Changes In Stephen King's The Stand 1978-1990 Part 16

Chapter 45 has the usual date changes.  For example, Mother Abagail is now born in 1882 and not 1877.  It also is expanded to provide more background on Abagail's past.  For example, in the 1980 paperback, the paragraph that ends with "That year had been a topper." is followed with the one that begins "And little by little . . ."  In the 1990 version, three long paragraphs appear between those two.  The flashback to her music performance is also expanded, and King uses the scene again in a nightmare where Abagail faces off with Randall Flagg.  King adds two pages of Abagail using the outhouse before she looks out at the corn.  Her journey to and from the Richardson farm is also longer by several pages, filled with her memories and more details of the events in that section.  The cooking scene is also a bit longer, and King throws in lyrics to a hymn Abagail sings and plays on the guitar.  Nick Andros is described not just as "The young man with the dark hair" but as "The young man with the eyepatch and the dark hair", continuing the eye injury from Ray Booth.  Maintaining that detail also adds to Nick's almost psychic power.  Not only is he deaf and mute, but he's nearly blind.  Nevertheless, he's often more perceptive than people with all senses functioning.  The aftermath of the meal scene gets expanded a bit, as does Abagail's conversation with Nick and Ralph Brentner and the rest of the scenes in the chapter, including a funny bit where Abagail shows Ralph a letter she received from Ronald Reagan congratulating her on turning a hundred years old.

Chapter 46 gets quite changed, since King adds a storyline featuring two new characters, Mark and Perion.  Mark gets sick and dies, Perion kills herself from grief, and Fran Goldsmith wonders how she will be able to deliver her baby in a world seemingly without medical care.  The excerpts from Fran's diary are longer and more detailed; for example, the visit to Stovington runs for four pages instead of only one.  Some details get changed.  For example, Nolan Ryan is described as playing for the Texas Rangers and not the California Angels, presumably because he switched teams in the 1980s.  Some updates don't work as well though.  King moves the Arab embargo oil shortage from the 1970s to the 1980s, which isn't historically accurate.  There are also more entries.  In the paperback, the diary skips from July 8 to July 19, while the hardback includes entries from the 12th, 14th, and 16th before the chapter ends.  King having apparently decided that the chapter was getting long, split it into two, with the entry from the 19th taking place in the next chapter.  One last interesting bit is that King has Fran misspell Abagail's name as "Abigail" here, perhaps to show that she's only heard it in her dreams and so doesn't know the correct spelling.  He is very thorough!

Chapter 47 continues what in the paperback is just a single chapter.  This time, King doesn't add a new storyline, but he does expand significantly the meeting of Fran and the others with Dayna Jurgens and the other women she travels with.  In the 1990 version, the women don't have an auto accident, but they escape from captivity.  The chapter contains a firefight between the women and their captors with Fran's group in the mix of the chaos (the women use the encounter as their opportunity to escape).  It's a fairly brutal scene, as the women take revenge and kill the men who had been keeping them as sex slaves.  It also serves as foreshadowing for the conflict between the two sides of survivors later in the novel.  As in the previous chapter, Fran's diary entries are expanded (the August 1st entry grows from one sentence to one page) but there are no more of them.  Other scenes get expanded a bit as well.  Oddly enough, the spelling of "Abagail" as "Abigail" also continues this chapter even in the dialogue where there is no logical reason for a misspelling.  Perhaps the copyeditor got confused by King's subtlety because this doesn't occur in the paperback.               

Chapter 48 also is quite different and includes the character The Kid, whom King notes in the preface that he had always regretted cutting.  The Kid is quite memorable, a hotrodder rockabilly type who sodomizes with a pistol and otherwise terrorizes the Trashcan Man.  In the paperback, The Kid is replaced by an old man who gives Trash a ride in a car and only lasts a couple of pages before dying of a heart attack.  The Kid gets twentysome pages.  Other than the major addition of The Kid storyline, the chapter has the usual expansions (Trashcan's arrival in Las Vegas has extra scenes; Hector Drogan's role grows from a couple of lines in the paperback to a few pages, ending in a crucifixion--this scene also shows vividly how different the Boulder community is from that Flagg runs) and changes such as a reference to the fight in the previous chapter.

Chapter 49 and 50 start the chapters in Boulder, which aren't as altered as these last three chapters, though King still expands and fiddles with them a bit.  Some interesting changes from this section include inflation.  In 1980, King priced Nick's house in Boulder at $150,000-200,000.  Ten years later, it's in the $450,000-500,000 range.  The paperback book itself cost $2.95 in 1980, and, from what I can dig up, $6.99 in 1991.  Even with the expanded length, that's quite a jump for just a decade's passing!

I'll pick up with 51 next.              

Changes In Stephen King's The Stand 1978-1990 Part 15

Chapter 44 gets a few expansions.  Among other changes, Larry Underwood swears a bit more in the beginning, thinks a bit more about the death of Rita Blakemoor, remembers ditching his motorcycle and starting to walk, gets discovered (and nearly killed) by Nadine Cross and Joe earlier, rummages in a store, enjoys the seashore a bit more, wonders about Nadine and Joe a bit more when he does meet them (when Joe tries to kill him yet again), remembers a musician friend who descended into and rose out of drug addiction, plays a bit more music, and humorously fancies himself as a Scotland Yard detective.  Nadine gets a large section of the chapter, in which King fleshes out more of her and Joe's background and has Nadine save Larry's life again (Joe wishes to cut Larry's throat while he sleeps).  This addition makes Nadine a much more sympathetic character than she is in the earlier version, though King makes up for that by making her a bit more antagonistic to Mother Abagail in the dream scene.  The characters' discovery of all the abandoned cars on the highway gets more detailed, as does their discovery of the message left on the barn and their visits to the motorcycle dealership and Stovington.  Lucy Swann's introduction gets more details as well.

Quite a few brand names get changed in this chapter.  For example, Harold Lauder really enjoys Payday and not Milky Way candy bars in 1990.  I wonder if King's own tastes changed since both brands were probably still around in both eras.  Another interesting change is that Harold's carving of his and Fran Goldsmith's initials gets a heart with an arrow illustration this time, though the text still reads, "In a heart.  With an arrow." which is probably unnecessary in this edition.

Chapter 45 is next.  The middle of this book has some long chapters!        

Changes In Stephen King's The Stand 1978-1990 Part 14

Chapter 28 gets expanded similarly to how Chapter 27 did.  The scene with Fran Goldsmith and the pie also includes an incident where Fran burns french fries, remembers seeing the massacre in the tv station on tv, and recalls a town hall meeting in which the citizens decided to barricade the town.  The scene where Fran buries her father is also expanded to include more details of how she got his corpse out of the house.

Chapter 29 gets a minor expansion after Stuart Redman knocks Elder, a soldier Stu believes is out to kill him, out and details Stu wondering if perhaps Elder hadn't come to kill him.

Chapter 30 is a short chapter that just gets fiddled with and, as a result, gets expanded a tad.

Chapter 31 is a new chapter, detailing Randall Flagg brutally getting his forged papers and a car from a dying Christopher Bradenton.

Chapter 32 gets a minor expansion where Lloyd Henreid masturbates after he kills the rat.

Chapter 33 is another new chapter, featuring Nick Andros getting attacked by and then killing Ray Booth, the ringleader of the thugs who beat him up when he first arrived in Shoyo.

Chapter 34 is basically the same, just the usual minor fidgets such as when King corrects "trustee" to "trusty" when Trashcan Man reminisces about being in prison.

Chapter 35 gets majorly expanded at the beginning and features Rita Blakemoor and Larry Underwood discussing leaving New York City.  A sex scene in the middle of the chapter gets expanded as well.  King adds a scene where the characters outfit themselves for the journey in a sporting goods store, including a quote from The Lord Of The Rings, one of King's inspirations for the novel.  The scene where the characters leave Manhattan also gets a couple of expansions (a man offers Larry a million dollars for fifteen minutes with Rita and Larry and Rita's reunion runs a bit longer).  As with almost all the chapters, there are minor changes as well.

Similarly, Chapter 36 gets some expansions.  Fran's nursing of Gus Dinsmore is described in more detail, Fran and Harold Lauder discuss how to walk across New England, and Harold explains why he brought the paint down from the barn roof.

Chapter 37 gets a few expansions during Stu's conversation with Glen Bateman such as when Glen discusses plagues striking at the end of a century.  Of course, most of the expansions involve dialogue by Glen, a character who loves to talk.

Chapter 38 is another new chapter, the last for some time.  In it, King provides more slice of life scenes of how the superflu affected people who survived it across the USA.  They all die, showcasing in particular the general comments, from the previous chapter, Glen had about how people would cope.

Chapter 39 gets a few expansions such as Lloyd thinking guiltily about his eating of the corpse in the next cell. 

Chapter 40 deletes the accident Nick has (which explained how he was injured without the Ray Booth attack) and the recovery of his eye.  His recovery overall gets more detailed.

Chapter 41 has a longer beginning which features Larry remembering his rejection of an earlier camping trip.  The narrator also mentions Irma Fayette, a minor character from Chapter 38.  The end of the chapter also gets expanded and seems to feature Flagg passing through the town Larry is spending the night in.

Chapter 42 has a few minor expansions but is essentially the same.

Chapter 43 features several new scenes:  Nick and Tom Cullen having a conversation, Nick thinking about Tom, Nick and Tom hiding in a barn's storm cellar from a tornado, details of the tornado's aftermath, Nick and Tom encountering a herd of buffalo, and Nick wishing for a car and driver to give them a ride.  The scenes where Tom plays with toy cars, Nick finds a bike for Tom, they cross the Kansas border, they meet Julie Lawry get extended, and they meet Ralph Brentner get extended.  Their leaving town is altered a bit, and King drops the mention of Rand McNally when Nick uses an atlas to plot their course to Nebraska.

I'll pick up with 44 next.     

Changes In Stephen King's The Stand 1978-1990 Part 13

Chapter 27 gets an expanded version of Larry Underwood's reminiscences. Instead of breaking from the past into the present after telling how Larry fell out with his friend Rudy Schwartz, the story continues to tell how Larry met his girlfriend Yvonne Wetterlen and lost her as well. The expansion makes Larry's meeting later that chapter with Rita Blakemoor all the more poignant.

On to 28 next!

Changes In Stephen King's The Stand 1978-1990 Part 12

Chapter 26 gets majorly expanded.  In the 1978 paperback, it's 4 pages.  In the 1990 hardback, it's 20.  So far, no other chapter has gotten this much expansion, and I want to say that no other one coming up does either, but we'll deal with that question as we progress further in the novel.  Chapter 26 is mainly atmospheric and has that 1970s paranoia about the country falling apart in such full effect that one wonders if Mr. King was getting high by smoking a potent mixture of the Pentagon Papers and the Watergate Tapes.  This aspect of King surfing the zeitgeist is one of my favorite aspects of the novel anyhow, so I quite enjoyed this expanded chapter.  Let's see.  We have campus radicals; newscasters having a shootout with the army and taking over the airwaves; samizdat editions of newspapers; a talk radio host getting executed on air; a massacre at Kent State University that makes the one on May 4, 1970 look like a minor incident; black nationalists taking revenge on white supremacy one white person at a time live on tv; some last lies from a dying president of the USA; and much much more.  Basically, this chapter shows the lengths the government goes to in an attempt to cover up the superflu, and the utter evil and futility of those efforts as the truth comes out and most of the population dies.

One notable change is the shift of the talk radio show's telephone numbers from 656-8600 and 656-8601 to 555-8600 and 555-8601 (too many King fans annoyed people with the original numbers perhaps?).

Chapter 27 isn't quite as exciting, but it starts a new phase in the novel.  After Chapter 26, civilization as the characters knew it is over; it's postapocalypse time now!  We'll pick up there next.

Changes In Stephen King's The Stand 1978-1990 Part 11

Chapter 23 has the usual minor expansion and fiddling, for the most part.  For example, Kings adds a bit to the sentence "He would read as his supper cooked over a small, smokeless campfire, it didn't matter what; words from some battered and coverless paperback novel" making it "He would read as his supper cooked over a small, smokeless campfire, it didn't matter what; words from some battered and coverless paperback porno novel, or maybe Mein Kampf, or an R. Crumb comic book, or one of the baying reactionary position papers from the American Firsters or the Sons of the Patriots.  When it came to the printed word, Flagg was an equal opportunity reader."

Chapter 24 has more expansion.  The scene with Lloyd Henreid and his lawyer is quite longer, and Lloyd finds out that, due to a recent Supreme Court case, he may be executed within the month.  One odd thing is that later in the chapter, a prisoner who attacks Lloyd gets a pack of cigarettes, but King changes the brand from Pall Malls to Tareytons.  Both brands were seemingly still made in both time periods, so why the switch?  Maybe King switched brands himself.  I doubt he researched the preferences of prisoners, but it's King, so perhaps he did.

Chapter 25 has two similar expansions, first when Nick Andros rides a bicycle to leave town to find help and then later when Jane Baker dies.

Chapter 26 gets expanded even more, and I will pick up there next. 

Changes In Stephen King's The Stand 1978-1990 Part 10

Most of the additional chapters in the revised version of The Stand occur early in the novel, and Chapter 20 is one of them (and, yes, when a novel has 78 chapters, Chapter 20 is still early).  The chapter focuses on Fran Goldsmith figuring out what to do with her life now that she is pregnant.  It's essentially a characterization chapter, which is why it probably got cut from the earlier, shorter version of the novel.  Fran hangs about in a hotel, King makes an AC/DC joke, and Fran's mother gets the flu, as Captain Trips starts hitting Maine hard.

The next chapter featuring Stu Redman only has some minor revisions, but the following chapter is quite expanded.  One minor revision in it though is quite fun.  In Chapter 22, King updates the reference from Jimmy Carter to George Bush.  So, instead of a description of the President of the USA as the "Georgia Giant" and a "clod-hopper"; he gets called "The dirty alderman."  Despite their shared Maine background, it appears King might have liked Bush less than he did Carter.  Then again, he also deletes the line, "The night that man had been elected had been a night of horror for him, and for all thinking men", but since the thought is attached to Len Creighton, who is one of the men responsible for the flu, it's probably just a reflection of the fact that Carter was not perceived as militaristic as his predecessors Nixon and Ford were, and thus might have been viewed as a threat by men such as Creighton to the military's development of biological weapons, and perhaps to Creighton's livelihood of war in general.

The expansion of the chapter involves Billy Starkey's suicide in the Project Blue laboratory where the superflu escaped from.  Before he goes though, Starkey pulls Frank D. Bruce's head out of the bowl of soup he had died in, a fact that had bothered Starkey when he observed it over the surveillance cameras.  As Creighton, who had taken over the command post from Starkey, notices though, Starkey was unsuccessful in clearing all the soup out of the man's eyebrows, which now becomes a fixation for Creighton, perhaps a suggestion by King that though the individuals change, the role remains about the same.

I'll pick up next with Chapter 23, which focuses on Randall Flagg, the novel's major villain (assuming you forgive Starkey, Creighton, and the rest of the military for messing with the superflu in the first place).