I posted this at previously on another site, but some may not have seen it.
First off, a collector I know has an Inscribed copy of The Stand. It was inscribed to KIng's daughter Naomi. In the inscription King describes his "breakthrough" when he was stalled writing the book.
After the quote, I will add some additional relevant information-also previously posted elsewhere.
Dear Naomi-
Well I guess this is the one (maybe along with
‘Salem’s Lot) they’re apt to remember me for
when I’m dead. The first three quarters of
it were written in Colorado and went fantastically
well-I mean, day after day, what a rush.
Then, when we came back to Maine-to
Bridgton, it was-it turned into a nightmare.
Like Pilgrim in Pilgrim’s Progress, I lost
the straight way in the Slough of Despond. I
walked Kansas Road day after day with my head
down, hunting for the way out. And just when I
was about to give up, I thought of Nadine Cross
planting a bomb in Nick Andrew’s closet and
blowing up most of the Free Zone Committee.
That blast had the effect of blowing up the
political issues that were strangling the
story, and the rest of the book went fine,
Love,
Dad
More info:
When king finished the first draft of The Shining, he spent two weeks writing “Apt Pupil”. (Which would appear years later in Different Seasons), and then rested for a time; early in 1975 he returned to the novel that he called The House on Value Street:
QUOTE
It was going to be a roman á clef about the kidnapping of Patty Hearst., her brainwashing (or her sociopolitical awakening, depending on your point of view, I guess), her participation in the bank robbery, the shootout at the SLA hideout in Los Angeles-in my book the hideout was on Value Street, natch-the fugitive run across the country, the whole ball of wax. It seemed to me to be a highly potent subject, and while I was aware that lots of nonfiction books were to be written on the subject, it seemed to me that only a novel might really succeed in explaining all the contradictions…………
The book was never written; King attacked it for six weeks, but nothing seemed to work. He was haunted by a news story that he had read about an accidental chemical/biological warfare spill in Utah that had nearly endangered Salt Lake City; it reminded him of George R. Stewart’s science fiction novel Earth Abides (1949), in which a plague decimates the world. One day, while listening to a gospel radio station, he heard a preacher repeat the phrase “Once in every generation a plague will fall among them.” King liked the sound of the phrase so much that he tacked it above the typewriter:
QUOTE
The phrase and the story about the CBW spill in Utah and my memory of George R. Stewart’s fine book all became entwined in my thoughts about Patty Hearst and the SLA, and one day while sitting at my typewriter…I just wrote-just to write something: The world comes to an end but everybody in the SLA is somehow immune…[Later] I wrote Donald DeFreeze is a dark man. I did not mean that DeFreeze was black; it had suddenly occurred to me that, in the photos taken during the bank robbery in which Patty Hearst participated, you could barely see DeFreeze’s face. He was wearing a big badass hat, and what he looked like was mostly guesswork. I wrote A Dark Man with no face and then glanced up and saw that grisly motto again: Once in every generation a plague will fall among them. And that was that. I spent the next two years writing an apparently endless book called The Stand. It got to the point where I began describing it to my friends as my own little Vietnam, because I kept telling myself that in another hundred pages or so I would begin to see the light at the end of the tunnel.
Doubleday had fired Bill Thompson in a fit of sour grapes, and the task of editing the massive The Stand was given to another editor. Knowing that King no longer had a future at Doubleday, the company declared that King must cut the huge manuscript (over 1,600 pages) by at least 250 pages in order to "keep the retail price down." King was furious, but he had little choice in the matter given his contract. It wasn't until twelve years later that his uncut manuscript was published (by Doubleday, ironically) as The Stand: The Complete and Uncut Edition.
At the time of the original publication of The Stand, Doubleday had two standard book sizes: A-size (5 1/2" x 8 1/4") and B-size (6 1/8" x 9 1/4"). The company published most of its books in the A-size format simply because they could run-on with their Literary Guild book club presses and thus save enormous amounts of money. For some reason, Doubleday published The Stand in the A-size format. The Doubleday presses were designed to print the comparatively shoddy product in which the book clubs specialized, so Doubleday books during the 70s and early 80s were among the lowest quality of all publishers. As a result, The Stand is very hard to find in Fine condition; many times pages will fall out of the glued binding after the book is read once. Also, Doubleday did not cover their dust jackets in plastic laminate as most other publishers did—as a result, shipping and handling of the books caused myriad scuff marks, tears, and stains. Therefore, a Fine first edition of The Stand will command over $600, even though it was published in an edition of more than 35,000 copies.
The Stand was published in 1978. Almost simultaneous to the hardback publishing was the appearance of King’s short story: The Gunslinger, in The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction.
The Complete and Uncut Edition of the Stand was published in 1990. The uncut edition restores approximately 150,000 words., preceded by a two part preface. Illustrated by Berni Wrightson- commissioned by SK, not Doubleday-the art complements King’s text. Peter Schneider was the architect and Marysarah Quinn the designer of the S/L edition.
Although The Stand in 1978 did not make the top 15 sellers list, it did do so in 1990 (Along with Four Past Midnight). It sold ~653,828 copies that year.:
1990: Fiction
1 The Plains of Passage -Auel, Jean M.
2 Four Past Midnight -King, Stephen
3 The Burden of Proof -Turow, Scott
4 Memories of Midnight- Sheldon, Sidney
5 Message from Nam -Steel, Danielle
6 The Bourne Ultimatum- Ludlum, Robert
7 The Stand- King, Stephen
8 Lady Boss -Collins, Jackie
9 The Witching Hour -Rice, Anne
10 September- Pilcher, Rosamunde
11 Dazzle -Krantz, Judith
12 The Bad Place -Koontz, Dean R.
13 The Women in His Life- Bradford, Barbara Taylor
14 The First Man in Rome- McCullough, Colleen
15 Dragon- Cussler, Clive
Food for thought:
When Stephen King first published his 1990 fiction work, The
Stand: The Complete and Uncut Edition, there was a flurry of
media attention. Numerous newspaper and magazine book
reviewers attempted to assess the value of King’s new work.
However, reviews of this particular book were markedly
different than those of most new releases. The earlier
publication of a 1978 version of The Stand, an edition with
approximately 400 less pages and different beginning and
ending, presented the reviewers with an opportunity not
only to evaluate the novel, but also to compare it to the
earlier publication. King had pushed for publication of the
later version because he had never been satisfied with the
publisher’s deletion of 500 pages from his original
manuscript. Unfortunately for King, many of these reviewers
centered their review upon complaints that there was no
real need for the insertion of the 400 additional pages. As
Karen Liberatore, a reviewer for the San Francisco
Chronicle explained, "The reader, first-time or second
time, gains nothing from the reinsertion of that lost
prose…except a longer book" (E-10). Indeed, many of the
reviewers suggested that the added pages, which generally
included additional character description and background
information, simply cluttered the book. As Robert Keily of
the New York Times Book Review explained, "this is the book
that has everything - adventure, romance, prophecy,
allegory, satire, fantasy, realism, apocalypse, etc., etc.
…But the overall effect is more oppressive than imposing."
Additionally, some of the reviewers criticized King’s
additional pages because they found these added details on
a large number of characters in the story devalued each of
the unique personalities he created. "As a storyteller,
King knows how to create interesting characters who stick
in your mind; but by leaving them isolated in so ponderous
a book for long periods of time, he doesn’t do full justice
to his inventions" (Lafaille 111).
However, not all of the reviewers held the same viewpoint
on King’s lengthy character descriptions. A few of the
reviewers wrote approvingly of the added pages, some even
claiming that the additions "make King’s best novel better
still" (Steinberg 60). Moreover, Ray Murphy, of the Boston
Globe, wrote in glowing terms of King’s use of character
description. Murphy vehemently defended King’s lengthy
interludes into background information, "[King] picks up
some of these characters again and again throughout the
book in a series of self-contained vignettes, each of them
of lapidarian brilliance. It is these short telling scripts
that make King so much the writer of his time, the
"post-television writer"…The jarring bits make a whole and
build into a crackling structure with explosive climaxes"
(Murphy 76). Ultimately, however, Murphy’s adamant defense
of King’s style is itself overwhelmed by numerous
descriptions of the work as "too lengthy" and "overly
detailed" and "plain unnecessary." While King himself might
have been pleased with the addition of 400 pages of the
original manuscript, the rest of the literary world
appeared happier with the original version.