Jordache Bitches and the Vengeful Wereteen (Cycle of the Werewolf, 1983)

Cycle of the Werewolf (1983)

Back in the olden days of the nineteen eighties, a quarter to Internet and half past Model T, shopping was largely a physical endeavor. When you couldn't shuck your jive down to the mall, you had to at least let your fingers do the walking to get goods shipped to your doorstep. Catalogs were king in this regard. The Home Shopping Network was in its infancy, rarely offered anything a preteen might want, and your household had to have cable to get it, anyway. 

While there were stand alone, independent bookstores and record shops around Wichita, one usually needed wheels to get there. Overwhelmed parents had an option, though, and ours took full advantage of it once we made that galvanic change from ten-year-old babies to eleven-year-old Women. T'was the Mall, y'all, and it was glorious. Mom would drop us off in the morning and pick us up for dinnertime. For six to eight hours, we walked, we lounged, we scoped, we giggled shrill and harsh. 

Embossing hollers from the inner front cover.

The midwestern and national anchor stores (JC Penney, Sears, Dillard's, Henry's) were bound together by shops with exotic, enchanting names like Cricket Alley, Ziggies, and The Wild Pair, and buttressed by standards like Spencer Gifts, Footlocker, and Radio Shack. In the revolving lottery of businesses that came and went, there were usually two music stores and two book stores to peruse for hours, day after day, searching for the new thing, the needed thing, the special shiny that would finally make life complete. Musicland and Camelot Music offered up the latest albums and tapes by Hall and Oates, Huey Lewis and the News, and 4-ever in our hearts Duran Duran, with the well tousled sheet music in the back that no one ever seemed to buy but countless kids relied upon to settle lyric disputes after rewind-play-rewind-play x 50 and the Mean Oracle Older Brother couldn't decipher "look for the purple banana 'til they put us in the truck" (let's go!). I still remember scoring the first cassette I ever bought on my own, its slick little case, black back, the cover art white save the band, all handsome and sparkly, with the lively yellow and blue lettering slanted askew as if to say there was indeed something I should know, letting those first static shutterclicks of cameras light me up and break me down, with "Girls of Film" electrifying my little silver boombox, my legs and arms flailing in unbridled, unfiltered delight.

Half title page.

Full title page. Note that Wrightson sometimes
went by "Berni" so as not to be confused with
an  Olympic diver of the same name.

The early eighties had not yet seen the super bookstore come to fruition, with Borders and Barnes and Noble still on the horizon, so instead we had the tiny, packed wonders of Waldenbooks and B. Dalton to fulfill our book buying fancies...if we had said fancies to begin with, that is. I will confess that I do not recall buying books back then at all. I saved my nickels for music and merch, specifically band shirts, clever pins, snarky hats, and later, clothes. I was far more concerned with keeping up with whatever psychotic turn fashion might take (layered looks, popped collars, pin legs, jelly shoes, neon neon NEON) than spending money on something I could read for free at the library. Almost every Stephen King book I owned up until college was a gift of some sort, mostly from my mother, God love her. 

When I would venture into B. Dalton (which I favored over Waldenbooks for reasons lost in time), it was always to cruise the idolatry sections, aka celebrity biographies, hot goss, slam books. Truth be told, with rare visits to sci fi and obligatory obsessing over horror (Barker, Straub, Koontz, Bradbury), this was also the section I spent most of my time in at the main library downtown, as well. It was on the second floor, sort of off in a corner, and rarely inhabited by anyone but me. Opposed to the book shops, which were already packed tight, with claustrophobic aisles and too many people leaning, reaching, breathing. Not to mention the stone cold fact that bookstore employees did not want kids grubbing up the merchandise for hours and skipping out without ever buying anything. 

But it was on the floor of the library and tucked round the corner at B. Dalton that I learned about Marilyn's hair dying habits, Garbo's humble childhood, Mansfield's fictitiously gruesome end, and just how mad Brando's first wife was and would always be, perhaps even beyond the grave. When I first started going to the mall, I had a great allowance that could buy plenty of mall food (Taco Tico! McDonald's!), trinkets, at least one cassette tape, and even a shirt, but I never spent a dime on books. Once my mother's job evaporated, there was no allowance at all. I'd get money here and there, but most of my acquisitions were from discount stores, garage and estate sales, and the whim, charity, and kindness of others. 

The 1983 specialty hardcover printing was by
The Land of Enchantment. I owned this same
1985, first paperback edition from Signet.

This is why I was especially lucky to get a new copy of the 1985 paperback edition of Cycle of the Werewolf since 1985-86 saw the worst of our financial drought, though whether I procured it at the beginning or tail end is not clear in my memory. I don't know how we afforded it, whether it was a birthday gift, or how exactly it came to be, but I remember being incredibly grateful for it...even if it was the least favorite thing I'd read from King up to that point. At the ripe old age of thirteen I could not have been less interested in comic books so, while the drawings were certainly compelling, the spare bits of story that bridge between those colorful smatterings of gore and horror were a bitter disappointment. 

There is something piercingly clever and cruel about experiencing a loss of financial stability right when a teenager has become achingly aware of the supposed "value" of Things. Every kid comes to understand it in one way or another, depending first on socioeconomic circumstance, then on individual development, personal obsessions, and the outside forces that move and motivate one's world. I remember being blissfully ignorant to the power of trend, fashion, glamour, and labels when I was in fourth grade (1981-82). I was outgoing, friendly, weird, and cute enough, though my idea of dressing up was wearing my no label straight leg jeans so blue they were almost black, my white sweater with a purple flower on the breast, and my unbrushed hair tied back with braided crochet string. I had half my teeth, stork legs, and an affinity for faking illnesses to get out of school so I could watch Sesame Street and Dallas reruns on my grandma's couch. My passion--the absolute, white-hot center of my soul--was rollerskating. I never missed a skate party, skate night, skate opportunity. I was there! First in rental skates, later in my own skates, won by taking third place in a charity skate-a-thon (what else). 

Dedication.

Epigraphs.

I was only at Jefferson elementary that single, fourth grade year, having moved from the center of town eastward, and we'd planned to stay there if not for a little twist of fate that sent me instead to Isely Alternative School for the following two years. I made lots of friends at Jefferson, a couple of frenemies, and sported an altogether easygoing crush on the most popular boy in school, a sixth grader named Robbie who also dug skating and was perhaps one of the nicest boys I ever knew. He was always kind and patient with me, as he was with all the little gigglers following him around Skate East, and never used his power for evil (as so many do). While I was not unfamiliar with the stratagems and stretched truths of gossip (I had babysitters, after all), it was the first time I recall peers talking bigger than they had a right, making claims about who did what and when, and generally taking their Barbie wannabe soap fantasies and applying them to real, schoolyard friends and foes. At the time, it was mildly distressing. Looking back on it now, I just want to laugh behind my hand, hug every one of them and tell them to put on their footy jammies, brush their teeth, turn on their night lights, be quiet, and Go. To. Bed.

When Robbie started to "go" with one of the meanest girls I'd ever met in my nine years of life, I was dismayed. What on earth would compel such a nice, good boy to pretend to date such a backstabbing babybeast? Some faceless, 4th grade frenemy told me that I could never have what our mutual foe Krissy had because I didn't look like her and I didn't act like her. What Krissy had was the undivided attention of every boy, including fair Robbie, but I could see nothing extraordinary about her except that she was bigger than us, had the world's weirdest, most teased perm, and wore copious amounts of strawberry Kissing Potion. She was also a skilled bully but I was relatively sure that could not be a factor. The fact that her jeans had someone's name on them never clicked. The fact that she had lip gloss at all never clicked. That she wore mascara and blue ice eyeliner--a scandal!--never clicked. It wasn't until the next year at Isely Alternative that it clicked. It clicked hard. It broke the sound barrier and I felt the seismic whoosh of impact. *CLICK*

Each chapter begins with the same, stylized
title plate, with the month emphasized in black.

The influence of my fellow classmates wheedled from the start of fifth grade. They said nothing, but wore it all. They dressed the same, in clothes I did not have and, upon further investigation, learned to my shock that I could not have. This was the crack, from out which frothed a bitter scum of want, and later, jealously so bright and sharp it all but cut me to shreds. They had things called Izod and Polo, crisp and clean. The little alligator, the little man on the horse. There were signatures and stamps on buttcheeks. Gloria Vanderbilt, Calvin Klein. They wore boat shoes in Kansas, went skiing in Colorado. They wore make up and smelled marvelous. The glint of jewelry twinkled 24 karat and genuine. They all had the same little red lunchboxes.

The thing that broke my hypercharged brain, a flashcard torture chamber of designer fashions and twinkly trinkets beyond my reach, each flickering by, ablaze with want and need, need and want, was a very small, very prim, highly idiotic purse that too many of the girls had and I decided would be the absolute end of me if I didn't, as well. It was blue with white hearts and spectacularly unremarkable. I would sit in class, seething for want of it, seeing it tucked behind the pink polo'd arm of some plain-pretty girl, feathered hair perfect, dangly gold earrings swinging and (gasp) double or even triple pierced ears, bored, gum popping, and utterly at ease with that little prim purse, no worries except maybe how many boys she'd have to say "no" to when they slipped her notes asking to be her boyfriend yes/no/maybe (circle one). I wanted that goddamned purse. Even though I had nothing to put in it. I wanted it.

In those two years at Isely, otherwise a dream within a dream, a school too good for this world (too pure), I did manage to acquire some of the things the other kids had, mostly the easy stuff (rainbow heart shoe strings for my hair), or things we already had that were turned back into fashion (rolled, red-paisley bandana repurposed as a belt). But while they had countless pieces with designer labels, I had the one pair of Jordache jeans. And while I eventually got the Tupperware (pitched earnestly as an essential to Isely dining, the hotmeal being too plebian to bare, and the lunchbag an atrocious affront to cafeteria aesthetics), we never skied in Colorado, and it took decades for me to stop caring about trends and labels and the altogether amorphous nature of "perfection."

I got the purse. It was, for a hot second, a resounding triumph. It was at the ass end of the year, however, and by the time school wound up again, the purse was abandoned in some corner of my room, a place to gather shiny bits of cheap jewelry picked up for a dime at estate sales where everything just had to go and yesterday if at all possible. It would have been a meaningful lesson in the shimmering mirage of Value had I the mental or emotional resources to grasp it. Unfortunately, it would take decades for me to truly understand the value of Things and the cheap emotional payoff of acquiring a new shiny only to have it dull before your very eyes, sometimes as soon as you took it out of the bag and removed the tag. Merch is, in the end, smoke, mirrors, and a sugarsweet flash of endorphins.

The introductory chapter plate is followed by beautiful, black and
white, two-page spreads illustrated by Bernie Wrightson. Each
chapter also includes one full-page, color illustrated plate set near mid-
narrative, and one black and white drawing at the close of the chapter. 

When I got my hands on the newly released, mass market, 1985 paperback edition of Cycle of the Werewolf, I didn't know that the 1983 hardcover had been a limited edition, specialty printing. My recent efforts to track down the original, 1983 pricing for the hardcover have been in vain, but they're currently selling for anywhere from $300-$600 USD. Thirteen-year-old me would not have been impressed. It didn't matter that the book was a work of art with or without King's story. I'd only ever wanted it because it was a King story. The idea that I might have been denied access to a King work--a bestselling, mainstream, highly in demand author--would have been astounding to me. I was certainly prepared to argue over whether someone of my tender age should be allowed to read such things in the first place, but to be denied because of my socioeconomic status? 

All that being said, thirteen-year-old me read her paperback copy of Cycle of the Werewolf once and tucked it away to be moved from one house, apartment, and duplex to the next and the next, likely never to be read again because I frankly just didn't get it. The linked vignettes of violent little deaths bulge awkwardly whenever King is compelled fill out the narrative a bit more. Otherwise it is a catalog of confrontations between a werewolf and the townspeople of Tarker's Mills. Little scraps of oily death. Cycle of the Werewolf is okay, and certainly engaging if you are into bloodbaths, but the real stars of the book were the illustrations. I was years from understanding that. 

Also, and so true to form, werewolves are about as exciting to me as a bunch of draculas, mummies, and frankensteins running around causing havoc. Give me a double feature movie night with Monster Squad and An American Werewolf in London. Now, that is monstermash entertainment.

I found out about the special edition hardcover of Cycle of the Werewolf a few years later, when during my senior year in high school I read about another Stephen King work that I was definitively not allowed to have. It was a short story called "My Pretty Pony," which had been made into a book with artwork by Barbara Kruger. It was a special, 250-copy printing from the Whitney Museum's writer and artist series. At the time, it was available only in this extremely limited, entirely obnoxious format. There was no other version of the story printed in a magazine, no copy pirated and shared on some website because the Internet as we know it didn't exist in 1989, and it would not appear in any collected King works until four years later, in Nightmares & Dreamscapes. Not that there was any inkling that the story would eventually be available to the unwashed masses. It was only available in this one, highly exclusive format.

My favorite two-page illustration, April.

As I sat there in the library, exhausting whatever card catalogue, microfiche cache of information I had to get my hands on this one, solitary story, all I could feel was fury. In my mind, it was a loud, beastly FUCK YOU to the millions of fans that had bought every book and waited with bated breath for the next and the next and the next. To my teen logic and limited knowledge of publishing, rights, and collectables, it seemed certain I would never be allowed to read it, nor would most people. Instead, it would be hoarded by those 250 decidedly rich buyers (it was over $2,000 per copy in 1989) and they alone would get to experience whatever magix that story held. It was unjust, grotesque, and infuriating. My vague but warm affection for Stephen King took a serious hit that day. Before, he'd been this dorky, talented, good-willed "Uncle Steve," bringer of scares both mighty and mouse-y, but always with humor and humanity and soul. Now, he was an elitist shit, probably wearing (re-branded) Lacoste and Sperry's on his gold-plated yacht, no doubt named something oogy like "Bloody Carrie" or "Here's Johnny."

To call my eventual reading of "My Pretty Pony" in Nightmares & Dreamscapes "anticlimactic" would be an insult to all things anticlimactic. That special edition hardcover now sells for anywhere from $200 to $6,000, but I reckon the story alone is worth about .42 cents a pop, or 1/24th the Nightmares & Dreamscapes paperback cost sans tax. Truth be told, I don't really remember what the story was about. Still, I always wondered how it was allowed to be one of the twenty four stories included in Nightmares & Dreamscapes collection at all. Didn't that devalue the limited edition? Wasn't at least part of the value the exclusivity of it? That if you owned it, you would be one of only 250 owners on the planet? That not even libraries would have a copy, save maybe one or two who had that kind of budget to blow? 

Also in April, "Let's fly a kite, Food!"

Maybe King decided it would be uncool in the long run. Who knows.

But whenever I think of Cycle of the Werewolf (which is seldom), I immediately think of "My Pretty Pony" and those limited edition runs, meant only for the lucky few. It never burned me that I could not own the artifact, with the special steel covers and inset clock, emblazed with signatures from the creators themselves. I was mad that I could be denied the story. Friendo, deny me every unpublished story you like, but as soon as they are published, to be set out for purchase and to be owned by another, then NO. Hellllll NO. Art should always be reasonably accessible. Every glimpse of the Mona Lisa I've had throughout my life--in text books, coffee table books, and via the Internet (the greatest equalizer)--absolutely destroy the actual view I got of her at the Louvre. She's behind glass, there are 5,000 people straining to see her, and she is very, very smol. I will never get to see her close up, see the brushstrokes, smell the chemicals, the wood in the frame, study the cracks, the tint, the smile, but I can see her in my mind's eye anytime I like because she was made as available as any work of art can be. 

Creating something that only the richest, most elite, or just money foolish can attain then telling the whole world about it is gross. If it was a secret, just between you and your pal (or 250 richest pals), and it wasn't covered in national newspapers and magazines transported by truck and trolley to even the most dust-blown Midwestern corners of the nowhere to reach the eyes and heart of a fan who could never conceive of spending $2,000 on a book? Sure. Go buck wild. Write a thousand stories for a select few. But don't brag about it, fool!

According to Wikipedia, this whole project
started as a calendar, thus explaining the brevity
of the text, at least in part. It serves far better to
explain the clear liberties taken with the full
moon/kill dates coinciding nicely with
familiar holidays. 

Now having read Cycle of the Werewolf for maybe the third time ever (and I'm betting it's just twice, but I can't be entirely certain), what strikes me most is the extraordinary talent of Bernie Wrightson. He's the same illustrator for the 1990 edited edition of The Stand, covered in an earlier post. His depictions of the wolf are stark with bloody, lively, murderous, sometimes funny savagery, but the full, two-page spreads of the banal beauty of Tarker's Mills set the tone in an exquisite balance of horror and the mundane. It is well worth the read just to experience Wrightson's brilliant work framed within each vignette. I wish I could have understood the true focus and value of Cycle of the Werewolf when I was a kid, but I still had miles of growing up to do. 

Cycle of the Werewolf as a stand alone novel (or novella, really) is not bad, per se, but it would not be much of anything at all without Bernie Wrightson's magnificent artwork. If King ever considered reworking one of his books, this would be the perfect candidate, as sparing as it is, with so much more color and heft to be built upon the skinny bones. As an homage to Wrightson, to match his effort, at least, and truly bring this werewolf to howling life under the bright gleam of the full and ravenous moon.

[Never saw the movie, never will. Sorry, Corey Haim. You were great in The Lost Boys.]

Typical back cover copy, save the extremely
avoidable typo (repeated, no less) which gives
the name of the were-hounded town as "Tarker
Mills." They've corrected the copy in more 
recent editions, but babyyyy, print is 4-ever
[kiss emoji].

Grade: B (Wrightson gets an A, King gets a C)

Scary? (0-nope to 10-you will die): 3. It only gets a 3 because some of the illustrations are freaky and make the reader think, maybe overthink, possibly have nightmares. Most of the "chapters" are so short and to the point that there is no real build up to the killings. It's just kill, kill, kill. 

Warnings: Gore, n-word, implied weresex, extremely uneven narrative.

Artifact: Internet Archive had the goods, and for a full 14-day lend, too! Not that you need more than a few hours to finish Cycle of the Werewolf. It's only about 130 pages, including the illustrations. As with previous loans, they had the same edition I owned, and it was nice to peruse the pages once more, this time through more experienced eyes. Wrightson does beautiful, extraordinary work in Cycle, and it is well worth reading the paper copy just to experience the illustrations. While I believe the work would be better served by a more evenly spun narrative--either all brief or better fleshed--there is no denying King's ability to turn a phrase and make it sing tart or bitter in your mouth. I especially loved "November's dark iron," and King's well-known talent for expressing Maine's breadth of seasons.

The Twisting Lens of Fractal Time and the Beautiful Ravages of the Snotpocalypse* (THE STAND, 1978, 1990)

THE STAND (1978, 1990)

The world catches the flu and drops dead. If things weren't bad enough, a psychotic, narcissistic, jiveturkey clown drives the surviving population to cataclysmic ends using fear, lies, and the malignant power of the cult of personality...heyyyy...

I'm not going to say anything about this cover
other than the painfully obvious: it has nothing
whatsoever to do with the book. I couldn't torture
a guess out of this even if I wanted to try. 

I started reading the original version of The Stand (published 1978, set in the early 80s) as a snot-nosed high schooler. The Stand remained my very favorite Stephen King novel until It came along and stole this Loser's heart, in many ways, forevermore. The original publication, a relatively slim 800+ pages, was still a hefty undertaking for a kid that had never tackled anything thicker than 500 pages at that point. Packed within those pages, with careful plotting and an underlying moral so clear even a squirrel-headed teeny could catch the drift, was a story thick with interesting and conflicted characters, creeping horrors that revved up to roaring terrors, and a doubling down of misfortunes so sinister in conception one wonders if the lesson was all that clear after all.

A grimly humorous irony--and cherished memory--was the fact that the only time I could ever devote to reading The Stand the way I wanted to (straight through, no interruptions save the necessary) was either during summer break or, as I was more keen to do, when I was home sick from school with hours of hacking, coughing, and sneezing time to spare. There was something deliciously twisted about delving into the demise of the human race under the relentless virulence of the US government created superflu, Project Blue (aka Captain Trips), while combating my own garden variety virus. The very first time I read The Stand was under the heady fog of flu, propped up on pillows and swimming in tissues. The bonus visceral experience made that reading just as scary as you'd imagine. I've often wondered if that inaugural reading hardwired me to enjoy the first half of the novel just slightly more than the last. To this day, it remains true, though it's balanced out some over the years. It's either that, or perhaps because the first half of the novel is primarily rooted in reality--germ warfare is real, human egomania is boundless, stupid happens--whereas the back half is steeped in fairy-tale mysticism and the cruel extension of trials, a seemingly never-ending battering of heartache, disappointment, failures, and the looming threat of complete annihilation.

Same as above...and the description is wrong.
What the hell, dude.

So I read The Stand during various outbreaks of colds and flu, gleefully suffering from some of the same symptoms that were so effectively killing people in the story, enjoying a sick thrill not dissimilar to those movie-rides at Disney where the seats jimble jamble and they mist you in the face to heighten the experience. By the time the "complete and uncut" version of The Stand came out in 1990, I'd read the original more than a half a dozen times. It was well-worn and well-known. When I finally got around to the new edition, it was more of a curiosity and less a thrill. Nonetheless, I loved many of the additions, especially the confrontation between Frannie and her mother, and felt that most of what King added back served to strengthen the overall story. All in all, though, I had "moved on." There were quite a few King works that lit my fire hotter and brighter than the dusty ol' Stand, and college was expanding my tastes in insatiable bounds, so my copy of the complete and uncut edition of The Stand got shelved for a once-a-decade read through (if that) if for nothing else, a tiny, faded taste of nostalgia...me on my bed, buoyed by blankets and tissues, goggle eyed and snorting through the demise of the world. Good times.

Before I go on, I must acknowledge a certain elephant, for he is quite lorge, full trumpet-y, and stinky. It's been weighing on me ever since I started re-reading these first King novels, so I suppose now is as good a time as any to talk about the rotten facts of bigotry. I can't speak for every popular novel from the past, but I'd imagine similar levels of sexism, racism, and homophobia are smattered through the pages of many bestselling mass market paperbacks with yellowed edges and cracked spines. When portraying the general populous, or at least the primarily white-faced facets of it, the truth is laid bare for all to see. In the 1980s, women may have "come a long way," but they were expected to marry and reproduce. They might work, but they better fix dinner, bake pies, do the laundry, raise the children, and clean that house Spic-n-Span. People of color were gaining traction, but racism was rampant, systemic, and largely unacknowledged by whites (imagine now but much, much worse). And homophobia? Standard. Remember that an entire generation of gay men were left to die of a literal plague because people, at best, didn't want to talk about it and, at worst, believed that a "chosen lifestyle" was being punished by God. We all have indeed come a long way, baby. There are miles to go, even so.

You can see the decorative elements added to the first page of
each chapter, full bleed art. 

Inside cover showing embossed
stamping, first class. 

The Stand is a worthwhile read, but I would be lying if I said some passages weren't grating and sometimes downright infuriating, especially when the bigotry seeps in so casually, so matter-of-fact, that you just have to stop and take a breath. It's a relic of a bygone age. The world still requires changing, and some deep introspection and unfettered honesty, but I know the breadth and depth of my own understanding and empathy for other human beings has expanded greatly since 1978, 1987, 1992, 2001...right to the here and now. I would never claim to be perfectly "woke"--no one should--but I believe true compassion is a process and no more black and white than the protagonists and antagonists in King's The Stand. I would expect any modern casual reader of The Stand to suffer similar misgivings, discomfort, and inner conflict.

To bear the casual, ignorant, even well-intended bigotry, I've tried to see these early King works as artifacts as much as they are entertainment or art, similar to how I choose to view the almost unbearable Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, oft taught and repeatedly (understandably) challenged. Denying history--how people truly treated one another: the sorrow, the pain, and the dehumanization, both radical and casual--dooms us to repeat it. The answer to these uncomfortable/offensive uses of language and stereotypes is not censorship or incineration. The answer is definitely not to jam such "great works" as Huck Finn down highschooler's throats simply because some old, dusty mummy declared it part of the sacred Western lit canon. A thoughtful approach is required, teaching history and literature in the same breath, with a clear understanding that we are reading from a modern lens, bent to our perceptions in the Now. If wishing it could only make it true. Unfortunately, the bleak status of the public school curriculum makes it unlikely to ever expect a qualified approach to such texts, even if there were time between all those "vital" standardized tests.

First page (i) of the preliminaries, a seriously glowing
praise page. Many King fans consider The Stand his
best work and, at the very least, their favorite.

Third page of the preliminaries (iii). standard,
current-to-this-edition author bio page.

The bent lens, the perspective of Now, is always at the fore of these re-readings of King's works. Truth be told, every offhand use of the n-word bugs the living shit out of me. But I'm working on keeping that separation, working hard, because the biggest challenge is around the corner and, quite frankly, I'm already dreading it. My sentimental favorite is coming up soon. Anyone who's read It knows it is all kinds of problematic, but I'm gritting my teeth especially against the memory of Trashmouth Richie Tozier and his godforsaken "Voices," one of which is...well, predictable. There's a difference between the racist ranting of the bully Henry Bowers and the embarrassing antics of Richie's very worst "Voices," just like any portrayal of a racist ass racist being a POS racist is different from, say, a certain author who makes every African American character speak in some form of jive. Acute, virulent racism is easy to condemn; it is the sneaking, systemic racism that is harder to pin down. It's the same kind of racism that provokes such sour defenses as "I didn't mean it like that," or "you people take yourselves too seriously," or my favorite, "Obama was president, racism is gone, why can't you get over it."

I don't want to misportray The Stand as some sort of post-apocalyptic romp through the song of the South--it is absolutely not--but the blips of casual racism smart, like cutting little slivers of ice against your cheek, and if nothing else reminds the reader of just how much closer we are to understanding one another. No, not all of us, but enough to make a difference. And enough to make rereading beloved novels from yesterday a bittersweet endeavor.

I hadn't read The Stand for at least ten years when I picked up a paperback copy at the library some weeks ago (my hardcover 1990 edition went to the Strand; the original paperback is lost in the loose pages of time). Even with that gulf of time between us, I was prepared to be bored. I have read The Stand many, many times. And I'm not going to lie. This last read-through was a bit of a slog. Lots of been there, done that, and more lines and sections memorized than even I expected. But though it was sometimes tediously familiar, I still found things that surprised me, more in how my perspective had changed than anything I'd missed or forgotten.

Prelim page iv, the staggering ad page,
updated to 2014 so very interesting...

One of the biggest (and most welcome) differences was re-experiencing a post-apocalyptic novel that, for all its death and doom, still remains much sunnier than the more modern post-apocalyptic works. Much, much sunnier. When I was in my prime The Stand-reading era, the world was still years from enduring the beautiful torture that is Cormac McCarthy's The Road or the evolving ugliness of The Walking Dead. A cornerstone theme in both works is the driving Evil of Man, that once society breaks down, the survivors devolve into unspeakable violence against one another. In at least the original version of The Stand, even the "bad" side was the law and order sort of bad. Sure, mass murder was on the menu, and yes, people who broke the rules were regularly crucified, but all that rape plus rape and more rape with a side of cannibalism was a big no-no, even in the Dark Man's land. Now, the new and revised edition does feature a backstory to secondary characters Susan Stern and Dayna Jurgens, both of whom had been captured and held for purposes of sexual-sadistic pleasures of men with guns in what was leeringly called "the zoo." But even this scenario is depicted as more of an outlier, not an eventuality, and while it was hard to read, the ugly situation was readily rectified by the women of the zoo itself, taking the chance to even the odds during the tense clash between their group and that of our already established heroes, who were on the road to find Mother Abigail and her like-minded flock of "good people."

You know I love a full title page that pulls
elements from the cover design, y'alllll. Too bad
it's from the 1990 edition so doesn't match with
anything other than our wistful memories I guess.

Copyright page identifying this printing as a
2012 Anchor Books edition, the same as the
library copy of Night Shift. If properly
updated. this was the 15th reprint of
this edition.

I grew up during the Cold War in a small city surrounded by both loaded missile silos and an Air Force base, so it was a common childhood "joke" to claim that once World War III broke out and all the missiles were flying, my friends and I would simply step outside and wait for the white flash of oblivion. These declarations became commonplace especially after watching The Day After on network television; the very idea of surviving an nuclear apocalypse was more terrifying than dying in one. Despite the sadness and shock of losing loved ones and just about everyone else, the protagonists of The Stand also find adventure, new beginnings, new challenges, new community, and an underlying, driving need to congregate for a greater purpose, to make one final stand. And while Captain Trips was cataclysmic to human, canine, and horse populations, the summer of death leaves the land still vibrant and green; the grass grows wild and the deer are plentiful. The roads may be crammed with traffic jams and stalled cars full of dead bodies, but the stores are fully stocked with nonperishable foods and a comical surplus of goods. And sure, there's a capering demon set on destroying the people of the Free Zone, but they're together for now, picking whatever homes they wish to live in, working on getting the electricity back on, and setting about making some sort of society. The worst civil issues are drunks breaking windows and teenagers hotrodding into abandoned cars. As grim as the work can be (clearing bodies and burying them in mass graves, for example), the post-apocalypse is, at times, relentlessly cheery. There are picnics, for God's sake. It's sweet.

Decorative gutter on the dedication page.

The updated edition included this preface
explaining the new edition and why it
happened. I can't imagine even the tamest
King fan passing up a chance to read this
version. A very smart decision on the
part of the publisher, indeed.

That same perspective, the eyes of Now, also renders characters I once loved into something tarnished and even curdled. Stu Redman and Frannie Goldsmith are arguably the main protagonists in a very wide pyramid of incrementally less "important" characters. When I was a teenager I loved them both; I imagined Redman to be a male model Marlboro Man (and later almost identical to my imaginings of the Gunslinger), rugged with a steel jaw and beautiful eyes. He was heroic but accessible. I always imagined Frannie to be insanely beautiful, which at the time translated to Alexandra Paul in the movie of King's novel Christine, as the cross referencing, King-obsessed teenage brain is destined to do. Frannie Goldsmith was relentlessly funny, spunky, sassy, and fierce. Sure, she cried a lot, but during the time of those first readings, so did I. Then thirty years happened and hoooooo boy.

Redman is fine, maybe not so romantic, maybe not so heroic, maybe a little more steeped in reality, a little more homely in my mind's eye. His musings over his dead friends' and acquaintances' character or serious lack thereof is, in and of itself, a diminishing indictment against his own flawed nature. Redman's indulgent recollections of the dearly departed "good people" of Arnette, Texas are bracingly grim: one good ol' boy beat the shit out of his kids and another controlled the feral cat population around the homestead by crushing kitten heads under his boots. Yet nothing is quite so mystifying as Redman's unquestioning love of the extremely annoying and wildly immature Frannie Goldsmith who CRIES every minute of every day, becomes more and more shrill throughout the course of the novel, and remains infuriatingly obtuse, especially once they settle down in Boulder, Colorado. The fact that I loved her as a teen and find her obnoxious now is no surprise, I suppose, but it's more than just my transformation from youthful idiot to knowing crone. She really is just awful. Alexandra Paul in Christine would never...

Funny enough, while my sympathy for Redman and Goldsmith has dimmed, my compassion for the squeaky third wheel on their twisted lovecycle has grown. Sure, Harold Lauder is an entitled, childish, snotty little asshole, but his is a sadder story to me now. While I imagined Stu and Frannie as prom picturesque, from the very first reading I saw the angry, alienated Harold Lauder as a version of Stephen King himself. Not the man King--the wildly successful, happily married and seemingly well-adjusted King--but a sort of mangled teenage version of him: tubby, be-pimpled, black, greasy hair and lumberingly tall...I mean, how could you not see it? Harold's a frustrated writer to boot. Lauder is King if King had swerved wrong, had a different upbringing, and developed in low light all twisted and bitter.

King readers know he loves a good epigraph or
sixty, but this was one of the first to really woo
the hell out of me, I mean that BOC quote from
my (then) favorite song kicking off a book by
my favorite author? Scree. 

First page of the introductory chapter. I'd like to
point out that this gentleman is not, in fact, an
escaped patient from a "biological testing
facility." Ugh.

As I read through The Stand this last time around, I already knew Frannie would irritate (I was in my 20s when I started realizing just how dreadful she really was), but this is the first time I wondered if King deliberately wrote them that way. The strapping handsome hero and his ill-begotten prom queen, the girl Harold (Stephen) could never get except in his pubescent fantasies...were they deliberately written to vex? In the midst of all these revolving characters, each grappling with their own development and challenges, the reader must endure multiple visits to Redman and Goldsmith's love nest to witness teasing, babysitter's club notions of naughty domesticity, where they trade sly, sophomoric come ons that seem more and more disjointed from the greater narrative as each cringe-y encounter ticks off, a sort of craven, sitcom silliness in the midst of real, grownup problems including Actual, Imminent Doom. It's not to say that these characters can't be light and fun, but it happens one or three too many times by my accounting, so much so that it took me out of the story to wonder just what the hell King was up to. Trying to make us like them more...or less? I suppose it depends if you're more the Frannie or the Harold. Over the years my compassion has expanded for The Stand's various broken little boys--Trashcan Man, Larry Underwood, and even Harold--all while my patience for the patriarchy in the real world has thinned to the breadth of the last hair on Glen Bateman's head. Perhaps that is why Frannie Goldsmith's glaring shortcomings bother me so much. Goldsmith's character stalls out at "pregnant, hysterical female" and her development is hinged only on whether Stu and/or her baby survive. Any depth she might've displayed early in the novel is mired down in the grind of her screeching antics. She becomes a thing, a vessel, a come-on sexbot for her Hero Man, a carrier of the future of mankind, a sniveling wrench in the works of the Righteous. It's disappointing to say the least.

Epigraph and art plate opposite book I header.

This element does not translate well to amateur
photography. Kind of looks like old school
tv snow, doesn't it? Back when stations went
off air after the "Star Spangled Banner"?

Years grant perspective, at least if you let them, but it was still a soft surprise to find my initial resentment of other characters had lessened if not entirely evaporated. Mother Abigail was always problematic for me. I grew up going to church only under protest, a heathen child sulking in the car during Sunday school since I refused to participate, running my cassette of INXS' Shabooh Shoobah thin and squealy with the volume turned as high as I would dare in such close proximity to the frowning church. Mother Abigail's evangelical identity was completely alien, and her motivations were as confounding to me as they were non-negotiable to her. I understood her on paper, but had limited experience with the world and could not conceive of true faith. I'm no more religious now than I was then, but I understood her perfectly this time around. The same was true for Larry Underwood, the flawed hero, mega asshole who wants to be good but fails again and again. When I was a kid, I could not stand him, not one thing about him, from the beginning of the novel to the end. I didn't care that he'd improved, become a better person, or had the presence of mind to want to be good. He was just a selfish, mean little jerk with a highly stupid song whose lyrics made me want to take my fingerclaws and rake my brain (more on that in a minute). I couldn't understand Larry Underwood because I was a kid, the world was black and white, and I believed wholeheartedly that everyone chooses to be the way they are. So, if you walk like an anus, talk like an anus? You are a giant, gross butthole, sir. On purpose. It took a lot of mistakes to learn how wrong I was about that but here on the other side of the lens, Larry, while still anus-adjacent, earns some respect. He's a complex character who grows up over the course of the novel to become a person worthy and able of making that last stand...

Aside from adding depth and color to characters by
reintroducing previously cut text, the 1990 edition of
The Stand is exquisitely illustrated by Bernie Wrightson.
This panel depicts Stu, Tom, and Kojak heading home.

...against Randall Fartface Flagg. Sigh. Folks, I hate him. Young me thought he was funny and sort of scary, and Lord Have Mercy that sex scene in the desert just about scarred me for life...but in the end he's just another Pennywise in a jean jacket and sprung cowboy boots, almost too silly to take very seriously. Glen Bateman sees through the artifice, laughs his ass off at him, in fact, so perhaps it's all by design, but it sure is a lot of build up to get basically nowhere. It is possible I'm holding a grudge against the character for more general reasons specifically relating to the curve the Kingverse took sometime in the midst of the last Gunslinger books and other related novels. Perhaps the glamour just wore off. As I read The Stand this time around, everything he did and said seemed more like a gimmick than anything truly threatening...and Nadine's seduction is nothing short of ridiculous. The seduction of Nadine and Harold, really. I mean, what did they expect? He's a capering lunatic, a jeering fraud, and still they fell for it. As did everyone who chose to follow the Dark Man. But I guess we already know that people will follow an Evil Foole if he tells them what they want to hear. And maybe that's why Flagg is all the more ridiculous to me now. The parallels between that capering clown in The Stand and the dunce in the White House are chilling. The fat head full of dense, flat thoughts of Big Winning and Quite Tremendous egomania. And consider the buttons Flagg wears on his jacket...one a yellow smiley face, one a pig face wearing a cop's hat with the caption How's Your Pork? He's on any side and every side so long as the shit stirs and he can sit at the center of it and drink the tears, bathe in the blood. But they are just hollow men, headpiece filled with straw.

The Trashcan Man's last gift to the Dark Man
(Bernie Wrightson).

One thing remains the same: The Stand is an expansive, ambitious, and impressive novel. Every time I read it, I try to imagine all those spinning plates, King keeping track of every one, and somehow bringing it all home more or less to satisfaction. It's an incredible achievement. A reader could understand a continuity gap or two. Both editions have been in circulation for decades, however, which leads to some editorial curiosities. I should note that, once upon a time, I worked for a scholarly publisher. Emphasis on scholarly. Over the course of 15 years, I was entrusted with many responsibilities, both publishing-specific and managerial. At different times I was a proofreader, copyeditor, tech support, liaison, project manager, author wrangler, mean ol' department manager, and on. I worked on first editions from raw manuscript to printed book, and I worked on reprints, second editions, paperbacks, and offsets. Depending on the influence and prestige of the author (which walked almost exclusively hand-in-hand with having an agent), some of our trade authors were allowed to make corrections to the paperback editions of their books. If we went forward with a paperback at all. Authors of scholarly works were almost never afforded corrections, especially if they were minimal. The margins on scholarly works are microscopic. The print runs are tiny (if they even have a first print anymore--it's just as likely to go print on demand from the start) and the price points are enormous compared to trade titles. And no matter how much an author demands his work is the Last Word on Shakespeare, The Very Last, I Say, it is a simple matter of supply and demand. Very few people (and mostly just libraries) are going to need a densely written scholarly tome on Venetian coins in the 1100s. Barnes and Noble is not going to want a copy. It's not meant to be mean. It just is.

Truth be told, I loathe the addition of the last chapter to
the uncut version. It starts cute enough, but the trope is
tired and the message is already received (Flagg's New
Flock, Bernie Wrightson).

But King? He's a bestseller out of the gate, every time, a zillion times over. He's been a powerful, influential institution for decades. Now, The Stand came out near the beginning of his already extremely promising career--King didn't have the chops yet, the big belt buckle, and all those championship rings to knock that publisher into letting him have the full volume. That's why he had to cut some 400 pages and let it (ahem) stand with what was left. Ten years later he was a proven juggernaut, an unstoppable force of publishing and nature, so they could afford to add back in whatever King deemed still vital to the cut. It's a fantastic turn of events, one so few authors can be afforded. Which makes it extra galling that they screwed it up as much as they did.

The first time I barked aloud reading any book, this page right here. It's not
my very favorite line, but man is it up there. Such deliciously awful imagery.

If he wanted, Stephen King could have any and all of his books corrected. They could pulp whatever is in the warehouse, update all the files with corrected versions, and make all the next printings as clean as could be. He makes massive amounts of money for himself, his staff, and his publishers. His backlist is alive and well. There is no struggle on the publisher's part to make ends meet. The margins are double wide and extra roomy. The only reason they have not done this for The Stand or any other King novel must be because King doesn't want it. Maybe he values the book as an artifact, as well, a perfect time capsule from the past, where all the warts remain, even if they would be sooooo easy to fix. Tweak a couple of words, upload the files, next printing is perfect, why not? For example, when Nadine and Harold flee the Free Zone to join Flagg's people in Las Vegas, Flagg prepares a trap for Harold, which is meant to send him over an embankment to his death. It doesn't work out quite as expected, but in the end Harold is abandoned with a badly broken leg that will inevitably lead to his demise. In his last hours, he writes one last highly pathetic journal entry, signs off as "Hawk" and tucks the Permacover notebook into his saddlebag just before blowing his brains out. Later, when the four remaining male members of the Free Zone committee happen upon him, the notebook is somehow miraculously in his hands. So small, this continuity problem, so, so easy to fix. Whether it was a mistake from the original publication or the 1990 edition, I do not know, but it does lead us to the more egregious, over arching problem with the complete and uncut version of The Stand...

Acknowledgement page relegated to the back
for lack of space in the prelimiaries. SOP.

Releasing a new and restored edition of a novel set "in the near present" requires not only evening out the seams created when the extractions first took place, but demands updating the setting, vernacular, pop culture, and other miscellany to match what was then the late 1980s / early 1990s. Who wants to read about a catastrophe that definitely didn't happen back in 1980 when you could read about one that might be right around the corner? So they updated it, kind of. The problem is that there are tons of references, objects, phrases, et freaking cetera, that belong solidly and without question in the late 70s. Little things, inconsequential things, but still like sand in your sock, it grates. I found myself twitching every time I would stumble across one. I should have made a list but here are just a few from the top of my head: the "boogie down" notebook would be a rare find in 1990 because disco hatred was at an all time high so where did Stu find it in some guy's attic I think not; many, many references to the gas and oil shortages that were all the rage when this book was originally written but were a part of history when the new edition is set so why are people thinking and talking about it like it just happened or was happening when the flu descended; Flagg's politics and buttons are even more antiquated and weird with ten years between not to mention the fact that dates and ages don't add up quite right every time, either. The worst Offense? That horrid song, "Baby, Can You Dig Your Man?"--a phrase that sends me rocketing to Hell every time I even think about it--would never, EVER get traction on popular radio anywhere in the late 80s or early 90s. Maybe mid-90s? Mid to late? Maybe. My teenage brain incinerated into a tiny black briquette of hate every time I had to read that song title or any part of the song lyrics because NO. Disco was dead, "dig" was deader, and referring to oneself as "Your Man" was in the same crypt as calling female sex partners "Mama," sophisticated or otherwise. Ridiculous cheese factor aside, every mention of the song effectively catapults the reader out of the story. When I read my original paperback, it rankled the tarts, but I understood that the book was written pre-1978. It made sense even if my 1987+ sensibilities made the bitter lemon face every single time I read it. But the updated version? Set in 1990? Homey don't play that.

But maybe they already know all this, and maybe they know it would be too gargantuan an undertaking to do anything about it now, some thirty years after the uncut edition's release. And maybe that's why Harold's magical notebook will forever exist both in and out of the saddlebag for all time. Why bother correcting a continuity problem when there are so many timeline problems too difficult to correct now? After all, it isn't like there is a maniac out there with editing experience who knows the 1980s so obsessively she could reconstruct them from, like, memory.**

Grade: B+ (issues aside, it's still a helluva good yarn)
Scary? (0-nope to 10-you will die): 7. Lots of scary moments and there's no arguing the spread of Captain Trips evokes a very real, creeping horror for anyone who's suffered from respiratory ailments, especially for the first read around. I highly recommend enjoying The Stand while sick as dog.
Warnings: Casual bigotry, profanity (sometimes inspired), mid-range gore (nothing pornographic), "Baby Can You Dig Your Man?," megrims/vapors/hysteria/female problems (Frannie because She's-Pregnant), He's a Righteous Man, a sweet treat, desert monster sex.
Artifact: 2012 edition reprint from the same people who brought you the 2012 reprint of Night Shift. Paperback, flat cut, trade pulp, embossed CMYK cover. This library edition was in remarkable shape considering it is one of King's more popular novels, it is one of King's longer novels, and it is a paperback. The printing and binding were near perfect and there was virtually no wear and tear. It is possible it was a newly acquired copy, but it was still impressive. That being said, the jacket redesign is a shocking travesty, with nonsensical cover art and embarrassingly inaccurate cover copy. The ad page was updated sometime after the 2012 first Anchor Books edition, which makes the mistakes both in the novel and especially in the back cover blurb all the more galling. Sure, maybe the actual book must remain untouched for whatever reason, but they can't fix the jacket copy? (Disclaimer: I am aware that this is a library copy and realize that one or all of these errors may be updated in more recent printings. The next time I'm in Barnes & Noble I'll give it another look.)

*Not to be confused with Gregg Braden's Fractal Time, though some of the themes certainly intersect. 
**This same maniac nearly had an aneurysm during her first viewing of The Wedding Singer, a movie allegedly set in the 80s that took such outrageous liberties with the timeline that said maniac was nearly panting with rage by the end of it. The more contemporary tv show The Goldbergs takes these same liberties in every episode, but said maniac is now used to these perversions. Every depiction of the 1980s in television and movies today--and there are so many--is at least twenty percent wrong. Usually more.