Swan Song Journal #4: The Long End

I finished Swan Song tonight.  I didn't plan to, didn't even know I was that close to the end.  In most formats you can track the distance left to the finish line.  In books it is simply pages; or when listening the number of tapes or CD's left.  But on my Ipod, the book was broken into so many parts, I actually lost track  of where I was.  So it was a surprise  to me to realize I was closing in on the final pages of the massive novel. Where had the time gone?  I ended up walking almost six miles tonight, extending the walk ever further to finish the book.

There are spoilers ahead:

Swan Song is rightly compared to The Stand.  Both books stand on their own; McCammon's novel certainly doesn't even edge close to any kind of intellectual plagiarism.  I think perhaps the author is afraid of that accusation, but Swan Song is truly its own story.  Still the similarities are striking.  Here are a few:

1. Both novels feature strong women of faith with familial titles -- Sister/Mother.  The transformation of Sister Creep into Sister is difficult for the reader to accept at first.  How could this crazy lady come into her right mind?

2. Both novels show survivors of a devastated earth seeking to rebuild civilization.  In The Stand, the destruction is much greater, leaving only two major civilizations -- The Free Zone and the Vegas crew.  In Swan Song, the survivors are in cities and towns, spread out.

3. Both novels give a final battle that while exciting, leaves me a little empty.  I went a long way for that?

4. Both novels introduce God as a character.  In Swan Song, God lives on Warwick Mountain, and in The Stand, God lives in heaven.  There is a final battle in each book, and in each book  it is God who is ready to bring about the end of evil.

5.  In The Stand, God is -- God.  He gives dreams to his people and assigns  the righteous tasks so that they might stand against evil.  In Swan Song, God is an aging thin man.  Track with me -- I'm walking and I think, "Man, wouldn't it be interesting if this guy on Warwick mountain who says he's  God, if he turned out to be The President.  His plane went down, but McCammon sure  spent a long time with him at the beginning of the novel.  But he'd never do that.  Even if I was sitting in the room while he wrote the book and I suggested the idea, he'd blow me off."  Then -- as the voice in my headphones clamored on -- it turned out the man who called himself God really had once been the president.

6. In both novels evil is personified.  In Swan Song, he finally takes the name Friend, and in The Stand it's Flagg.  Though I find Friend much more frightening throughout the heart of Swan Song than I did Flagg, in the end he is simply lead to his death without much fanfare.  It is interesting that both Flagg's evil empire in Vegas and The Army of Excellence basically implode.

Questions:

There are things left incomplete in Swan Song.  The glass crown is only used once on Swan's Head, when she radiates power.  It seems the full effect of the glass crown is never revealed.  Why is it so important?  What does it do?  Why does it belong on her head?

After evil is confronted and Sister dies, Josh sets Swan out on her own.  She must go forth and heal the earth.  Now wait!  He guided her from childhood and protected her; but now sends her and Robin alone into the world to heal it?  It seems once the final struggle at Warwick Mountain takes place, the towns immediately go from being hostile, evil places to being sweet farming communities!  What happened?  Does Swan no longer need her giant protector?  Would she not need  him all the more now that she is about to step up and begin to really use her power to heal the broken wasteland?

Finally, why did the AOE keep Josh and Robin alive?  They only needed Swan?

Some quick notes:

I like it that the code to end the prayer to end the world is "amen."

McCammon's narrative style is intrusive at times.  Let me explain; McCammon talks over the story quite a bit, using his narrators voice to press forward, instead  of building  the story scene by scene and causing the reader to learn by observation.

When Stephen King tells a story, he usually tells it the way you see it on TV or the movies.  Each scene moves the story forward in progression.  Only when really necessary does a narrator break in to tell you what's going on. McCammon often dumps the scene by scene work load and instead simply talks over the character.  This allows him to tell big, sweeping, things in just a few pages.  It gives the characters  a "thinner" more cardboard feeling, while giving the book itself a sense if greater scope.  It feels big.

I realize it sounds like I'm being critical of McCammon's narration in Swan Song.  Truth it,  I liked it very much.  He never got bogged down in a scene.  I never felt like, "man, will this scene ever end?I'm not saying that style  would always work anymore than King's present tense narration in Mr. Mercede's  would always work.  But I am saying that at least  in Swan Song, McCammon has his own unique narrative style that is not at all like King's.

By the way, justice comes to the wild, broken world a little too easily.  Get this line:

Settlements struggled out of the mud, built meeting halls and schoolhouses, churches and shacks, first with clapboard and then with bricks. The last of the armies found people ready to fight to the death for their homes, and those armies melted away like snow before the sun.

Oh!  So that's how we get peace on earth; armies melt away like snow before the sun.  It feels a little neat and tidy for a book that was pretty grim.

Final Word:

I liked it a lot.  It left me plenty to think about and talk about.  It was good enough to keep me running/walking through the long hours of the night.  Or, perhaps the best thing I can say about it is that I will miss reading it very much.  It could have  been another 50 pages.