It’s interesting how much my view of King changes over time. He still remains my favorite author, and the things that I love are still there, but as I get older I also become more keenly aware of his flaws. He can’t write women to save his life most of the time, and it’s a frustrating limitation. His women are always pugnacious, but easily reprimanded by men. They always seem to be the moral compass, but a touch naïve. They always have strength, but often crumple and succumb to tears of frustration or grief when men are around who can compartmentalize and press on. He also has extremely regrettable ways of writing people of color. Some of it can be chalked up to the characters’ ignorance, but often it’s clear King is a flawed white dude who picked up regrettable unconscious biases — there aren’t any good black characters outside of Mother Abigail, and the villains are always described as animalistic and savage.

He has his well-meaning but misguided tropes: disabled folks are magic, especially those with intellectual disabilities. This is especially true of black folks. It’s easy to understand the calculus: folks that were born lacking in some way or who face undue hardships are given something supernatural to make up the difference. People with intellectual disabilities are usually psychic, and older black folks are often wise and spiritual and closer to harmony with God or Nature or Ka. But that’s an ableist and racist way of thinking, even if it comes from a well-meaning place.

With all that said, King’s ability to just get the psychology of people is excellent. He understands the interpersonal dynamics of small communities in a way that’s uncanny, and his ability to write naturalistic dialog is fantastic. King is at his best often when he’s just letting characters shoot the shit and bond. And he, of course, has his finger on the pulse of terror and suspense, crafting narratives that span larger and larger until your mind is racing with how this can possibly end with anything other than certain death for everyone involved.

One thing that’s always true about King is his belief that evil is vain and arrogant, and that people on the whole are good and well meaning. They’re flawed and can succumb to their lesser demons, sometimes to their own destruction and even the destruction of everything, but he’s able to portray those failings as almost understandable— weak people in bad circumstances sometimes succumb to their baser instincts, but if given a second chance will rise to the occasion. 

Redemption is a big King theme. He does seem less optimistic of groups of people. Friendship and love and understanding and compassion can save the day, but the larger a group grows, the less personal the group becomes, the more they cater to their own self-interests, the more likely they are to falter, fail, and hurt themselves and others. King’s personal philosophy could almost be summed up by Tommy Lee Jones’s quote from Men in Black: “A person is smart. People are dumb, panicky dangerous animals and you know it.”

This is a lot of preamble about The Stand, but that’s because the book is massive, an enormous biblical struggle between good and evil, God and the Devil. It spans so many characters, and while the cast is huge, main characters eventually make themselves known. Although I will say one of my favorite things about King’s writing is his pit stops and brief layovers with random people. The chapters from other points of view is often what makes King’s books feel so lived in and realistic.

Larry Underwood was a fascinating example of a flawed, even shitty person, who eventually learns to be better by putting other people before himself. And his struggle with his short temper and worse impulses wasn’t something he just overcame overnight or after one important moment. He treats Rita awfully, and it’s only after he almost shoots her in the tunnel that he starts to really appreciate her as a person and companion. And even then, he still has bad impulses, but he learns to recognize them, silence them, alter this thinking. It was a very believable transformation, and by the end, Larry was one of my favorite characters because he tried so hard to be better, and he’d greatly succeeded.

Stu feels very much more like an aspirational figure. Not that he was perfect, but he didn’t go through quite the journey that Larry did. But he also feels much more like the true main character of the book, if anyone could be considered one.

Nick’s death was heartbreaking. At first, I thought it was a poor narrative decision, a big let down after so much time building him up via Mother Abigail as this special figure, but it also felt very much in the vein of the book’s themes. Holy visions, psychic powers, and premonitions may be real in this book, but understanding them and accurately parsing them from regular bad dreams and normal gut feelings is imprecise. Mother Abigail wasn’t all-knowing, and neither was Randall Flagg.

It was obviously eerie reading this in the wake of the Coronavirus pandemic. There were lots of small details that felt very prescient, from the shared symptoms such as diarrhea and a cough, the way the disease could hide as a cold or flu, the way it would wax and wane and let the victims get better before suddenly worsening and dying almost unceremoniously. The way the government and the public at large refused to outwardly acknowledge the pandemic before it was far out of control, the way people politicized the virus, especially the way they wrote off the coastal cities, made me nauseous because it brought back my memories of mid-2020 and the refrigerator trucks full of bodies.

Covid-19 was thankfully not even close to as deadly as Captain Trips, but it was still like a portal into a future that could have been. 

I listened to this as an audiobook, and I really wish there was an easy to find version of the original text. I’d love to know what the original draft was like. I think I remember it was around 700-ish pages long, while the expanded version is around 1100-ish. I’d love to know what 400 pages worth of material was cut, but more so, I’m curious how the characterization would feel if I were reading the book in its original setting of the late 70s and early 80s instead of the late 80s and very early 90s.

I chose to read this now in my King reread and not later because ultimately it was the 4th King book, even it the book was expanded by 1/3rd later. And what a fucking subject to tackle with your 5th book (4th King book, not counting Night Shift and his Bachman book Rage). It’s part of why I wish I could find a way to more easily consume the original version. This feels so much different and more confident than The Shining that I want to know if that confidence of prose was added later in the expansion and revision, or if it was there as strongly in the original text. Were the Dark Tower references there yet? Was King already working those in even if The Gunslinger wouldn’t come out for several years? What about Mother Abigail’s reference to the shining — the powers, not the events at the Overlook.

I am slowly purchasing all of the older King books i don’t have. I skipped The Stand because I already own a copy, but I may not be able to help myself and may end up buying an original copy if I can find one at a price that isn’t absolutely absurd, if just so I can read it as it was originally written.

Next on my list is The Long Walk, which was a favorite of mine in middle school. I’m excited to revisit it.