vol. 10 issue 9

Fellow readers, I didn’t plan it this way — I’m just not that smart. If you’re reading this the day I send it (1 Sep) you know that tomorrow (in 1990, if you see what I mean) is the next meeting of the Boulder Free Zone Committee, that Harold has some kind of plan (perhaps related to said meeting), and that Brad also says the power’s going to be back on. Unusually for me, I read this week’s portion of the novel in two sitting, and I have to say things still feel weirdly slow to me: another 90 pages of political machinations and interpersonal drama, none of which has yet to amount to all that much. Now, caveat the first: breaking a novel up into ~100 page chunks, and assessing each part on its own merits is certifiably unwise, and the sort of endeavour only a fool would take up. Caveat the second: whilst the momentum seems lacking, there is a real sense of tension being built all across the board. A few weeks ago I wrote to you wondering whether we had reached the top of a rollercoaster, and were set for a full-speed-ahead latter half of The Stand. Instead, to my mind, what we’ve been treated to is a further winding of the mechanism. At this point every spring feels pretty much as taut as it’s going to get without something popping off, and yet King keeps turning the key. I think we’ll get our all-gas-no-brakes finale, but Steve’s making us wait for it.

So let’s talk about some of those springs. Mother Abagail is still missing, which feels like too consequential a plot thread to go entirely unremarked upon, even if we don’t have much more to say right now — that’s a small but vital cog.

The fate of Harold Lauder looks to be set. Once again this week we witnessed a moment in which things could have gone a different way. Harold reflexively recoils at other members of the ‘Spade Crew’ mocking him with the nickname Hawk, before realising that in fact they’re not. There is a brief gap between the dark clouds in his mind, in which he considers the possibility of being sewn into the social fabric of the Free Zone. Then a voice in his mind (Flagg’s? The worse demons of our nature?) quickly convinces him to tap back into that reservoir of sludge we talked about last week: pride, self-righteousness, hatred. And this week we saw greed flare up in the mix too, as Nadine Cross offers Harold more than he could ever have imagined, save for that one exception. And men like Harold Lauder cannot abide being stopped short of having everything they want. Revealed in the manner he treats her is the fact that Harold’s desire for Nadine is cut with a vile contempt for her, rooted in her refusal to surrender to him completely.

The nature of Harold and Nadine’s relationship is very interesting. I’ve enjoyed how King has made it obvious the two are somehow destined to be with one another, without feeling the need to explore the specifics. (It’s somewhat reminiscent of Sigourney Weaver’s Gatekeeper and Rick Moranis’s Keymaster, in Ghostbusters (1984), only not funny.) Is this all the malign influence of Flagg, moving his pieces at a distance? If so, by what means and to what end? Nadine seems dedicated to Flagg on a personal level, where Harold sees him as a means to an end: namely, the complete destruction of Harold’s enemies. Perhaps we might read into this distinction a probability that Flagg finds it easier to manipulate Nadine, and hence is using her to manipulate Harold, by means of his insecurities and lust.

So that cog feels about ready to ping off its sprocket (NB I have no mechanical knowledge whatsoever); we leave Harold sweating over his dynamite surprise and marking off days off his calendar.

(A quick note on Joe / Leo: I’ll be honest, I’m not sure what to make of that whole situation. At one point the kid appeared to be under Nadine’s influence, with the spell breaking when he met Mother Abagail and spoke aloud his true name. We also saw last week that he’s sensitive to whatever bad vibes Harold’s putting out — more so than any of the adults currently around. But then he appeared in an intensely creepy scene this week, seemingly severely diminished by Nadine’s abandonment of him, and in a manner she isn’t able to predict or control. This reader doesn’t entirely know whether to be freaked out by the little guy, or feel sorry for him… or both. I do have the strange feeling it’s not going to end well for him, but only time will tell.)

Things also feel increasingly unstable amongst the community writ large. Whilst it might be a good — or even necessary — idea to send spies west, the methods by which the committee has done it are questionable. No sooner does one resurrect political structures, it seems, than one also resumes (somewhat underhand) political machinations. First the Committee take the decision to keep the spy plan secret from the rest of the Zone, and then they feel the need to obfuscate when confronted with questions at the town meeting. Afterwards, Stu thinks ‘we got by it again’ (p880), seemingly in acknowledgement that the seeds have been sown for greater problems to grow in time. The nascent social structures that they have begun to knit together are fragile enough without deceit as an added ingredient.

I’ve enjoyed King’s exploration of how this community has grown and begun to organise. To my mind however, we’ve spent too little time in Flagg’s camp over the last 200 pages, such that the obvious contrasts — which might have been fun to explore — aren’t drawn as starkly as they could have been. That said, perhaps making the novel 1,400 pages long simply to underline the fact that Randall Flagg is a brutal authoritarian, is unnecessary. I’ll defer to Mr King.

Finally for this issue, I’d like to say how much I enjoyed the scene between Larry and the Judge, in which the former approaches the latter in order to ask him to travel west as a spy. I found the whole thing to be nuanced and well balanced — say what you will about King’s difficulties writing female characters, he has a superb ear for the various timbres of conversation between men. The Judge’s pondering the most propitious order by which to reconstruct post-plague society struck a chord after our discussions of the last few weeks:

‘I wonder if we need to reinvent that whole tiresome business of gods and saviors and ever-afters before we reinvent the flushing toilet. That’s what I’m saying. I wonder if this is the right time for gods.’ (p846)

Ultimately, the Judge’s simple assertion that ‘You can only captain your own soul’ (p849) felt like a small piece of good advice to a man in a position to need it. In more of less the same breath, the Judge also says ‘you can only be one man’ (ibid), which provides me an opportunity to draw comparison with another moment I very much enjoyed this week. You’ll recall that when recommending Storm of the Centuryin the previous issue, I mentioned Colm Feore’s portrayal of the villain in that piece: Andre Linoge. It’s only the most minor spoiler to point out how that surname can be re-arranged into ‘Legion’, a reference to a Bible story in which Jesus exorcises a demon who, when asked its name, replies ‘My name is Legion: for we are many’ (Mark 5:9). I got a little kick out of the fact that Tom Cullen — whilst under hypnosis — recognises Flagg as an instantiation of the same. Legion, Linoge, Flagg… ‘Jesus knocked him into a herd of pigs once’ (p856).

This week, a recommendation with a twist. Back in June of 1999, Stephen King was out walking in his native Maine when he was hit by a van piloted by a distracted driver. His injuries were severe, even life threatening, and it took a prolonged period of hospitalisation and physical therapy for him to recover. If you’re interested, you can read King’s own recounting of the incident for The New Yorker.

There are those amongst his readership who believe that this near-death experience profoundly changed the nature of King’s writing. I won’t go into that whole conversation here, but I do want to highlight a pair of novels that would serve you well if you wanted to make your own analysis.

In 1998, King published Bag of Bones, the story of a writer who secludes himself in his remote lake house following the death of his wife, afflicted with writer’s block and experiencing increasingly strange things that may be supernatural, or may be a product of his fraying sanity. It’s… not a great novel.

A decade later, King published Duma Key (2008), the story of a man who — following a life-threatening accident — moves to a beach house to mourn the loss of his marriage, and try to cope with his own fractured mental state, partly through artistic pursuits. It is a pretty great novel! I’ve never seen King mention the similarities between the two books, but they are striking. The latter novel is the one I recommend, and it’s absolutely amongst his best work of the 21st Century. If you’re going to read both however, start with Bag of Bones 😉

OK, that’s everything from me for now. I will write to you again next Sunday, 8 Sep to discuss the novel up to the paragraph break on p1,000 (circa mid C62) which ends with the very ominous ‘…and into the presence of Randall Flagg.’

✌🏻

— Adam