The Stand: Not a Review

That famous bard once wrote: “What is love, baby doesn’t hurt me, don’t hurt me, no more”. To him I responded: Spartacus had an identity crisis. My point is clear.

2013 was a really shit year. An “annus horribilis” as Queen Elizabeth said that one time. What are years coming to? They plod and they gallop at the same time. At times I look back and think, I was having fun there, I was smiling, so it must have been fun. Am I having fun now? I don’t know, I could only tell you next year. Its hidden in my funconcious mind.

My annus is horribilis

The following is not a review of the Stand, it just summarizes some thought threads shuffling around in my head after my first read-through.  This will make more sense if you have read The Stand. Also: Spoilers!

I shall reap you with my grim reaping equipment

So, I just finished  “The Stand”- the expanded edition even- and that Stephen King simply put too many words on paper. I enjoyed every minute of it, don’t get me wrong, but like “The Return of the King”, there were ways that it should have ended that would have left me feeling for satisfied in a shorter amount of time. The reference to LOTR is relevant here also because of the main antagonist of the novel.  Randall Flagg as he is depicted in The Stand often takes on the characteristics of a giant orange eye, watching our heroes, plotting and directing his instruments of destruction against Mother Abigail and the citizens of the Free Zone in much the same way as Sauron uses Saruman and his dark forces to counter Gandalf and the armies of middle earth.

I call bullshit.

The basic plot of the novel is that a superflu, “Captain Trips” kills off 99% of the world’s population and the remaining survivors are in dreams and their darkest nightmares called to locate either 109 year old Mother Abigail, God’s agent on earth in Boulder Colorado, or Randall Flagg aka Russell Faraday aka Legion aka Nyarlohotep, the servant of evil in Las Vegas. While Mother Abigail offers nothing much but insight into the ways of God, Flagg immediately sets people to work on establishing a military force to destroy the citizens of the Free Zone. Basically this becomes the “stand” between the forces of “good” and the forces of “evil” and punctuated by the confrontation of the  main forces of good and evil at the end of the novel.

Mother Abigail

Not Mother Abigail

Speaks for itself

This story was centred on locations in America. But I kept thinking about what was going on in other places, what about London, were they all having dreams of being attacked by misaligned dentures? I don’t know. What about South Africa even? If Captain Trips came here, would I be immune to it? Would it be better not to be immune? My point is because generally people suddenly to me seem to strike me as  considerably more stupid than ever , more wrapped up in their stupid lives, more wrapped up in drum and bass than possible genocide in the Central African Republic. I hope that’s not the case, and I don’t know why I feel that way. But seriously, what the fuck is drum and bass?

Somehow I doubt Yoda would approve

And then, even if I was immune, would I head on over to Mother Abigail or to Randall Flagg?  Long story short, the book says that Good triumphs over Evil, but I won’t tell you how. Read the bible possibly if you want a hint. (Alternatively, read The Stand) But assuming I didn’t know that I feel I would pick the place that got the electricity up faster, had warm meals prepared by master chefs and had some sort of law and order from the outset, even if Crucifixion was deemed a method of disposal.

Since this book is about faith, it would be a pretty tough choice to settle in the Free Zone without any assurances that things would get better, apart from the ramblings of a possibly crazy old lady who sometimes shits berries and twigs. But then I also think that once Flagg’s police state got too much for me I probably would want to leave. Whether he would let me is another story, he would probably send out some wolves to chew up my intestines or something. But then would I even want to go to the Free Zone?

Nom nom nom

I ask this because I always pick someone I would like to be in a novel. This time I picked Harold Lauder, a really smart fat boy who has a heavy crush on the lady he sets out with to find Mother Abigail. She can’t stand him, even though he proves adept at survival, while being a pompous, but goodish guy. She together with another character Stu Redman (who I initially thought I would see myself as, but then got tired of) lie to him about their relationship and he finds out and begins to go slightly insane.

Basically Harold

I picked Harold because like him, I am not a social person even though I can be at times. I can't just talk to people, I don’t know why. More clearly, I can speak, I just don’t know how to speak to people. As soon as I get into a conversation, my mind will think up the most perverse thing it has in one of the top shelves of my memory banks, courier it to my mouth, and my mouth, the pet idiot, will blurt it out like a galactic pharmacist dispensing universal truths. No prescription required, if I get hurt, I can deal with it, I have a fictitious medical degree, he thinks. Bloody fool.

The Red Ones are to be taken Penally.

Anyway Harold is manipulated and encouraged by Flagg, and the pressure cooker in his mind heats and heats until he snaps eventually and blows up a meeting of the Free Zone Committee- 7 elected officials running the Free Zone, killing two of them. He is later killed in an accident manipulated by Flagg as he escapes, breaks his leg in a few places and is left for dead. He begs for redemption from the others in a letter in his journal before he dies. Now because I picked Harold, he became my true first person narrator. When he was betrayed I felt vengeance was the only option and I begun to dislike the members of the Free Zone, even the ones I had not found irritating initially.

Because when bitches talk smack they need to get slapped.

I begun to dislike the characters because even after a superflu epidemic, the old ways resurfaced, the politics, the land grabbings and the power struggles. The Stand attempts to show that humans will be humans, flawed, and that we can only appeal to faith in a higher being to deliver us. For example, both a sociologist and a judge get a bullet through the head from Flagg’s henchmen, the scientists were mostly wiped out by a flu epidemic of their own creation. Instead it was the meek who triumphed, the electronic calculator makers, the veterinarians and the electricity repairmen who inherited huge tracts of land.

Earth? I own that bitch.

And the meek should really go and screw themselves I feel, because they are the one’s with the drum and bass and electronica obsessions and the ignorance of death and destruction apart from what they feel in their own stupid lives. Oh so you’re meek? Go fuck yourself. The heathens were screwed from the beginning it seems anyway. And I/Harold was left dying with a broken leg while vultures nibbled on my tatas. What fun!

Happy New Year! 

RB