5th
What not to read during the Swine Flu outbreak
2009 is the year of the hefty tome for me. I welcomed the year by finishing Bolano’s breathtakingly messy 2666, spent the winter snuggling up to Tolstoy’s masterpiece, War and Peace, and cleansed my palate with Yu Hua’s raunchy epic Brothers. This past week, I devoured Stephen King’s The Stand.
I read The Stand because my obsession with Lost demanded it. The writers of the show frequently reference the book as a major influence. One of the characters, Charlie Pace, is loosely based on one of the The Stand’s heroes, Larry Underwood.
The story opens up as a super flu virus is unleashed on the United States, doing swift work of ending the lives of 99.6% of the population. The remaining .4% are disparate, spread across a desolate landscape. To make matters worse, they are haunted by horrific dreams of Randall Flagg, a personification of pure evil. It’s a relief to these survivors’ night terrors when they begin dreaming of an old woman who seems to be an agent of God. Factions of survivors commence a long trek across an empty America to start a new civilization centered around their new savior and figurehead. Of course, there are other people drawn to Randall Flagg as well. There is a final stand between good and evil in Flagg’s dystopic Las Vegas community.
Stephen King said that he wanted to write a Lord of the Rings type saga, and all the elements are there, but shifted somehow. Instead of hobbits, elves and dwarfs, we have modern men and women. Instead of Mordor, we have Las Vegas. Instead of Sauron, we have Randall Flagg and his eye. We still have are the failings of men when left to their devices. In this case the devices are not a ring of power, but society, committees, secrets and all their trappings. We still have good and evil, but with a little bit more moral ambiguity than in Tolkien’s tale. Yes, the plot is what drives the story, but we have a whole host of wonderfully drawn characters making an incredibly readable, enjoyable, unable to put down story.
Next up? I’m thinking You Can’t Go Home Again by Thomas Wolfe.
