The journal entries have spoilers. these are not reviews, they are my thoughts as I read the books. I am assuming you have also read the books.
. Undiscovered Country: Chapter 35
. I thought I knew the Stand pretty well. Cover to cover. And this most recent reading hasn't landed many surprises.
. Often I have been most captivated by how King writes. For instance, Larry watches Nadine ride off on a motorcycle. But King describes the movement in terms of sound. It was very fluid and natural. But if I had been writing the scene, I would have only connected visually -- his watching the bike ride further and further away. King accomplishes what he needs completely by sound.
. You can't really blame me for having skimmed it the first few times, the chapter is massive. It seems with large chapters, sometimes I start skipping and dipping -- as if it is simply a course to complete.
. I met someone today I had forgotten all about. In fact, he is so far out of my thoughts I can't remember what happens to him. It's a kid named Joe. I know nothing! It's a delight to discover a character you had previously breezed by.
. Joe is a boy who has regressed in his development since the plague. He trusts Nadine and at least at the novel's current point, he poses a minor threat to Larry Underwood.
. Tone, War Of The Worlds:
. 
The tone of this chapter reminds me very much of H.G. Well's: War of the Worlds. Actually, it reminds me of the 1938 radio drama by Orson Wells! Just the tone. A man wanders across a destroyed earth and begins to meet other survivors. Honestly, it has very much the same feeling.
. This is just to prove what happens when you start reading into things -- the name of the town they come to is Wells. I kid you not! Come on, H.G., Orson and now the name of the town! M-O-O-N, that spells Wells.
. Heady
. I love the way King can get inside a characters head. As Larry travels, he is on Herold and Fran's heels. Larry develops a respect for Herold, his boldness, his ingenuity. He imagines Herold to be a common sense farmer. Of course, he's off by a mile!
. "Lovesick or no, Milky Way freak or not, Larry had gained a lot of respect for Herold, almost a liking in advance. He had already developed his own mental picture of Harold. Probably in his mid-thirties, a farmer maybe, tall and suntanned, skinny, not too bright in the book mental sense, maybe, but plenty canny. He grinned. Building up a mental picture of someone you had never seen was a fool's game, because they were never the way you had imagined."
. These are the kind of details that didn't get snipped out of the Stand, 1978. King resisted the urge to chop up character development, and instead took his cuts in big lumps. Wise, in my opinion.
You skimmed through part of "The Stand" the first few times you read it...? Blasphemy! :)
ReplyDeleteI love the novel, but it's far from perfect. One of the big imperfections is the character of Joe, who is sort of set up to be somebody important, but ends up being almost totally irrelevant. He functions as a bit of a coulda-been adopted son for Larry (for the Larry who would have been if Nadine had stayed on the side of light and the two of them had ended up together). But King doesn't even really use Joe terribly well in that capacity.
If they end up making the new movie, I'd hope that ole Joe is red-penned right out of the story.
Yep... I skimmed! Can you believe it? Blasphemy indeed. But I'm not a good reader -- so that's why I'm such a fan of the audio editions.
ReplyDeleteI do like it that King will build up characters, but you never know which ones are going to fade into the background in the end.
I'm not that terrific a reader myself, sometimes -- which is problematic, considering my (useless) degree is in English! I definitely go through stretches of time, though, when my attention span wanders and makes it difficult for me to focus on actually reading. Unless I'm in public somewhere, I'll usually try and get around this by reading aloud to myself. I suck at doing voices for characters, but if it's just straight-up narration, I actually do okay.
ReplyDeleteIronically enough, not long after I made that comment about Joe in "The Stand," I sat down and read the latest issue of the comic, and Joe had a good scene in it with Nadine. That made me chuckle.
And don't get me wrong: I like Joe too, and I don't mind that he never quite becomes an important character in the novel. If a novel holds my attention for 1000 pages, that's good enough for me; if it holds my attention again when and if I reread it, then I'll be more than willing to overlook whatever flaws it might have.
I'm waiting until the stand comic comeso ut in one big gigantic book. Then I'll read it all. I never read comics as a kid... and I almost don't know how!
ReplyDeleteFunny about the English college degree (that and psycology, religion, music!) You know, all college was was a lot of required reading. I would saved a lot money if I had known that, and read the books!
I read so much for work that it's just not what I want to do on my down time. But audio does the work for me.
I actually considered not reading any of the comics until the entire run was done, and just reading them all at once. But, since I'm DEFINITELY going to keep buying the Dark Tower comics issue-by-issue (the supplementary material at the end of each issue is frequently awesome, and isn't being included in the graphic novels -- unfortunately!), I figured I'd just go ahead and buy "The Stand" that way, too. And if I'm going to spend that money, I guess I may as well read the issues.
ReplyDeleteAs for the comics themselves, they've been pretty good so far. I don't like a lot of the character designs, but apart from that, it's been VERY faithful to the original, and it's actually a pretty fascinating way to "read" the novel. By the time it is all said and done, I'll have spent an obscene amount of money on it, WAY more than I'd spend on any edition of the novel itself. But it doesn't feel like a waste, and if Marvel decides to do another one after "The Stand" is finished, I'll probably buy that one, too.