Ben: I had to go through and ensure all my dirty photos were protected.
Ben: Aren't you going to ask?
Me: What were your dirty photos?
Ben: No.
Ben: The other thing.
Ben: I'm sure you're burning with curiosity.
Me: The one of you passed out in another man's bed with a pair of panties clutched in your fist?
Ben: I don't know if 'passed out' is the correct description and no.
Ben: Keep guessing.
Ben: Why did you come here?
Me: I have not studied your photo catalogue diligently enough.
Ben: Think about it.
Ben: No this has nothing to do with photos.
Ben: Photos are tangential.
Ben: Oh speaking of did we ever upload that album?
Me: Not ever.
Ben: Should probably do that before everyone who we went to college with is dead.
Ben: We've already lost Bob.
Me: Did you remember all those captions yet?
Me: :'(
Ben: Goodnight sweet prince.
Me: Raped to death in a French bathroom.
Ben: We can't prove it was rape.
Me: I had a dream last night where I was visiting my old elementary school and Matt was there for a parent-teacher conference.
Ben: With his daughter?
Me: I think she was off-screen.
Me: Anyway tell me about the book.
Ben: How do I put this?
Ben: THE STAND totally sucked.
Me: Hahahahahaha.
Me: Elaborate.
Ben: Let me collect my thoughts.
Me: Remember you are judging the book as a whole.
Ben: Okay well first let's go over the ending.
Me: Ka is a wheel.
Ben: Okay so first of all
Ben: THE STAND must contain some sort of bizarre time/space dilation field.
Ben: Its girth must distort the fabric of spacetime.
Ben: Because every single time I gave you an estimate of the pages remaining I was always off by at least 100 pages.
Me: That must be why it took you eight months.
Me: It's like the Never-Ending Story.
Me: It is constantly adding to itself.
Ben: If I didn't know better I'd say Stephen King was sneaking into my house and writing more of it as I slept.
Me: Maybe in a few years he will come out with the ultimate director's cut edition, restoring 500 more pages of lost footage.
Ben: Maybe if I go back and look at it right now it will have grown a decent ending.
Ben: Really it's just too much bullshit to properly critique.
Ben: I could fill whole blogs on the failings of THE STAND.
Ben: No character received any sort of satisfying end.
Me: Ben, you must explain.
Ben: Sigh.
Me: These vagueries will not do.
Me: It is the most popular and best-loved novel of the most popular and best-loved American author of the 20th century.
Ben: Okay, so Harold just died like an asshole.
Ben: Which he was.
Ben: But he had so much potential.
Ben: He was the only interesting character left.
Ben:
Then he died what basically amounted to an offscreen death and was
mentioned in passing in maybe two sentences in the rest of the book.
Me: He betrayed his friends, Ben.
Me: He needed his comeuppance.
Ben:
We've already gone over how fuckin make-her-own-biscuits bitch died
without any sort of poignancy or meaning apart from providing a source
of deus ex machina.
Me: The old black lady?
Ben: Yeah.
Ben: Then Nadine just got fuckin thrown off a building after all this bullshit about her being important or whatever.
Ben: So glad we spent so much time building to that conclusion.
Me: But she was carrying Flagg's child.
Ben: We presume.
Me: He would have been like the Antichrist or something
Me: if she hadn't sacrificed herself.
Ben: I'm not sure if it's possible to be pregnant from being raped the day before.
Ben: Let's find a Republican.
Me: Ask Shane.
Ben: No it wouldn't have.
Ben: Woulda just been blown to hell in the atomic fuckin blast.
Me: Yeah speaking of deus ex machina.
Ben: Wtf.
Ben: I held out hope that Larry would save the ending.
Ben: Figured he was a sleeper.
Ben: who would awaken some sort of hidden character development.
Ben: But no, he just goes Buddhist and dies like a bitch.
Ben: So much for not abandoning the people you knock up.
Ben: Coulda just sent Ralph.
Me: Ralph was a very important character presumably.
Ben: Who?
Ben: Anyway
Ben: so like
Ben: the whole point
Ben: of their little trek west
Ben:
was to get put in a cage so that the Walkin Dude would use the occasion
to demonstrate a heretofore unknown ability to conjure balls of
lightning on a completely arbitrary person, and then lose control of it
for no reason so that it could descend on a nuclear warhead thus blowing
it up(?!).
Me: OH SHIT WE'RE ALL FUCKED.
Ben: LARRY
Ben: IT'S THE HAND OF GOD.
Ben: Well yeah I guess deus ex machina is technically the hand of God, almost.
Ben:
That's the best that can be said about the ending, in that maybe it's
Stephen King making some sort of meta-statement about deus ex machina.
Ben: But I doubt it.
Ben: To Stephen King, a metanarrative means making the author a character in the story.
Me: You have not gotten that far yet.
Me: Stop spoiling yourself.
Ben: I really hope Roland teaches Stephen how to shoot a gun.
Ben: Like a father figure.
Ben: And then they can both molest Jake, like the elder King would never do with his son.
Me: What about the falling action after the bomb?
Ben: That was actually sort of okay.
Ben: A little odyssey with Tom Cullen and East Texas.
Me: Then the Walkin Dude woke up in Polynesia.
Ben: That's the epilogue.
Ben: We still have to discuss the denouement.
Me: Oh right.
Ben: Also I like how we get back to town and see Larry's baby-mommy but the tribal primitive kid is never mentioned again.
Ben: Weren't you taking care of him?!?
Me: Wasn't there a scene from the dog's point of view for some reason?
Ben: Yeah.
Ben: I was planning on making fun of that ages ago but forgot.
Ben: Also
Ben: calling it now
Ben: the dog is totally going to get sucked into the search for the Dartower.
Ben: At least I'm hoping so, because there's no one left alive in this book who I want to endure any longer.
Me: Hahaha.
Ben: Anyway
Ben: East Texas reunites with Giggle Bitch.
Ben: They share an emotional scene where their baby does not die of the flu
Ben: then decide to get pregnant again and fuckin leave civilization behind.
Ben: I really don't want to bother making commentary on how stupid the morals are.
Ben: Just completely inane and self-contradictory.
Me: What was the moral?
Ben: Uh that humans should remember the actions that led to the superflu in the first place
Ben: or something.
Ben:
But then the main characters strike off on their own and ensure that
the nascent Boulder society is left to repeat the mistakes of the past.
Ben: I guess they really don't care.
Ben: Maybe that's really the moral, that humans are just too fucking stupid to not fuck everything up.
Ben: The main characters certainly exemplify this.
Me: Glenn Beck, professor of sociology, died a hero, Ben.
Ben: No he died like a bitch.
Ben: Literally no aspect of the story was ultimately fulfilling.
Ben: Stephen King has completely struck out on this one.
Me: What about that old lady Larry was sleeping with choking on her vomit?
Ben: Eight dozen characters and not a single one done right.
Ben: Fuck that old lady.
Me: What about Trashcan Man!
Ben: Trash deserved better.
Me: You probably don't remember but did you notice the reference to him at the end of Waste Lands?
Ben:
It's like Stephen King wrote a handful of possibly-decent characters in
this menagerie and then decided to focus all of his authorial focus on
the least interesting ones.
Ben: No I don't remember, please remind me.
Me: Whenever Flagg shows up to recruit the Ticktock Man he obliquely mentions him.
Ben: Does he?
Ben: Fuck now I have to check.
Ben: I'd actually be sort of excited
Ben:
at the idea that Stephen King was actually capable of identifying which
of his characters would be interesting enough to reference.
Me: Hahaha.
Me: Roland met Denis and Thomas chasing the man in black through time.
Me: I HAVE ONLY DONE THIS ONCE BEFORE.
Ben: Fuck, who are those people.
Me: The dudes from Eye of the Dragon, man.
Ben: Oh right.
Me: Come on.
Me: You have to keep the dramatis persona straight.
Ben: Wtf sort of name is 'Dennis' for a fantasy setting.
Me: Jek Porkins.
Ben: Also am I imagining this or did Stephen King reference WATERSHIP DOWN in one of the Dartower books
Ben: before he referenced it in THE STAND?
Me: I don't remember.
Me: Sawyer read it on Lost one time.
Ben: Hit up the wiki.
Ben: Look for the category "References to Watership Down."
Me: Thank God for Wikia pedantry.
Me: Anyway continue your analysis.
Ben: I can't find where the dark man recruits Tick Tock Man.
Ben: Fuck.
Ben: You've ruined me.
Ben: I am ruined.
Ben: Anyway
Ben: so like
Ben: dark man
Ben: right before the bomb goes
Ben: disappears from his clothes.
Ben: You see his clothes fall to the ground.
Ben: So like he obviously went somewhere.
Ben: Not sure why
Ben:
if Stephen was just going to go to the trouble of explicitly having one
of the character say NO I DON'T THINK HE'S DEAD I THINK HE CAN NEVER
DIE.
Ben: Coulda just had him been fuckin vaporized
Ben: and then he shows up in Papua New Guinea
Ben:
and decides hey instead of tracking down one of the fledgling
communities of civilized technocrats I'll just nurture this native
fucking tribe from the brink of the iron age and then form them into an
unstoppable empire.
Ben: Good luck, asshole.
Ben: END BOOK.
Ben: (mercifully)
Me: But doesn't he like turn into a demon or something for like one sentence?
Me: As he disappears.
Ben: Maybe.
Ben: Inexplicably.
Ben: Anyway
Ben: final synopsis.
Ben: THE STAND:
Ben: Great premise, promising start, tedious middle bits, fucking catastrophic ending.
Ben:
A book written for people like my mom who would actually be afraid of
Beelzebub speaking through a Ouija board to college students.
Me: Did that happen?
Ben: Yes.
Me: Wat.
Ben: Remember that flashback to when Nadine was in college?
Ben: Don't bother.
Ben: It was one of the dumbest scenes in the book.
Me: What was the dumbest scene in the book?
Ben: That's an unfair question.
Ben: There are so many to consider.
Ben: Was it the dog's flashback?
Me: Hahahaha.
Ben: Was it the old woman equating being fucked to corn?
Me: I loved that dog's flashback.
Ben:
Was it ABSOLUTELY ANY SCENE involving the gigglebitch, including the
interminable portions when she and East Texas bookended every single one
of their scenes with dispassionate sex?
Ben: Or was it, in aggregate, the absolutely criminally unsatisfying ending to every character's story?
Ben: That's it.
Ben: The worst scene in THE STAND was every part of it.
Ben: The ending is like gangrene.
Ben: That's actually almost profound.
Ben: You might even say that the ending was so bad that it infected (lol) the good parts of the book.
Ben: Stephen King is Captain Trips.
Ben: We are the dead.
Ben: (No great loss.)
Me: Hahaha.
Me: That bitch.
Me: Why then do you think THE STAND is considered by conventional wisdom to be Stephen King's greatest book?
Ben: Sometimes I'd be reading THE STAND and my mom would walk in and announce (again) how much she loved the book.
Me: Aw.
Me: So you hated it just to spite her?
Ben: No.
Ben: I really felt bad in those moments
Ben: because it's so bad.
Me: :'(
Ben: ;_;
Me: It's not the destination, Ben, it's the journey.
Ben: Bullshit.
Ben: Both are important.
Ben: Let's not repeat tired aphorisms.
Me: lol
Me: You have the book, what do the critical reviews on the first page say?
Ben:
"THE STAND, COMPLETE AND UNCUT...IS A BOOK THAT HAS EVERYTHING.
Adventure, romance, prophecy, allegory, satire, fantasy, realism,
apocalypse. Great!" ~ The New York Times Book Review
Ben: I swear to God I did not invent that quote.
Ben: This should have been my first warning.
Me: Hahaha.
Me: But it has apocalypse.
Ben: And realism, and allegory.
Ben: And, allegedly, satire.
Me: All key ingredients of any successful novel.
Ben: Now I have to read the preface again.
Me: Which one?
Ben: Both of them.
Me: Do you think Stephen King warned you?
Ben: How would that have helped?
Ben: It is my lot in life to endure whatever writings are thrust upon me from out of these shoeboxes.
Me:
"Is that bothering you? It must be. Here!" Fannin seized the hanging
flap and ripped it briskly off Quick's head, revealing a bleary swatch
of skull. There was a noise like heavy cloth tearing. Quick shrieked.
"There,
there, it only hurts for a second." The man was now squatting on his
hunkers before Quick and speaking as an indulgent parent might speak to a
child with a splinter in his finger. "Isn't that so?"
"Y-Y-Yes,"
Quick muttered. And it was. Already the pain was fading. And when
Fannin reached toward him again, caressing the left side of his face,
Quick's jerk backward was only a reflex, quickly mastered. As the
lineless hand stroked, he felt strength flowing back into him. He looked
up at the newcomer with dumb gratitude, lips quivering.
"Is that better, Andrew? It is, isn't it?"
"Yes! Yes!"
"If
you want to thank me—as I'm sure you do—you must say something an old
acquaintance of mine used to say. He ended up betraying me, but he was a
good friend for quite some time, anyway, and I still have a soft spot
in my heart for him. Say, 'My life for you,' Andrew— can you say that?"
He
could and he did; in fact, it seemed he couldn't stop saying it. "My
life for you! My life for you! My life for you! My life—"
The stranger touched his cheek again, but this time a huge raw bolt of pain blasted across Andrew Quick's head. He screamed.
Ben: Wow, what an oblique reference.
Ben: Okay that's pretty good.
Ben: Are you sure that's not from the next book?
Ben: Who the fuck are these characters?
Me: Richard Fannin.
Ben: WHO
Me: Was the RF name Flagg used at the end of Waste Lands.
Me: BEN.
Me: This was your favorite book thus far.
Me: How can you have forgotten it all?
Ben: It's been like a year.
Ben: Fuck now I have to start this whole thing ever.
Ben: Ka really is a wheel.
Me: Me: Were you relieved that the Tick Tock Man survived?
Ben: I was more relieved that the man in black had returned.
Ben: And that it appeared that he was no longer completely in control of Roland's ka-tet.
Ben: There's finally some kind of conflict.
Ben: You have to strike a balance with this destiny bullshit.
Me: How did you know it was him?
Me: He changed his name again.
Ben: Yeah what a weirdo.
Ben: Just use your real name, dude, this guy doesn't know or care who you are.
Ben: Absolutely no recollection.
Ben: This is disconcerting.
Me: Have you been comping again?
Ben: For all I know, maybe.
Ben: I'll skim our blog archives as a refresher
Ben: and then
Ben: WIZARD AND GLASS.
Me: Are you excited to resume your quest?
Ben: Yeah.
Ben: We are still riding off of the crest of the last book.
Me: Which you have apparently totally forgotten.
Ben: I fully expect the first half to be enjoyable.
Me: Just the first half?
Ben: It seems like the Dartower books are good by halves.
Ben: So a book will have a good first half and then a boring second half.
Ben: Then the next will have a boring first half and a good second half.
Ben: Repeat.
Me: I see.
Me: When will you continue the odyssey?
Ben: Well it has to be soon.
Ben: What's our ETA for DARTOWER 4.5?
Me: April.
Ben: IV.V
Me: That looks like a dumb face.
Ben: You mean a cool guy wearing triangular sunglasses and gazing slightly to the side.
Me: YEEEEEEEEAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHH
Ben: I'm not sure what to do.
Ben: Do we go for it?
Ben:
I still have two books before I'd even be able to read it if we wanted
to do this thing according to the proper narrative progression.
Me: April 24, 2012.
Ben: And you'll have to read it first
Ben: to ensure there are no spoilers.
Me: Indeed.
Me: How long will it take you to finish the shoebox?
Ben: Almost certainly before April.
Me: We can go on hiatus.
Ben: Again.
Me: Use that break to read some non-Stephen literature.
Ben: We can call that blog HE DID NOT SO MUCH TO SCREAM.
Me: Our next project will be to read Keith's complete works.
Ben: *blam*
