Character-fueled descent into 1980's post-apocalyptic America (4/5)
This is only the third King
novel I’ve read aside from his collections in Skeleton Crew (1985) and Night Shift (1978). The two novels—The Shining (1977)
and The Running Man (1982)—haven’t exactly been beacons of terror excellence. Perhaps this
is due to King’s prose or subject matter, but the popularity of his writing has
yet to make itself obvious to me. For enlightenment, I finally picked up King’s
most popular novel, The Stand. Everyone I’ve spoken with says that this
novel, above all his others, stands out as his best and I quote two friends
when they call it a “a good read” and “his best book”.
Rear cover synopsis:
“June 16, 1985. That is when
the horror began—the evil that started in a laboratory and took over America.
Those who died quickly were the
luck y ones. For the scattered survivors, wandering through the country turned
into a gigantic graveyard, life has become a nightmare struggle. They escaped
death, but now something even more terrifying is waiting to claim them—the most
fiendish force ever to see all humanity as slaves and victims. A strange,
faceless, clairvoyant figure that is reaching for their very souls…”
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At a government facility hidden
in the desert, the green numbers on the wall suddenly turn red. A sentry posted
outside the facility sees this ominous sign and, due to the failure of a small
electronic part is the signaling system, the sentry is able to flee the base
with seconds to spare. Within the underground base, men can be found dead where
they had stood or even where they had sat eating soup—the sentry, Charles D.
Campion, has unwittingly contracted the virus which had killed the base crew
and fled into the desert. Later, when he crashes into a gas station island of
pumps, his family is found dead and bloated with gangrene and Charles himself
is oozing with phlegm, on the cusp of an agonizing death. He is Patient Zero…
but the world would never know as the world is about the die.
The open, freely flowing
highway and interstate system of American roads were once the arteries of
holiday revelers, families of four, traveling salesmen and transient workers;
rather than flowing with destinations in mind, the unfortunate individuals in
the same system begin to transport the superflu away from the small desert town
and into the metropolises of America. As regional and national pathologists
study the virus, Atlanta’s CDC takes control of its study and the government
initiates protocols to dampen the seriousness of the superflu in the eyes of
the public. People begin to die; families begin to suffer and expire together;
entire towns and cities begin to be littered with corpses and festering
corruption.
Though the superflu—or “Captain
Trips” as many people call it—acts a catalyst to worldwide pandemic, its
presence soon fades to the background to those who survive. The lucky 99.4% of
the population—if “lucky’ is the right word—must face an America without
government, daily lives without rule or law, an existence without the modern
conveniences of electricity and running water: “with civilization gone, all the
chrome and geegaws had been stripped from the engine of human society” (348)…
then there are the rotting corpses one must consider. The “constantly shifting
A-Prime flu” weaponized by the American military is resistant to vaccine as
“every time the body did produce the right antibody, the virus simply shifted”
(30). But humans aren’t the only victims: humankind’s companions of dogs and
horses die en masse while the innocent deer, cows, and rabbits thrive amid the
stalking remnants of the blossoming feral cat population. The randomness of
death is a vague mystery to the survivors, but one thing begins to penetrate
their collective psyche: “God gives life and He takes it away when He wants”
(324).
The sinking belief in a greater
God isn’t the only common experience among the human survivors; most have also
shared dreams of the saintly yet elderly Mother Abigail in Nebraska and have
also shared nightmares of the darkly man in the west, who some know as Randall
Flagg. After the Fourth of July weekend, bodies had amassed around the
country—and probably around the world—so, the survivors followed their dreams
to Nebraska to seek guidance under the woman whose mind is seemingly in contact
with God. Skeptical yet desperate, lonely individuals form strengthened groups
which form migrating tribes, all of which seek Nebraska and, later, Boulder,
Colorado where sanity and civilization lay waiting. Yet, beyond the Rockies,
another collection of humanity begins to amass without need for either sanity
or civilization; Randall Flagg attracts the miscreants, the morally decayed,
the dregs of human society. Rather than being touched by God like Mother
Abigail, Flagg embodies evil incarnate. Between Good and Evil, the survivors
“are all part of a chess game between God and Satan” (449).
Stuart is practically the first
survivor of the superflu. The CDC take him to Atlanta to study his immunity
and, when the facility fails, then to rural new Hampshire where eventually that
facility fails, too. On his own, Stuart leaves the security of the underground
facility when he meets Harold and Frannie. Frannie, pregnant from before the
virus’s outbreak, tags along with a boy a few years her junior—Harold. Both
young, Frannie scoffs at Harold’s awkwardness while he adores the angelic
presence of Frannie. When Frannie takes a liking to Stuart, Harold spirals
downward in an obsession of hate and vindictiveness. A quiet intellectual, he puts
his thoughts to paper, “an outpouring of hate like pus from a skin abscess”
(426). Even when the trio settle into Boulder, Harold coddles his hatred and
schemes against the very community which has accepted him.
Nick is a deafmute and
transient across America. He is brutalized by a band of hooligans in a small
town where the sheriff takes him in. As the superflu spreads even to this small
town, his attackers imprisoned by the sheriff slowly fall victim to the death
by phlegm while the sheriff, too, slowly succumbs its persistence. Writing as
his only method of communication, Nick had got along in the small town but
leaves when everyone else he finds is dead. The one person he meets, Tom
Cullen, is a simple-minded sprat who is illiterate. Regardless of their
communication difficulties, Nick and Tom band together in order to find
Abigail, who eventually leads them to Boulder where Nick becomes the honorific
head of the Committee in its infancy. Tom, though dull-witted, is not without
use.
Larry Underwood, high from his
recent success as a songwriter and perhaps still drugged to this gills with
cocaine, returns to New York with his tail between his legs and he realizes
that his so-called friends only relished his money rather than his company. In
a series of events which causes Larry’s reality to come crashing town, Larry
soon realizes that he’s not a nice guy. His mother dies of the superflu and, in
a city heaped with corpses, Larry decides to leave with Rita, a much older lady
plagued by borderline insanity. When she overdoes on pills, Larry is pushed to
the brink of losing all self-respect, but two people save him from the pit of
self-despair: Lucy and “Joe”. Lucy is a proud virgin and her boyish companion,
whom she calls “Joe”, is a savage who grunts and mimes. Larry is initially
skeptical about having the feral boy along with them, but he bows reluctantly
to Lucy’s insistence. Shames compels him to hide behind his fame yet he drudges
up the silt of his self-esteem in order to become a prime mover in Boulder,
Colorado. He’s also aware of the looming threat of Randall Flagg.
The demonic man named Randall
Flagg stalks the American wild west, a territory which he has taken for his
own. Though his plans are vague, his promises are enticing to the miscreants which
litter the American landscape after its megadeath… Lloyd Hendrich is one such
criminal who is played by Flagg. Locked in a prison and forgotten about, Lloyd
is the only prisoner to survive the superflu but starvation is close on his
heels. He has eaten the raw meat of a rat and contemplates eating the leg of a
fellow prisoner when Flagg approaches the bars of his cell, offering freedom
for the cost of utter loyalty. Another man, a few screws short and everyone
knows it, is the Trashcan Man. A pyromaniac
who failed rehabilitation, the Trashcan Man savors the newly found
freedom he has to savor the sights of flames anywhere he chooses. His first
choice is the oil tanks of Gary, Indiana which he ignites in a massive display
of pyrotechnics, destruction and heat. Injured by his own stupidity, he
relishes his long-held dream. Flagg senses the man’s obsession, welcoming him
into the fold of evil.
In Boulder, Nick and the rest
of the good-natured survivors are trying to salvage what’s left of Boulder’s
infrastructure to make it a move livable place: resume electrical power,
dispose of the bodies in a mass grave, and form a system of government based on
American democratic ideals. Just when all things are beginning to improve,
Mother Abigail—the backbone of faith for the fledgling community—leaves a note
and disappears by herself. This deeply worries the growing community now
numbered at seven hundred and growing everyday with groups being welcomed every
day. In Las Vegas, Flagg and his deputy Lloyd Hendrich have revitalized the
downtown area. While some may be replacing bulbs in streetlights like a common
citizen, others are at an air force base arming jets with missiles… and the
Trashcan Man is at the center of it all—Flagg has entrusted this psychotic man
to comb the desert sniffing out caches of hidden of weapons of war.
On the horizon of both
communities—in Boulder and in Las Vegas—war is perched high, a friction of ideals
set to clash.
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My 1980 Signet edition has 817
pages, so its size is proportional to my synopsis. As my mini-synopsis
outlines, the novel is rich in plot and characterization. For the most part,
this is an engrossing read that is easy to lose yourself in. First, the spread
of the superflu, by itself, is an absorbing scenario with wide-reaching
consequences on civilization, humanity, and on individuals. Then there’s that
itchy sense of good vs. evil lurking behind their dreams—Mother Abigail and
Randall Flagg—the showdown of which is still hundreds of pages away but the
tension always feels fresh, grating. If the schism and frisson between good and
evil aren’t enough to placate the reader, at the very least the characters make
the book worthwhile; each is a unique person, not only bent by the change in
civilization, but internally at war with themselves by a conflict of their own
sense of good and bad, right and wrong, hope and fear, etc. If you don’t like
people, there’s always Kojak, one of the last dog’s on earth, who is a
memorable and faithful scrap.
The only major fault in the
book lies within two-hundred pages between 400 and 600, roughly. During this
period, Boulder is in its early stages of developing its own system of
government and having meetings to establish its own foundation. The reader is
taken, step by step, through each meeting’s minutes, its parliamentary procedures,
suggestions for laws and amendments, etc. Rather than a all-encompassing snapshot
of the fledgling community’s attempt to restore order, King’s 200-page spread
is more like a boring family photo slideshow.
There another less irksome kink
in the novel which annoyed me throughout: King’s inclusion of pop culture songs
and other pop culture items from the 1980s. As a child of the 1980s—being born
in 1980, actually—I thought this would be an endearing quality, yet the books
feels terribly dated because of the pop culture references. I mean, on the first
page alone the reader is given three snippets of lyrics from Bruce Springsteen,
Blue Oyster Cult and Bob Dylan… followed later by The Sylvers (1), Paul Simon,
Chuck Berry (261), America, and The Drifters (621). The music isn’t even particularly
good. I’ve read online that King updated the novel in 1990 and included, dear
me, an additional 400 pages of material. Pass.
As far as terror and horror are
concerned, King pens a good story along these lines. Though people drop like
flies by the million, most of the characters who survive seem immune to the
horror just as they are immune to the superflu. I, for one, wouldn’t be
sticking around all those coughing bodies and decaying corpses; I’d be one to
get the hell out of Dodge, and quick. Rather than being affected by the decay
of the body, the characters are most perturbed by the decay of society and the “American
way of life”, almost like a loss of entitlement to their pursuit of happiness.
And they act quite logically, which is the opposite of horror. If they were truly
horrified by their predicament, they all would of starved to death or killed
themselves (which would have resulted in a much shorter novel, surely); rather,
they both mentally and collectively organize themselves to push to toward Nebraska
and Colorado. There’s a tinge of terror of what always awaits them, but horror…
not so much.
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While this is my favorite of
King’s work thus far, it’s not a masterpiece of fiction, terror or horror. It
is, however, a compelling read into characterization and a tantalizing piece of
post-apocalyptic fiction akin to George R. Stewart’s Earth Abides (1949).
In my shelves, there only remains one last King novel: The Tommyknockers (1987).
I’m tempted to buy Thinner (1984) and Under the Dome (2009), but
there isn’t much else in King’s bibliography which really draws me.
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