King, Stephen. The Stand. New York: Signet, 1980.
I think it goes without saying that The Stand is a super-long, super detailed book and the critical attention paid to character development and personality nuances plays a huge roll in its length. The other component to its heft is the fact it takes a long time to build up to the meat of the plot. The Stand contains three books, “Captain Trips”, “On the Border”, and “The Stand”. “Captain Trips” is the introduction to an influenza-like plague and its fast-paced spread of infection. You won’t look at another sneeze or cough the same way again after this. “On the Border” is convergence of the plague survivors; the good and the evil alike. They are all brought together by a shared dream of an elderly women. In the final book, “The Stand” the surviving society must take a stand on where their civilization will end up – on the side of good or evil? It’s drawn out to the point of ad-nauseam but the writing is fantastic.
Here is one of my favorite quotes from The Stand: “Denninger looked and acted like the kind of man who would ride his help and bullyrag them around but lickspittle up to his superiors like an egg-suck dog” (p 59). I just love the word bullyrag and lickspittle isn’t so bad either!
Book Trivia: Many different adaptations of The Stand exist. My favorite is a comic book series.
Author Fact: King used to haunt the halls at the University of Maine, Orono. He wouldn’t remember me but I served him coffee once in the Bear’s Den.
BookLust Twist: From Book Lust in the lengthy chapter called “Science Fiction, Fantasy, and Horror” (p 213). I think Pearl intended The Stand to be horror.
~*LunaSea*~ 