I spent the afternoon in a bookshop, which is a great way to spend an afternoon. Usually I do this on weekends, of course, and it turned out that weekday visits can involve special considerations: a large and important part of one floor (the SF section) was blocked off because some celebrity author was signing books there. A surprisingly large number of people were queueing for the event, even though it was in the middle of the day on a Wednesday. Don’t these people have any work to do?

A visit to a bookshop almost invariably ends with me buying books. And while I showed commendable restraint this time – if I say so myself – and went home with only 4 new books, this still means that these 4 will soon make their way to the “books to blog about” pile, which is still teeteringly high… A deal, then: for every book I read, I will blog about two. This way, the pile should be gone by the time I’ve read all 4 of the new acquisitions. For extra effect, I’ll start with the biggest one.

And a big one it is indeed. The Stand, complete and uncut edition, 1415 pages.

Story: A virus escapes from a government lab, and wipes out almost all of the US population. The survivors struggle to survive, to find each other and to recreate some sort of order, some sort of civil society.

Unlike most of King’s stories, the horror element in The Stand is quite limited. That is, there is horror enough in the scenes of multitudes dying, but it is all restrained and realistic, not presented as horror scenes. This is one of the reasons why I re-read this book: it is not a horror story dominated by looming monsters or crazed murderers. Most of it is an exploration of psychology and sociology. How might people react when everyone around them dies? Who would survive and how? How would they keep their sanity? To what lowly state would society collapse, and how might it recover from there?

Some people who survive the initial epidemic die soon after, because they are not “cut out” to be survivors. For others, the disaster is a wake-up call, and they pick up their unsuccessful, failing lives and start taking responsibility.

How would you react? What would you do? If you survived, how would you go on?
What would it feel like to be able to take anything, do anything, go anywhere, because there are no controls – but to be totally alone?

Much of the strength of The Stand comes, I think, from its combination of epic scale and close observation. The end of the world as we know it is an immense event, but it is told through small episodes. The book touches upon the lives of many dozens of characters, and even the list of main characters would have to include a good half dozen. A bit disjointed, perhaps, but at the same time I thought it was a great way to really show how all-encompassing the effects of the disaster were / would be. The characters themselves are somewhat predictable and not particularly interesting, but they are more than adequate for illustrating the themes of the book.

This close attention to detail is, in a way, also a shortcoming of the book, because it ties it so closely to the USA around 1980. For a non-American reading it 30 years later, it can be hard to relate to all song lyrics quoted and names mentioned.

The book’s other strength is the pervasive feeling of hope, and courage and goodness. Unlikely friendships form, and unlikely people become heroes. There is evil too, of course – there always is in a Stephen King book, and it’s never subtle. (King doesn’t really “do” subtlety.) In this one, two people personify the opposites of good and evil, and survivors tend to gravitate towards one of them, and of course there is a kind of a fight between the two sides in the end. I found that part of the book less interesting, primarily because it was so predictable and, ultimately, rather unsatisfying. I guess King just didn’t know how to end a book of this kind of epic scale without taking a supernatural element to help. However, the end is, after all, only a small part of the book and doesn’t detract from the rest of it.

Footnote:
I have a special relationship with Stephen King, because he was one of the first authors I read in English (not counting children’s books). I must have been around 12 I guess, and I believe I read a good dozen of them. I can’t even remember where or how I got hold of them… The Stand was the one that made the biggest impression, and I’ve returned to it a few times since then.