superflu will kill the children yet to be born. I found the sections dealing with the reconstitution of a society of some sort to be the most interesting aspect of the novel - will it be like the old society, will it repeat the mistakes of the last one, etc. This is also a story of personal redemption, as the novels' heroes must overcome their pasts and/or their human weaknesses and handicaps in order to make their stand. When the deaf-mute Nick tells Mother Abigail that he does not believe in God, she tells him that it doesn't matter because God believes in him - that is a truly empowering message.

There is an intriguing philosophical undercurrent to this novel that applies both eloquently and meaningfully to the human condition. The Stand is modern literature, a direct descendant of such epics as The Iliad and The Odyssey, and you will learn something about yourself when you read this masterpiece of contemporary literature.

The Stand, Stephen King's apocalyptic novel that mixes science fiction with horror (think of it as a realistic merging of The Andromeda Strain and The Final Conflict), was a runaway best-seller when it first hit bookstores in the late 1970s and is still regarded as one of King's best works, at least by his millions of fans. Its scenario of an accidental outbreak of a government-created strain of the flu -- which has a mortality rate of over 90 percent -- that wipes out most of mankind and sets the stage for a final showdown between good and evil makes for compelling reading.

What many readers did not know was that King was asked by the accounting department of his publisher to trim his already huge novel by several hundred pages to keep costs down and to make the hardcover's price affordable ($12.95 in 1978). Given the choice of doing the edits himself or letting the in-house editors do the cutting, King chose the former. As a result, most -- but not all -- the characters and situations appeared reasonably whole, although King remarks in the Preface that pyromaniac Trashcan Man's westward trek from the Midwest to Nevada has the most scars from the literary surgery he performed.

By 1989, though, King had enough clout -- and reader support -- to get Doubleday to publish The Stand: The Complete and Uncut Edition. Released in hardcover in 1990, the book sold very well and was later adapted by King as a miniseries for ABC-TV.

So what are the differences between the two versions of The Stand, besides the heavier weight and higher price? (Remember that
$12.95 retail price from 1978? In 1990 this had nearly doubled to $24.95!) Well, the novel's tale remains the same -- nefarious U.S. military creates a deadly strain of the flu...flu accidentally (and later not so accidentally) infects most of humanity...then the survivors split into two camps, one led by the evil Randall Flagg, the other headed by an elderly woman known as Mother Abigail, thus setting up the ultimate battle between darkness and light.

But in this novel, the magic is in the details. The long and fiery journey of the Trashcan Man across the United States is now more complete, and a frightening character who was completely excised from the original novel in '78 is now restored in a literary equivalent of the Extended Editions of The Lord of the Rings DVDs.

Another bonus: Illustrator Bernie Wrightson, who has contributed his drawings and artwork to King's Creepshow, Cycle of the Werewolf and one of the Dark Tower books, has added several illustrations to this edition. There are just a few and they are sprinkled sparingly, but they add a powerful jolt of visual effects to King's already vivid prose.

King acknowledges his penchant for writing big, sometimes rambling novels, and The Stand: The Complete and Uncut Edition is surely big and rambling. Yet the cast of characters -- Stu Redman, Frannie Goldsmith, Larry Underwood, Harold Lauder (whose descent from merely obnoxious teen to jealousy-driven traitor is one of The Stand's more interesting subplots), Nadine Cross, Nick Andros, Tom Cullen, Lloyd Henreid...and the mysterious entity known as Flagg -- is one of King's best ensembles of fictional creations, and the mythical landscape of post-flu America is truly unforgettable.

If I were reviewing the original of this novel, I'd definitely give 5 stars. I read it years ago and loved it. I was heartbroken, though, to read this version with all those pages that had been originally edited out and which, years later, King decided to have put back in (purely out of ego, I'm sure, because he couldn't bear the thought of any of his writing being discarded). Examples:

1. In the original, I recall being impressed that you got an explicit sense of what Frannie's mother was all about, even though she wasn't in a single scene. In the new version, she's in there, taking up space.

2. Similarly, I liked the understated reunion between Larry and his mother. You got a clear impression of their awkward relationship in just a few pages. But once again, SK decided to throw in a lot more exposition that wasn't at all necessary and slowed down the book.

3. There is now a completely gratuitous and really grotesque homosexual rape scene that I could have lived happily without.

4. Worst of all - SPOILER ALERT - There is now a tagged on ending that renders completely meaningless the sacrifices made by the heroes of the novel.

5. SK claimed he was putting back in original material and yet he has a character wondering if the plague is some strain of AIDs. When The Stand came out, no one had ever heard of AIDs.

6. The character of (I believe) Dana originally crops up in Denver with a minimum of history attached. Now there's an utterly ridiculous description of how she and some other women had been kidnapped and turned into sexual playthings for a wandering gang of thugs before being rescued.

I guess to sum it up: King's editors knew what they were doing back in the days when editors actually dared to edit him! I just hope he leaves The Shining and Salem's Lot alone. I can see why everyone's giving 5 stars, but I really wish you all could have read the original - You really missed out, and I'm sure you can't find it anywhere now.

THE STAND was the first Stephen King novel I read (I think it was in 1985). The similarities to biblical prophecy in this marvelous story are hard to miss for even the the novice student of the book of Revelation. That fact played a large role in my interest in The Stand. The book is so enthralling that even when I became aware that King had veered a long way from the scriptural story, I didn't really care. And after all, no other writer had managed to figure out what all those seals, and trumpets, and vials of the Apocalypse were either.

Continuing my interest in the subject, I have read a number of other books in the same general vein. Or perhaps I should say that I started to read several. The problem is that every writer that tries to stick with the original concept of end-times prophecy is also out to force a load of preaching down your throat. Their stories are less coherent that comic books and they seem to think their relationship with God makes up for the fact that they can't write.

I have very recently found an exception to this rule and I wanted to recommend it. It's THE CHRIST CLONE TRILOGY by James BeauSeigneur. BeauSeigneur does an incredible job of story telling while sticking very exactly to biblical prophecy. He even blends in prophecies from several other religions! An interesting difference is that in THE CHRIST CLONE TRILOGY the antichrist/Flagg character plays his role and tell his lies so well that you can't help but sorta be pulling for him even though you know he's the bad guy. Or is he?

The enthusiastic response of a number of King fans on-line persuaded me to give it a chance, but I have to say I don't get it. To start with the most obvious problem, it's far too long. Maybe it would have been better had King started AFTER the plague, since the point of the book surely isn't the disease but the reorganization of society afterward. A really detailed look at that scenario might have been interesting, but a lot of central points are either ignored or glossed over. In contrast to the pre-plague U.S., for example, race seems to be a non-issue; there seems to be only one black here, the Ratman, and he's a freak, and I recall only one Jew. Then there are the characters, which are never really King's strong point. I think a few in The Stand work (Tom Cullen, Trashcan Man, Lloyd Henreid). Overall, though, King relies far too heavily on regional generalizations and stock character types here instead of specifics that would breathe some life into them. A symptom of that is that the dialogue is so often stilted -- only in a King novel would "good riddance to bad rubbish" qualify for a prolonged belly laugh. Other points: There are strands of plot that go nowhere (in the end, the Free Zone learns nothing from the spies who go west); too much space is devoted to blow-by-blow accounts of committee meetings and too little describing Flagg's society, and when we meet some of those people, most turn out to be pretty much the same as the people in the Free Zone. Not a very satisfying confrontation after such a lengthy buildup. Bottom line: Too much verbiage, not enough craft. (Can a guy who turns out such a sheer volume of words every year really have time for substantial rewrites?)

OK, so obviously this isn't "my" book in the sense that I wrote it, but long-time fans and admirers of "The Stand" like me consider the book to be a masterpiece and are kind of possessive about it. I was excited about reading an expanded version of The Stand, in supposedly its original state as submitted by Stephen King to his publisher in 1978. I was very dismayed that this edition actually contains some *new* material that Mr. King wrote around 1989. As a result, this edition suffers from some temporal dislocation. An example: the rock singer Larry Underwood goes to a girl's apartment where she has displayed a "Love Story" poster -- very 70s. Then afterward he goes to a Freddy Krueger movie. NOOOO! This just doesn't work for me. It takes me right out of the dark spell that the previously published "Stand" put me under.

I still give it 4 stars because the story is so powerful. But if you haven't read "The Stand" yet, I would really recommend that you read the truncated (edited) version first.

The beginning was good. But it led into a religious heaven and hell war. At the beginning I thought it had potential to make people think about the diseases and chemicals we contain on earth and how dangerous they are. But in the end all it amounts to is divinding the world into worshipers of God and Satan. The outcome of this story could have come about with out there ever being a disease. It sounds like King got a little bored with the story and made a bad end cause he didn't want to write any longer.

This is the real Neverending Story. A real disappointment from Stephen King. His best qualities are all here: his amazing ability to create realistic characters and take us inside their minds, his way with a scary scene, his really great villains.

Unfortunately, all of his worst qualities are here too. The pretentiousness, the over-writing for the sake of filling up pages, the too cute characters (If Tom Cullen had told me that M-O-O-N spelled anything again, I was going to throw the book across the room!), and a delusion that he has Something Serious To Say About The Struggle Between Good And Evil.

The sad thing is that King really does have something serious to say about the struggle between good and evil. He just says it better in his shorter works like The Shining, Pet Sematary, and Dolores Claiborne. The Stand, however, is just page after empty page after empty page after empty page after empty page.

3.5 stars.

This isn't one of King's typical horror stories. This book goes beyond that; it takes on some of the most important religous, psychological, and social issues of our time. There's a double meaning behind the title: Stephen King himself is taking a Stand on these issues that we've all been debating. Because of the implications, this novel is vast in scope and stretches beyond the borders of its covers. But is it King's best? No. Here's why:

First off, the novel is slow. The beginning of the book is dedicated to the spread of the plague. Then it shows the survivors grouping under two leaders: Randall Flagg in the west and a 108-year-old black woman named Mother Abagail in the east. It's a long while before the heroes actually depart to make their Stand against Flagg. And also, the novel is filled with too much talking to my liking, mostly philosophical stuff (In other words, not enough action). (SPOILER SECTION) Secondly, I HATE deus ex machina, and that is what this ending is. Thirdly, the very end makes everything that happened in this book seem for nothing. It basically said that time is circular. The last sentence of the book went something like this: "Time was a wheel, and it always came around to the same place again." Time is linear, it is it is IT IS! Just look at our own history and you can see as much. Fourthly, there are many abandoned plot threads: 1)There's a scene in which Mother Abagail realizes that an Eye(Flagg) is looking for everybody that would come to her, and one little girl. Who was this little girl? We never find out. At first I thought it might be Frannie's baby, but no, that turned out to be a male. 2)What was so important about the child Flagg conceived on Nadine? We never find that out, either. 3)Why was Flagg losing his powers toward the end? This is never revealed, unless it's just deus ex machina again. Also, Flagg's psyche is never fully explored; I can only get a vague picture of him. 4)What happened to Leo Rockway that turned him into a murdering savage? And why did he have such a special perception? The book doesn't say. 5)Toward the end, it seemed that Tom Cullen had an important part to play, but he didn't. Yeah he saved Stu but it didn't change anything major in the story. We never find out what was so special about him or how he relates to the moon, M-O-O-N, that spells abandoned plot threads, and an author isn't supposed to abandon his plot threads, laws yes, everybody knows that! 6)And more important than any of the others, WHAT stand was there? If everyone had stayed in Boulder the outcome would have been the same, because it was Trashcan Man that did everything. Basically, Larry, Glen, and Ralph all died for nothing. (END OF SPOILER SECTION)

Those things listed above greatly flawed this novel. But, the depth of the story and King's great characterization would not allow me to drop the rating to less than 3.5 stars. This book had the potential to be his brightest gem, but, in the end, it just didn't cut it. I think King knew how to start this story but he just didn't know how to finish it properly.