Posted on 02/15/2021 6:01:39 AM PST by mylife
King has been open in the past about his difficulties writing The Stand, the novel still considered by many fans (myself included) to be his finest work. In his memoir On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft, he detailed how at one point the book almost went off the rails entirely because he'd run out too many narrative threads. He'd tripped himself up — until he realized that a bomb in the Boulder Free Zone was a handy way to curtail some of them and streamline his plot.
That's the most famous story of the book's struggles, but it's not the only one. Later in the same passage of his memoir, King explains that he also struggled to reach a satisfactory conclusion to the final scene, in which Frannie Goldsmith and Stu Redman put their son to bed and ponder for a moment what their struggle in the wake of Captain Trips meant.
In the book, this pondering ends with Stu asking Frannie if she thinks "people ever learn anything," a response to the battle against Randall Flagg that only ended when an atomic bomb (the world's great manmade devastator) exploded in the middle of Las Vegas. In that moment, Stu is thinking about the future, about their children, and their children's children, and worrying over whether or not they'll actually be able to rebuild the world without resorting to the old ways of mutually assured destruction.
(Excerpt) Read more at syfy.com ...
The stand was the last book of King’s that I could read.
“IT” was horrible- and I actually tossed it in the trash before I finished it. (And I had sprung for the hardcover)
Let me guess- they were all transgender?
I’m sorry that I ever read Kings trash. I can’t stand that cross eyed twit.
King was never interesting. He relied on weak conclusions and endings. It was all suspense and no action.
I gave up on King after Cujo.. When you put a book a month a out it goes down hill pretty fast not to mention his liberal views are a horror story itself.
There were a lot of reasons to look forward to the sprawling new adaptation of The Stand on CBS All Access when it launched last year, from its all-star cast to the possibility that it would offer hope in a dark time with its tale of pandemic survivors banding together to vanquish evil. For longtime Stephen King fans, though, the most tantalizing thing about the miniseries was a new contribution from King himself: A much-hyped “coda” scene that would offer some new sense of resolution to the epic tale of light versus darkness at the end of the world. Now the series finale, and King’s new ending, has arrived, and with it comes a poignant answer to one of the biggest lingering question in the author’s massive body of work.
So King used a deus ex machina two times in a book because he had written himself into a corner and somehow he is a great author?
Have not read one of the high school teacher’s screeds.
Do not give a shi...er...Obama about him.
Meh.
I really liked the Stand but I thought the ending was stupid. It was also the last novel of his I read but I did like his book of short stories.
I watched the first episode and it was so bad I didn’t watch any more.
I found the original mini series to be excellent, It will be hard to top.
I read king all the way to after he got run over by that van. Last one was “Duma Key” where he bashed W. Bush ....that was it for me.
How original, a disaster to obliterate all the loose ends you created by poor plot conception and writing.
If you didn’t read Misery give it a shot. Movie was pretty good but book is better of course.
:)
LOL! Yup. Except in this case the survival rate is over 99% instead of the fatality rate. Sadly the ‘x-spurts’ are treating the scenario like “the Stand”. I can’t stomach the author but the book is good. I’ve re-read it a couple of times. And we recently got the original dvd with Gary Sinise as the lead character. Tried to watch the ‘see B S” version but couldn’t get into it.
Trash............
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