Stephen King's "The Stand"

Be warned!: if you value your time and sanity, do not read this book!

I've often wondered about abandoning books. As a youth I thought it was almost criminal to stop reading a book in mid-read. I figured everyone had something worthwhile to say and, besides, the book might get better. My best example is Sir Walter Scott's Ivanhoe. The first seventy pages or so are tedious but after that it becomes a great historical adventure/romance.

But as I get older I find I no longer have the patience or the time to spend with a book that just doesn't interest me that much. Some books are just so awfully bad it's hard to justify spending so much time with them (Battlefield Earth by L. Ron Hubbard springs to mind). Some books I feel I'm not prepared for yet. Some books just seem to have a lot of promise and eventually go straight downhill. The Stand by Stephen King is one such book.

Let me give you a description of my experience so you'll understand my revulsion:

First, the book opens with a scene describing some awful/weird happening going on. The opening is full of action. It is kind of disorienting. You're not sure who these characters are or why they are going through what they're going through. It is a great opening scene. It is intriguing and makes you want to keep reading to understand what is going on here.

Then the characters are introduced. Background is given on each character while sections are interspersed explaining the larger story concerning the epidemic. You get to learn about the characters, believe in them, understand them, care for them, and worry about what will happen to them when the epidemic hits them. By the time the epidemic starts affecting all the characters Stephen King has got you where every author wants you, a rapt listener to his tale.

So the second part begins--a major event has occurred and you want to know how these characters will deal with it. But a nagging voice inside your head keeps wondering when this story will pick up steam. There is plenty to see and experience but you start to wonder if maybe it isn't just a bit too much. There are so many characters to deal with and you start wishing that Stephen King didn't feel the need to go into minute detail about each characters' idiosyncracies and thoughts and lives. When every character is important, none of them are. But the story is so strong at this point that you let that voice subside for awhile.

Now you find yourself at page 300 or 400 and you're still not exactly sure where this story is going. A story concerning an epidemic hitting the world, decimating 75 or 80% of the population, and the consequent anarchy and loss experienced is a gripping tale. But Stephen King keeps inserting these annoying glimpses about something supernatural. By page 200 or 300 you don't need something completely new inserted. The story was interesting just as a tale of survival in a post-apocalyptic world. Why do we need some pabulum about prescience and good vs. evil now? You start to feel tricked by the author. It's almost as if he had this idea about writing some grand epic on good vs. evil, chose a vehicle (the epidemic) to tell that tale, and when the background tale was better than his original conception he refused to let go of his original idea.

But, like a Scientologist who figures, "I've spent a lot of time and money believing this, I might as well keep on going," you read on.

I've got a pretty good memory and I think I'm an attentive reader. But after awhile you either start to forget the characters or you just don't care. When that happens, reading becomes a chore, not a pleasure. I would read The Stand right before going to bed and it would truly help in putting me to sleep. I wanted to scream at Stephen King to bring back the good story he had going, not this cosmic good vs. evil stuff. I was interested in how people could live after such a disaster (a great, human story) not some banal metaphysical rubbish. Now there's some evil man trying to conquer the world with cosmic powers and some annoying, saintly woman who is somehow going to stop all this because of her faith in God.

Stephen King, you robbed me of several hours where I could've been sleeping or farting or reading a better book. Needless to say, I abandoned the book. I couldn't go on. Around page 700 I gave up. The story wasn't interesting anymore. The characters became flat and mere vehicles to further the cosmic agenda. You fooled me again, Stephen King.

Stephen King is not a bad writer. People who refuse to read him or disdain him because he writes horror are snobs. But he is far from being a great writer. Some of his worst qualities are abundantly in evidence in this novel: prolixity (get an editor once in a while, please?); lack of discipline (stories told not because they need to be told, but because they can be told); and an obsession with the minutiae of everything to the point where the story becomes obscured. But the worst sin Stephen King commits in this novel is abandoning a good story for a poor one. He should've let his muse take him where she would and not allow his own internal editor try to make this into something it was not.

If you like Stephen King read The Shining or Four Past Midnight. He has done some good work in the past. But this horrible, tedious, pointless novel should be left for future literary critics to disembowel.

The Ascendancy of Europe by M.S. Anderson

How does one review a historical book? I suppose it depends on what you're looking for when you read a history book: information, a basic understanding of the period and events, maybe a cohesive vision or story (maybe not).

Let's start with what this book is about. This book concerns itself with what happened in European history during 1815-1914. 1815 was the year Napoleon was defeated and 1914 was the beginning of World War I. Consequently, much is said about the rise of nationalism, the balance of power in European politics, the growing economies and the innovations in technology.

As far as information is concerned, this book gives much information. Unfortunately, I wish there were more about Eastern and Central Europe. Being a "survey" book the focus is on the "great powers" of Europe at the time: Great Britain, France, Germany, Austria, and Russia. The author uses a pretty straightforward method--he uses a topical approach. There is a section on the political history, a history of how the economies changed, colonial history, intellectual history, etc. Each section tackles that particular slice and shows how it is reflected in Great Britain, France, etc. There is space provided for "minor" players like Italy and Spain but it would be interesting to know a little more.

The main thrust of the book is the rise of nationalism. From the interest in folk cultures to the growing rhetoric about the German people's mission, or the French people's mission, nationalism pretty much informs the entire book. And, at the end of each section, the author shows how that led into the conflicts and alliances that gave rise to the first world war.

Any good historian knows a little something about historiography. In other words, what is this particular source's biases and/or prejudices? I thought he (she?) was a breath of fresh air in this perspective. I am sick of hearing from the academically inclined about the glories of Marxism and the evils of imperialism. This historian seems to be a little more objective in showing some of the wholly dogmatic and impractical aspects of Marxism and some of the benefits of imperialism. (But M.S. Anderson isn't so dogmatic either by also concluding that imperialism had its own grave errors and arrogance).

All in all it is not a bad book. It didn't thrill me (and I'm not kidding when I say some history books do thrill me), but it does have a certain charm in its approach. I would say it's a useful introduction to 19th century (Western) European history.

The Blind Watchmaker by Richard Dawkins

(orig. posted on Jan. 6 2006: http://sirrealswordsofwisdom.blogspot.com/2006/01/blind-watchmaker-by-richard-dawkins.html)

I just finished Richard Dawkins' now classic The Blind Watchmaker. Not a bad book at all. But before I tell you about it I should provide some background.

I have a degree in English and American Literature and my minor was in History. In other words, I'm not great at science or math. But I've always been interested in some aspects of science and biology and evolution happen to be subjects I like. I'm not a complete moron when it comes to scientific subjects but I'm sure any 8th grade science geek could probably run rings around me.

Consequently, this book by Richard Dawkins is made for me. The way I understood it it was written with a general reader in mind. The book is well written and plausibly argued. And as long as you pay attention and follow the logic of the author's arguments it's not that hard to follow.

The basic premise of the book is to show how life could appear in the universe without a creator or any pre-conceived notion of design (the whole "Intelligent Design" argument now being debated across the U.S.). Dawkins obviously loves Darwin and bases his argument on cumulative evolution over billions of years (the age of the Earth [and please shut-up you stupid creationists trying to argue that the Earth is only 6,000 years old!]). Dawkins patiently explains how such a slow and random process like natural selection could evolve our life-forms over vast amounts of time. Like I said, I'm no great scientist, but the argument makes perfect sense and I still fail to see why anyone tries to argue otherwise (except, of course, for religious reasons, but those are very silly reasons).

Overall, this is a good way to try to understand evolution in more depth than the few words hopefully given to you in high school and college. There are a few parts which I found to be boring (like the taxonomy debates and different schools of thought in taxonomy) but I think this book is an important read--especially now that religious nuts are trying to dumb people down.