The Stand.

KING, Stephen [William Burroughs].

$18,500.00

Item Number: 132641

Garden City, NY: Doubleday & Company, 1978.

First edition of the author’s classic fourth novel. Thick octavo, original half cloth. Association copy, inscribed by the author on the front free endpaper, “For Bill Burroughs- With love and good wishes Stephen King 9/20/94.” The recipient, William Burroughs is credited as a primary figure of the Beat Generation and a major postmodern author who influenced popular culture and literature. His writings had a strong influence on King as an adolescent and young man. As a English major at the University of Maine, King was taught by instructors who consciously identified with the beat movement. Burroughs was also impressed by the writings of King and in the summer of 1979 discussed King’s The Shining as part of the NAROPA lectures on “Creative Reading.” Fine in a near fine dust jacket. Jacket illustration by John Cayea. From the library of William Burroughs. Housed in a custom half morocco clamshell box by the Harcourt Bindery. An exceptional association linking two great writers of the last half of the twentieth century.

"I love to burn things up," King says. "It's the werewolf in me, I guess.... The Stand was particularly fulfilling, because there I got a chance to scrub the whole human race, and man, it was fun! ... Much of the compulsive, driven feeling I had while I worked on The Stand came from the vicarious thrill of imagining an entire entrenched social order destroyed in one stroke." "There is much to admire in The Stand: the vivid thumbnail sketches with which King populates a whole landscape with dozens of believable characters; the deep sense of nostalgia for things left behind; the way it subverts our sense of reality by showing us a world we find familiar, then flipping it over to reveal the darkness underneath. Anyone who wants to know, or claims to know, the heart of the American experience needs to read this book" (Fiona Webster). It was the basis for the 1994 American television miniseries. King also wrote the teleplay and had a minor role in the series. It was directed by Mick Garris and stars Gary Sinise, Miguel Ferrer, Rob Lowe, Ossie Davis, Ruby Dee, Jamey Sheridan, Laura San Giacomo, Molly Ringwald, Corin Nemec, Adam Storke, Ray Walston, and Matt Frewer.