I'm currently on page 339 of a 1,141 page book, The Stand. I have so many questions like, "Who is this man with 'lunatic glee'?", "Are all this characters going to eventually meet?" and "Why is it called The Stand?".
However, I have a extreme respect for an author who can write a novel with more than a thousand pages and way to many characters for me to keep up with and still make it interesting. I never found that "dry part" everybody talked about which seemed to have no purpose. Instead, I see every character, every chapter as an important part of the plot and if I pay close attention maybe, just maybe, I'll actually get what's going on. I fear I'll read all 1,141 pages and still be confused and clueless. Even if I still am, I feel I will have read a really interesting and long book and therefore be accomplished.
Until that point, I'll continue to flip back to past chapters to revisit an old character and remember what happened to them. Then I'll try to figure out why Stephen King put this character in the paragraph next to the last character I read about and I'll attempt to connect the extremely scattered dots which make up his plot. Then at the end of the day, I'll tape a piece of notebook paper over the picture of Mr. Creepy King himself on the back cover, calculate the next 27 pages that I have to read for the next day and cough with fear of the "superflu".
"Outside the street's on fire
In a real death waltz
Between what's flesh and fantasy
And the poets down here
Don't write nothin at all
They just stand back and let it all be
And in the quick of the night
They reach for their moment
And try to make an honest stand
But they wind up wounded
Not even dead
Tonight in Jungle Land"
-Bruce Springsteen
Maybe that's why its called The Stand?
I don't think I can find the time to read a book that big. your so brave, good luck.
ReplyDeleteyou'll figure out why it's called The Stand - and it will be in the last few pages :) keep reading...you're going to love it, i promise!
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