I have two items for my write-up today of Stephen King’s The Stand: The Complete and Uncut Edition:
1. Glen Bateman was defending faith after Mother Abagail left the Boulder Free Zone to seek the will of God, at the potential cost of her health and her life. But Glen shortly thereafter experiences his own miracle. His dog, Kojak, whom he left behind when he went with Stu on a journey to find Mother Abagail, has finally found Glen after traveling for thousands of miles. Glen is having a hard time processing that. When Stu reminds him that he was defending something extraordinary the previous night, Glen responds: “Oh, I can talk that stuff for hours on end. I’m one of the great all-time bullshitters. It’s when something actually happens.”
On a similar note, Larry realizes that he is about to be nominated to serve on the Free Zone permanent committee. He reflects that certain issues feel small when he was talking them over with fellow committee members in “the room comfortably lit with Coleman gas lanterns” (page 753). For example, sending out the Judge, Tom Cullen, and Dayna Jurgens to spy on Flagg’s team appeared to him to be like a chess game. But when Larry recognized that he was participating in decisions that had profound effects on people’s lives and deaths, he was scared to be a leader and was thinking of sneaking out of the nominating meeting.
It’s fun to shoot-the-bull about things that appear to be theoretical, but what happens when one hits his or her head into the hard wall of real life?
2. There are times when the book helps me to understand the miniseries better. In the miniseries, Harold asks for Stu (the chair) to recognize him, Stu and Fran are obviously suspicious of Harold, Stu recognizes Harold, Harold motions that all of Mother Abagail’s committee be approved in one vote, and Glen Bateman says (if my memory is correct) “Absolutely brilliant.” The book clarified what was going on. The people who were to serve on the committee were planning to be nominated, seconded, and elected on an individual basis, and it would be easy to throw a monkey-wrench into that process, for what if somebody else were nominated? But Harold did the potential members a service when he proposed an up-or-down vote on the committee in mass, and that’s why Glen said “Absolutely brilliant.” But Stu did not know that Harold would be trying to do the committee any favors, for he and Glen expected Harold to lead an opposition party against the committee, and that’s why Stu was suspicious of him. But things did not turn out that way, for Harold cleared the way for the committee to be formed—with the members that the clique desired, and nobody else.