Bests & Worsts Reviews from Amazon

This is a mini-review of the original version of the STAND, first published in the late 70's (slightly revised for it's paperback edition) and a more extensive review of the "Complete and Uncut" version, which has replaced the original version in print. The original version was one I found to be imaginative, poetic, and compelling for about two thirds of its 800 page length, and then, at a point where King has admitted he got writer's block, the tone shifts and the story becomes cruder, and has a rather ridiculous climax. It seems King lacked the fortitude to fulfil the promise of a story dealing with the psychological and spiritual crises of the many characters he had introduced, and decided to make the story a "stand" not of personal choices between good or evil, but a mere choice to trust in blind faith vs. using technology. King seems to have lost his vision of what certain pivotal characters, like Mother Abigail, were supposed to provide to the tale, and solves it by cruelly sidelining them. However, up until this point, the story was pretty magical, and awe-inspiring, giving a poetic sense of the world slipping from the one we know into something more mythical. King said he was trying to write an American "Lord of the Rings" and the original version does often achieve that feeling. The "Complete and Uncut" version may have been an attempt to bring the bulk of the novel in line with the less inspiring last third of the original version, and you must not believe the impression given by the title "Complete and Uncut" that this version is merely a restoration of original cut material. King has called it a "revision" himself, and one blurb in an early paperback copy of the "Uncut" refers to "material ADDED as he revised the work for a new generation", which seems to refer to newly written material, in addition to the 90's updating. King has also referred to it as an "expansion" (not a restoration), and the latest edition of the book has had the words "expanded edition" added to the title. And when I read the "Complete and Uncut" version, what I experienced fit with what these hints imply, that it seemed that King had heavily rewritten some material, and also added totally new material with a completely different focus than his younger self. Gone is a focus on poetry, and beauty. Increased are incidents of crude slapstick-gore, and goofy jokes about sneezing and snot. Many passages, where in the original the reader was allowed to sympathize with the plight of many victims of the plague, are changed so that the reader is encouraged to sneer or laugh at them. In one passage, about the spread of the plague, where in the original one felt bad for a nice family who had just contracted it, in the new version the reader is encouraged to laugh at a nasty, prideful father of this family, whose pride in his parenting is confounded when his whole family catches the fatal disease. The character of Lloyd, whose experiences in prison aroused sympathy in the original version, is subtly changed so that the audience is encouraged to sneer at him as he suffers, (for example, an inserted line about his anticipation of better food when he arrives at the prison changes his later starvation ordeal into a joke on him, and a focus on his masturbation while starving distances and distracts). A scene where Nick guards some dying prisoners is changed to make them seem more violent, repulsive, and comical, ruining the original's note of forgiveness and shared humanity when Nick finally releases the last of them, and King brings in a final ghastly attack by a newly-added/restored character who ends this episode with a morbid focus on eye-gouging, and with Nick kicking his corpse, utterly ruining the forgiveness feeling. Frannie's mother, who was unseen in the original, is shown, but as a cartoony witch, who one can't imagine could be loved by anyone, and a new "moral" seems to be inserted about Fran's father's manhood, which he asserts by slapping the nasty woman, a misogynistic element absent from the original. A formerly poetic passage about Flagg's journey across the country on foot is marred by new, crude indications of his evil nature, such as his reading "Mein Kampf" and "porno novels" and a new passage seems to have been written solely around a homophobic joke, as a middle aged homosexual, who longs after the "buttocks" of young men, is ironically killed by Flagg when Flagg SITS on him. One of the most poetic and beautiful passages from the original version, where Fran buries her father, is utterly mutilated by King's insertion of new or revised material, as he horribly changes Fran's attitude from loving realization of what must be done with her father's body, to that of a shell-shocked whiner, who cringes at the idea of touching her father's body, and only comes around to feeling love for her dead father after being slapped in the face by the gross-out of her father's corpse belching and farting at her. The presence of this belching corpse material may be explained by an interview King did with Playboy, where he described a "belching corpse" scene in his as-yet unpublished PET SEMATARY, a scene that never actually made it into the novel, probably due to editorial objections, either because of it's disgusting nature or because someone pointed out that a professionally prepared corpse would not produce gas. And so, when revising THE STAND, King may have realized that, since Fran's father was not professionally prepared, he had the opportunity to showcase this previously lost bit of nastiness, and he decided to do so at the expense of one of the most moving and poetic passages of the original book. I only noticed a very few new passages that seemed, mostly, to be similar in tone to the original version ... an extra phone conversation that Frannie has with her boyfriend, and a scene in a junkyard where Flagg does mysterious magic. A lot of new scenes seem to be totally new, written or rewritten extensively in King's more recent insincere, jokey style, as if King was embarrassed by the poetic pretentions, and mythic ambition of his younger self, and was trying to pretend he never meant any of it seriously. Perhaps this revisionism began when he got stuck and changed directions in the original (Flagg in the original, only seemed to go more in the goofy lunatic direction after the two-thirds mark, and this Uncut version goes all out revising him as a goofy lunatic throughout, erasing the former mysterious and magical portrait). King, in his introduction, goes on about how wonderful the missing Trashcan Man material is, but the only thing you'll miss is a homophobic gross-out involving anal-rape with a gun. Was this really what the original missing passage was like, or was it revised by King to make it worse? I suspect the latter, somehow. All in all, I recommend only the original version, for its poetry, its economy (only 800 pages versus 1200 for the Uncut) and the absence of mean-spirited "humorous" cruelty. Almost nothing added to the Uncut is worth adding, and in fact, detracts and distracts from the main story, and seems to have been added with carelessness and contempt. Whatever its flaws, the original seemed sincere. The "uncut" seems to be done in the spirit of a joke, King amusing himself at the expense of his own story. The "Complete and Uncut" edition also seems to have been inspired by marketing, a publicity stunt to revive King's profile by reissuing a new version that supposedly was better than the original. Don't believe it. It's infinitely, and I suspect, deliberately worse. I would give the original version 3 1/2 to 4 stars, but I am only giving the Uncut version 1 star. It would be 0 stars if the system allowed it, I am so disgusted with what King did to the book.