Slow Read: The Stand

SLOW READ: The Stand (Chapters 65 - 71)

Welcome to SLOW READ [https://slowread.substack.com/], where we tackle the books you’ve always wanted to read at a pace you can handle. Hosted by Sarah Stewart Holland [https://www.instagram.com/bluegrassred] and Laura Tremaine [https://www.instagram.com/laura.tremaine/] We are currently reading The Stand [https://urlgeni.us/amzn/thestand] by Stephen King (unabridged version) You can find our full Reading Schedule here [https://slowread.substack.com/p/the-stand-reading-schedule] Join the SLOW READ [https://slowread.substack.com/] community on Substack for bonus episodes, book club meetings, and Side Quests with Sarah & Laura Mentioned in this episode: * Michael Pollan on the Ezra Klein Show [https://www.nytimes.com/video/opinion/100000010802886/michael-pollans-journey-to-the-borderlands-of-consciousness.html] * Rosemary’s Baby [https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0063522/] (1968 film) [https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0063522/] * The Sopranos The Announcement Before We Begin Laura: Hello, I’m Laura Tremaine. Sarah: And I’m Sarah Stewart Holland. Laura: This is Slow Read, where we tackle the books you’ve always wanted to read at a pace you can handle. And we are in the final chapters of The Stand by Stephen King. Sarah: If you have been reading along with us since January, lordy, things are finally happening. And if you are binging and catching up with us, well, welcome. Laura: There is a lot to discuss, including whether or not Randall Flagg is a bride’s dream come true. Sarah: He is not. Laura: Spoiler for the whole episode. He is not. Sarah: Now, we would love for you to join us for our last couple of book club meetings for The Stand. Our May meeting is next week. And then we’ll have a big final meeting in June to process the end of The Stand and our whole slow reading experience together. You will want to be there for these meetings because they’re going to be very satisfying to discuss this novel after being with these characters for six months — and each other for that matter. And we’ll be revealing what our next Slow Read is going to be. It’s a big one. It’s a big announcement. Laura: These book club meetings are for our Substack paying members only. And when you join us over there at the Slow Read Substack, you will get not only our book club Zooms with me and Sarah, but you’ll also get a host of other goodies, like all of our Side Quests where we share our personal stories about our dreams, death, parenthood, love triangles. Don’t you want to hear us talk about those things that are tangentially related to The Stand that we have been discussing for the last five, six months? Join us over on slowreadbookclub.com. That’s on Substack. The Balance of Good and Evil (Before We Even Get to Chapter 65) Laura: Okay, Sarah. Chapters 65 through 71. Wow. Sarah: It’s weird because Stephen King has spent the whole book setting up how powerful Randall Flagg is. And then the closer they get, he’s starting to poke holes in that power — which felt like a lot of what this section was. But it hasn’t really lessened my trepidation for our boys as they get closer to Vegas. You know what I mean? Laura: A lot of things I think are happening. He is poking holes in how all-powerful he is, but it feels like sort of the yin and yang to what he also did with Mother Abagail. Sarah: Yeah. Laura: So there’s a real balancing happening in this part of the book, which for me was a little jarring — to go from all of these hundreds of pages spending in the Free Zone with these characters that we love and how they’re setting up their community and all this, and then now to spend the last couple sections in Vegas. I’m like, this is a decidedly different vibe. And I agree with you. It doesn’t make him any less scary. Sarah: But that’s because we know from life experience — not to mention our own literary tastes — that just because he’s not all-powerful doesn’t make him any less terrifying. It’s almost he’s almost more terrifying now that he’s feeling a little desperate. Laura: Right, because he’s backed into a corner. People backed into a corner are dangerous, for sure. Sarah: There’s a lot that happened in this section that sort of brought up so many questions that we have been teetering on the edge of in terms of: what is good and evil? What is all-powerfulness? Who is Mother Abagail and Randall Flagg, like — are they, if they’re not exactly God and the devil, are they angels, demons? And there’s just a lot of questions about those characters, but then also about our community characters in terms of like, nobody is all bad or all good. Laura: He feels all bad to me, but the bad is complicated. Well, he does. He might be all bad — but I guess I meant the community people as they’re starting to have doubts. Sarah: Yeah, I mean, I think that’s what opens up the most interesting moments, especially with Lloyd and Nadine and everyone not operating out of a place of pure fear. Because the holes that King pokes in Randall Flagg’s power break the spell just enough that people in Vegas can start to assess their own decision-making. In the same way that Mother Abagail disappearing freed people up to take leadership roles and make some decisions in the Free Zone — it’s a very similar situation, I think. Laura: Yeah, that’s what I was feeling in the balance of it all. When Mother Abagail goes on her walk to the woods, it’s kind of disappointing, but you still have this human nature thing of like, all right, we’ll buck up, we got to come together and do it in her absence. But when we start to see the failings or the humanness of Randall Flagg — “disappointing” is not a word that covers it. It feels like terrifying. Like, oh no. Because we know men like this who start to lose their grip on power — if it slips even a little bit, they get very erratic and dangerous. Sarah: Well, and the reasoning of the people around him — they’re like, oh no. I did so many things, I made so many decisions, based on the premise that he is protecting us. These people have made some moral and ethical sacrifices on the premise that he was gonna keep them safe. And he couldn’t even keep them safe from Trashcan Man. But I’m skipping ahead — let’s start with chapter 65. Chapter 65: Randall Flagg in the Desert Laura: Chapter 65 opens with Randall Flagg out in the desert. He’s just cooking a rabbit and thinking. This is, I think, not the first time we’re in Randall Flagg’s head, but it’s the first time this whole section where we’re getting a bit more of a fuller picture of how he thinks. And it is substantially more human than we’ve experienced him. Sarah: He’s frustrated with himself and his powers. It’s almost like he has also taken his powers for granted. He cannot see who the third spy is. He cannot figure that out. He’s baffled that Harold Lauder attempted to betray him in the end by shooting at Nadine. He’s having trouble levitating, which is this — Laura: Oh, my God. Sarah: Well, considering what happens to poor Nadine, I don’t think so. Laura: He comes through in the end, as the case may be. Sarah: Oh, my God. I was so freaked out at the beginning of this chapter — how he would look at the wolves and they would fight. We’re going through a lot of the diminishment of his powers, but King is still like, don’t forget this dude is scary. He would just look at the wolves around him and they would start to bite each other and fight each other, and I thought, oh, that’s just such creepy dark imagery. That he is just like violence personified and a mere glance can bring it out in these creatures. I was very freaked out by that. Laura: Yeah, he’s so creepy in this part. But to me it was giving more demon than devil. Sarah: Yeah, and I thought it was so interesting how he talked about how he couldn’t remember his life or experiences before the super flu. He was no longer strictly a man if he had ever been one. He was like an onion slowly peeling away one layer at a time — only it was the trappings of humanity that seemed to be peeling away. Organized reflection, memory, possibly even free will, if there ever had been such a thing. He can only remember the events since the super flu. He was losing himself is how it’s described. So to me that’s so interesting. That feels like something that would happen as his power grew — but maybe there was something in his power and connection and ability to control other humans that was really linked to his own human experiences. Laura: Well, and he also says — this is skipping ahead, but it’s relevant — he says later in this section that there might be other versions of him. What if there was one in China, what if there was one in Russia? He’s kind of assuming there are other versions of him, but that’s something to deal with in ten years is how he thinks about it. But as this whole story has been set up with Mother Abagail representing the good and Randall Flagg representing the bad — now that Mother Abagail has died, it’s interesting that it’s not then just like evil reigns. Because the evil is faltering. The evil is faltering in the face of her death. Characters throughout this entire section are starting to mention: this all changed when she died. When that power — it’s like they keep each other in check. There is a natural order of things, and when there is one to balance the other, that’s what keeps it in check. Now that one has died, instead of evil becoming total dominance, it’s become chaos and confusion. Sarah: She must have known that. She must have had a sense that that was going to happen. I think there is a theme here, beginning with Nadine and continuing, that this isn’t going to end the way everybody expected it to. Nadine thought she knew what was going to happen when she got to him, that she was going to have this ecstasy. Instead, it was horrific. Nadine and the Desert Laura: I underlined the whole thing — because I think it’s one long sentence. He battered into her invader destroyer and the cold blood gushed down her thighs and then he was in her all the way up to her womb and the moon was in her eyes cold and silver — and it just goes. It’s like a paragraph. The sentence just keeps going and going and going describing that. It’s wild. Sarah: So after he cooks the rabbit and has his philosophical thoughts or whatever, cut to Nadine on her Vespa with her white hair — very visual, very kind of cool image in a way — driving to the desert. The Vespa ends up dying. She’s totally dehydrated and delusional, sort of. And she turns around and he’s sitting there on his car. And she knew he was going to be there. To me, the image of her turning around and him sitting there was like, you know, the hot guy, the cool guy who sits on the hood of the car looking — I don’t know if that’s a 50s image, like from Grease, but it really sort of comes all the way through into present time — the hot cool guy sitting on the hood of their car. And you almost expect her to be grateful to see him. She’s been waiting for him since her own college days. Laura: She’s walking in the desert. She’s delirious. She’s dehydrated. I also made a note here about the walking. He is known throughout King canon as the Walkin’ Dude. He is the Walkin’ Dude. And yet in this book, people just walk. They have to walk. They walk in ways that annoy me — instead of using easier means of transportation. Remember Trashcan Man walked until he was delirious and dehydrated into Vegas? The four men coming over from the Free Zone, they’re walking, even though there are other ways to do it. There is something about walking in this story. I don’t know if it’s supposed to be an equal playing field, like we all have to walk. I don’t know if it’s supposed to be a reference to pilgrimages or journeys — the Camino de Santiago, things like that. I just am like, we return to walking always. And that is obviously a thing that we’re supposed to pick up on. Sarah: Well, I was just listening to Michael Pollan on the Ezra Klein Show about his new book about consciousness. He talked about all the brain science around walking and how it makes you more creative. It’s such an embodied experience that it really connects all the different pieces of your consciousness together. That’s definitely my experience walking — it’s where I feel clearest. But I think it’s interesting that in this book there’s not a consistent conclusion about walking. Sometimes people walk and it helps them, and some people walk and it pushes them to the brink and they make a bad alliance — like Trashcan Man, and Nadine here. She walked straight into insanity with this encounter she’s been waiting for for decades. Sarah: Yeah, I don’t know what it is. But maybe that’s the point. When all else fails, in a post-pandemic world, when all else falls away — it’s walking. We revert to walking. That’s our most primal thing. Before agriculture, we were wandering tribesmen. That is fundamental to who we are for sure. Anyway — she turns around, sees him at the car, and it should be this grand — reunion isn’t the right word — grand meeting. And it just isn’t. It’s gross. She’s repulsed. She calls him an ageless pimple. Sarah: So gross. An ageless pimple finally brought to a head and about to spew for some noisome — How do you say that word? Lauren: You know what, I was reading this out loud and I got to that word and I was like, what is that word? Sarah: We can leave this in the edit. Nobody knows how to say it. Noisome fluid. Some sweetness long since curdled.That’s disgusting. Laura: When I was making some notes about this scene, the first thing I wrote was that he rapes her. And then I was rethinking — this is just me thinking out loud, nobody come for me — I was like, this was always the plan. This has been her plan since pre-pandemic. They were going to come together and have a union in this way. She has saved herself for this person. So at first I was like, is that rape? And then I reread the scene and I was like, oh no, this is rape. She is screaming. She’s trying to get away. Sarah: It doesn’t matter. It is weird though — she had so many points to turn around. At so many points she understood consciously that he was dangerous, that this was a place from which she could never return. Nadine — of all the characters — Lloyd makes a certain amount of sense to me, Trashcan Man makes a certain amount of sense to me, even Harold. But Nadine, I’m like, I don’t get it. You didn’t want anybody to die. And then you turn all the way. You had Joe/Leo. Except for that moment with Larry when she’s like, please, please, please help me — there are just so many moments where I’m like, you knew how bad this was going to get. Your subconscious bubbled up into your conscious thought many times, like: no, abort, this is a bad idea. Laura: I don’t know if she’s meant to be like a sacrificial lamb, or if she’s meant to be, as he calls it, an incubator. Sarah: The implication to me is like his child could not be conceived willingly. She had to be taken this way and sort of put into the land of insanity for his child to be born or whatever. That to me was the subtle implication of the whole thing. Laura: Well, she is one of the most complicated characters in that there are glimpses of her being good throughout the whole novel. So why is she saving herself for this sort of ultimate evil? And then she doubts herself right up until she meets him. We also have these unusual ideas about what she was doing with Harold — not completely consummating, but doing everything but. And I got the impression she didn’t hate that. Maybe she was just doing that to manipulate Harold, but you kind of get the implication that she likes it. There’s that whole scene where she sort of wants them to go all the way and she has to stop herself. So she’s enjoying these sexual acts with Harold, but then when it comes to this act she’s been waiting for all this time, it’s just so horrible and violent and so —Rosemary’s Baby. Laura: Yes! Which by the way came out in 1968. That had to have been in his mind. Sarah: Well, what also happens in the midst of this is that Randall Flagg feels somebody pass by. He also understands that the men from the Free Zone are coming for him. So he hasn’t lost the eye completely — he gets these senses that somebody’s passing by. It’s a full moon, so we’re all putting together the pieces of who that somebody might be. That’ll be confirmed in the next chapter — chapter 66. But he’s still, the holes are showing. I loved when he got back to Vegas with Nadine — he saw the questioning in everybody’s eyes. So he knows everybody knows things aren’t working out the way he planned. But there’s still a lot of power here. Laura: And I think he’s trying to hide the slippage. Like, he’s trying to act like he’s still all-knowing. He definitely does not want people to know that he is, quote-unquote, losing himself. Sarah: But that’s what’s so interesting about this chapter — you’re in his head, so you know what he knows, including that somebody passed by. It’s complicated. Laura: Also — how relevant is this to our current world? Just desperate to cover up lapses in brain functioning? Sarah: Whatever could you be referencing, Laura? Sarah: Well, also, people backed in a corner are dangerous. That’s hyper relevant on many, many, many stages. Laura: Look, I feel like I could say this about our past two presidents — our current president and our past president — that there is a misstep and then a desperation to show that there was not an age-related mishap. When there’s a slip and then they double down. Yeah. Chapter 66: Lloyd Shows Up Sarah: And I think in chapter 66, we start spending a lot of time with Lloyd. That’s where I thought Lloyd was one of the most interesting characters in this whole chapter — the way he was kind of processing Randall Flagg’s slips and processing his own choices to begin with. I thought that was one of the most interesting themes through this section. Lloyd really showed up. He showed up and he showed out in this section, and I kind of dug it. Laura: Listen, I have much to say about Lloyd. Except to say — how far has Lloyd come from his shootout with Polk? Sarah: He even says that. That’s one of my favorite parts of the chapter: he got better. It’s like, it’s giving Larry. It’s giving Stu. There were people on both sides of this battle who, being chosen and stepping up and finding some leadership, really changed them. And I think Lloyd’s one of those people. So we get to chapter 66. Lloyd’s back in Vegas and he’s gotten word that Trashcan Man — apparently not always the easiest of allies or tools to keep in your control. Go figure. Who would have guessed? Laura: I mean, Lloyd isn’t just that he’s been chosen — he’s become a leader. Are we all on our own path? I’ve said this throughout the whole book, because I think a huge theme of this book is your path is your path. I think that’s what we’re exploring a little bit with Nadine also. Even though she doesn’t want to fulfill this thing she’s been on a path to fulfill the whole time, I don’t know how much choice she has in the matter by the time she meets Flagg in the desert. But we’re all on our own dedicated path. We have our roles, like it or not. Sarah: That’s why I don’t think “your path is your path” fits this quite so well — because I think there are so many people in this book who the path changed. Lloyd is different now. He was in a place of desperation and he threw in with Flagg, but that has changed him. And I think he could be a very different kind of henchman than Stephen King portrays. If you’re a Sopranos fan — it’s the difference between like Paulie and Silvio. There’s a kind of blind adherence, like you just follow the boss. And then there’s a more conciliatory approach. He even says, like, who would have become a diplomat — who would use that word to describe old Lloyd when he was hanging out with Poke? So it’s kind of changed him. His assessment — so first he learns that Trashcan Man has booby-trapped a truck. Spoiler alert: it gets worse from there. Then Julie Lowry comes and tells him about Nick Andros and Tom Cullen. And so he’s starting to put some pieces together. And watching him put these pieces together and decide what it means for him, what it means for the community, what it means for Randall Flagg — it’s not a level of complex decision-making or analysis that I would have predicted Lloyd able to do. Laura: Well, no. That’s why I’m sort of asking what exactly is going on here, because at the end of this chapter, Tom Cullen realizes it’s the full moon. It’s time for him to hit the road. And he is also thinking more clearly. His time in Vegas has changed his brain. And so this is what I’m trying to ask about both Lloyd and anyone in Vegas — what King’s commentary is here. It’s not just that they have been entrusted with a leadership role, or that they’re in a place of belonging, or any of those philosophical things. It seems that there is something in this orbit, in this community, that is making them think more clearly. It’s literally making them — I don’t want to say smarter, that’s a weird word — but Tom Cullen has actual disabilities and he is without a doubt thinking more clearly as he sets off to go back to the Free Zone than he was in any previous iteration of his life. And so I was thinking, what is King saying here? Because you would think the narrative would be: if you’ve chosen evil, you’re cloudy, you’re muddy, you’re brainwashed or something. But he seems to be saying that these people are having more clarity than even the Free Zone people. Sarah: I don’t think Tom Cullen is thinking more clearly because of his time in Vegas. I think he is thinking within the framework of the hypnosis. To my mind, the hypnosis is like an on-off switch and it’s still on. It fundamentally changes his brain. The hypnosis puts him in a future-oriented place that he doesn’t usually exist in — he’s very present-oriented. And so with the hypnosis and the mission in front of him, it changes the way he’s processing events because he has a goal. I love how he says that the people in Vegas were nice folks, not much different from Boulder folks as far as he could tell — but they had that smell about them. It was as if these people were wearing happy folk faces, but their real faces, their underneath faces, were monster faces. Sarah: Their underneath faces — so good. And I think that’s what King is getting at. He’s not making the argument that people are fundamentally good or bad individually. He seems to be saying: people make all kinds of choices, and he’s walking us through how people get to these places where they’re facing this battle between good and evil. It’s not like Stu, or in particular Larry, woke up and were like, I’m a good guy and now I’m going to make all the good right choices. I thought it was really interesting in chapter 66 when Lloyd is talking to Julie Lowry and she says, nice fucking guy — which is such a throwback to Larry. Because I don’t know how you read this section and don’t see that Lloyd is trying to make good choices that, if not protect the people of Vegas, at least live up to his responsibility towards them. And even — I know this sounds crazy — even when he kind of says, like, I’ve made this choice, this is who I have pledged my loyalty to and I’m gonna stick to it — I wouldn’t call it honorable, but I would at least call it consistent. And I think he’s really pushing this idea that people can change. The circumstances change you. And there’s no neat and tidy way to unpack how you get to even a very black-and-white battle between good and evil. Individual vs. Collective Laura: The more we’re talking through it, the more I think this might be a little bit of a commentary on individuality versus collective. The people in Vegas are very individualized in their decision-making — even with Trashcan Man, Lloyd — my allegiance is to Flagg, or I am making this choice. And maybe that brings some kind of clarity, or just a sole, s-o-l-e, soul mission — or s-o-u-l, a soul mission — that is a lot more defined. Whereas when you are trying to make decisions for the collective, or for a greater good, as they’re doing in the Free Zone with their community meetings and all of these things, that brings sometimes more of a muddiness when you’re trying to choose for others. I’m not saying one is good or bad. Obviously I’m all for the collective good. But I am just wondering if the people in Vegas, although they are doing things that ultimately benefit the community, are making decisions on an individual level. Sarah: Yeah, but that’s in real contrast to like Lloyd in chapter 67, where he figures out — when he’s trying to trace down the Nick Andros/Tom Cullen connection — he calls the guy who tracks people. I thought that was also one of the creepiest parts of this book. The sort of secret police that Randall Flagg had. Talk about current applicability. A version of real surveillance and tracking of people. It was like he had a Facebook algorithm file on people before there were social media algorithm files. So Lloyd learns that there’s this red list of people that Flagg has been keeping from him. And that really disrupts his understanding of Flagg — because ultimately that was a mistake. If Lloyd had known from the beginning about this connection, maybe he could have acted and caught Tom Cullen before he left town. And here’s the thing: Randall Flagg can’t even articulate why he kept the red list from Lloyd. So this other information comes in and it disrupts Lloyd’s understanding of not only his relationship with Flagg, but what Flagg is doing for the collective — and therefore what Lloyd is doing on behalf of Flagg for the collective. Laura: But it still reads as individuality to me. They’re doing it for their own benefit, even if they don’t understand it. They’re not doing it to protect others or for a greater good. Those that are starting to defect never had any real loyalty to Flagg in the same way that those who might have had a loyalty to Mother Abagail. It’s a version of loyalty — but it’s an individual loyalty. It’s a loyalty to Flagg. It’s not a loyalty to the people of Vegas. Sarah: Well, I think everyone’s loyalty — even if it was individual decision-making — was based on this assumption that Flagg was all-powerful and would protect them. And the more and more that gets disrupted, the more they’re questioning. That’s why people start to leave. There was a sense of like, I’m not saying to keep myself safe — I’m saying because he’s so powerful that if I step one millimeter out of line he’ll kill me. But the more people that he cannot control — well, then people start thinking, maybe he can’t control me either, and maybe I’ll bounce. Laura: But again, their assumption that he can protect them is individual. They’re not worried about who he can protect for others. There is no us here. This is a political idea. Sarah: Well, it’s so interesting though, because even the people who defect from Vegas — they have relationships with each other and they leave together. It might not be everybody in Vegas, but King does poke a lot of holes in the every-man-for-himself reading. There are relationships in Vegas. There are people who have aligned together. Chapter 67 and the Red List Laura: The first major hole we see — with the red list thing and everybody understanding that maybe Randall Flagg is not Satan himself — is Lloyd gets on to him. He tells him about the Tom situation and basically says, if you had told me about the red list, I could have stopped this. This is your fault. I couldn’t believe it. And he says this with Nadine in the background, catatonic. Sarah: So weird. And she really — she turns it on a dime. So they get into this fight, Flagg screwed up, Lloyd sees that — sees an opening to say this is your fault, not mine — which is a huge shift in people’s understanding. And then all of a sudden Nadine is not catatonic and really is back to the old Nadine. I found that turn kind of hard. Laura: Well, listen — you can’t skim this section, because you will miss a really pivotal part of the book. I actually kind of feel like King didn’t totally give this its due for what is about to happen. We have read a thousand pages leading up to Flagg’s consummation and impregnation of Nadine, for her to just flip a switch in two paragraphs or whatever. I was like, wait — I mean, I knew this was coming, of course, but I did not remember as I was reading it aloud how quickly this turns. Sarah: Well, I wonder if it makes more sense when you put together this slow drip of the holes in his power — Harold, Dana, Tom Cullen escaping, then the first Trashcan Man blowing up the trucks, then the pilots — the dominoes are falling pretty fast at this point. And so you kind of wonder, like, was Nadine there the whole time? Was her ultimate purpose to get there and get impregnated as she thought? Or did she, as these dominoes start to fall, did something awaken in her to realize: no, my ultimate purpose is to tell him that the four from the Free Zone are coming, that he’s screwing everything up, and to basically bait him into throwing her over the parapet at the MGM Grand to her death? When I think about it, it feels sudden — but then I’m like, no. Maybe back to the path. This was ultimately Nadine’s path. Maybe that’s why we needed someone who felt like they were questioning the whole time. So that when her moment came — maybe what I’m arguing is that Nadine was the ultimate Free Zone spy. Laura: Oh, that’s interesting. But she also gained some knowledge that I’m not sure where it came from. When she and Harold leave the Free Zone, as far as they know, they’ve blown up the whole committee. Until she gets to the MGM, pregnant, traumatized. I guess she’s starting to realize she’s given her whole life over to someone she thought was going to be a god. And then when she gets there, he’s a devil. She either overhears all the ways in which he’s failing, or maybe that catatonic state was some sort of — like the hypnosis — maybe when she’s in that catatonic state. But suddenly she knows that the guys are coming from the Free Zone to get him. Sarah: She has that knowledge. Maybe she sees it in her catatonic state. Laura: Then where does that knowledge come from? Is it bestowed? Does it come in dreams — because dreams are such a big thing? Sarah: Stephen King has been making the argument that moments of trauma and disruption open up levels of consciousness not usually available to us. That has been pretty consistent. So you can see why the moment in the desert could have perhaps unlocked some things for Nadine — because it’s pretty freaking traumatic. My favorite thing she says to him, though, when she baits him into throwing her over the edge: Everything you made here is falling apart. And why not? The effective half-life of evil is always relatively short. Sarah: I love that line. I thought that was so good. Laura: With Nadine, you also can’t overlook the mother instinct. She doesn’t want to be pregnant with his baby. She doesn’t want this to continue on. She doesn’t want to carry this demon to term. She wants to rid herself of all of this. And she’s obviously wildly manipulated Harold, attempted to manipulate Larry. It’s not that the ultimate manipulation — making him so mad he throws her over the edge — was out of character. It just felt like a lot of buildup, and we kind of think maybe we’re going to get to see the next gen of this. It really severs an enormous storyline of Flagg’s. Sarah: Yeah, but people are dropping like flies around here right now. You know what I mean? The closer we get to the end, it doesn’t matter how long you’ve spent with this person — everybody’s on the chopping block. Chapter 66 Continued: Tom Cullen and Love Sarah: What I think is so interesting about this chapter too is that he doesn’t end it with Flagg’s failure to levitate. A quarter of an inch; they would go no higher. We end it with Tom, and Tom saying that the biggest difference in Vegas was simply love: There were nice enough people and all, but there wasn’t much love in them because they were too busy being afraid. Love didn’t grow well in a place where there was only fear, just as plants didn’t grow very well in a place where it was always dark. Laura: I underlined that section too. Sarah: And he’s talking to Nick in his dreams. Nick is keeping him safe. But it’s really sad because he talks about waiting to see Nick again, but for some reason he could never understand — Nick had turned away. He doesn’t know yet. Laura: It’s also interesting that in dreams, Nick can talk and hear — and in Nick’s own dreams he could hear. Sarah: Well, he had to do something — because what’s he going to do, write a note Tom can’t read in his dreams? Laura: I’m telling you — the fact that Randall Flagg can’t get up is an obvious wink that he can’t get it up. I mean, he can, but he can’t. It’s an impotent kind of — Sarah: Okay, but look — isn’t that back to our theory? It’s easy and almost intuitive to think if somebody is all-powerful, they’re all-powerful forever. And Stephen King is like, no. Our choices, their impacts, the consequences, the energetic exchange are all connected and nothing’s written in stone. Something can change at any moment, including with the Walkin’ Dude and his ability to levitate. Laura: Well, I think there are so many doubts. When everything was going his way and everything was falling into place exactly how it was supposed to — he carries himself with the confidence of a man that everything’s going their way. And then when everything starts to fall apart — because the pilots blowing up are his fault — when Flagg finds out that Tom Cullen is the spy and is now on the move, he’s told that by Lloyd. He was not able to know that himself. And when Lloyd tells him, he sends the pilots after Tom for no reason. He even thinks in his mind — how bad would it be if Tom Cullen got back to the Free Zone? It wouldn’t be that big a deal. What’s he going to tell them? We’ve got the electricity going over here. He doesn’t have much to report back. I could just let him go. But no — his ego makes him send the pilots after Tom. And because Trashcan Man had rigged those helicopters, which might have sat there for weeks — instead, Flagg sends all the pilots after Tom Cullen, blowing them all up. So again, that’s all his fault. It’s all his misstep. Everyone in the room, Lloyd and Nadine, is seeing: oh, this guy — there’s no plan. He is losing his power. It’s getting sloppy. Sarah: Listen, what’d you expect bringing on somebody like Trashcan Man? Chapter 68: Trashcan Man’s Story, Told Twice Sarah: So we get a whisper of this, but we get in chapter 68, from Trashcan Man’s perspective — some of the pilots cracked a joke at his expense and he lost it and blew everything up. Then he kind of realizes — I love this line at the beginning: he was walking proof that a man finally takes on the look of what he is, because his skin had burned, peeled, burned, peeled again, and finally had not tanned but blackened. So creepy. Sarah: And you would think — okay, he’s blown everybody up. All is lost. The Trashcan Man is the burning man. We’re done here. Except now his ass is out here looking for a nuclear bomb. Laura: Well, I think this is all about trauma. They made a joke about fire starters or bedwetters or whatever silly thing they said. It brought up all of his trauma of being bullied, and he just goes to a place of destruction. What I thought was interesting from a storytelling point of view is that we hear this story twice. We hear it when the guy comes and tells it to Lloyd — this is what happened, the guy made a joke, here’s the exact joke he made, Trashcan Man loses it. And then we get to hear that exact same story with the exact same line, but from Trashcan Man’s point of view. And Stephen King — my buddy Steve — doesn’t do this over and over again throughout. This is one of the times that is interestingly repetitive. He does it purposely. It’s a storytelling choice to hear this story twice from two different angles. And you even hear that Trashcan Man almost realizes, like, oops, I might have overreacted. Sarah: But that’s back to the theme I’m pushing — that these pivotal moments, instead of just being this march down fate’s predetermined journey, there are these pivotal moments that might not mean anything to you. The pilots weren’t trying to be mean. It was a throwaway line. Randall Flagg’s decision to keep the red list to himself — he couldn’t even explain it to you. Doesn’t even know why he did it. But to Trashcan Man, this moment was wildly impactful. Because everybody is their own sort of bomb waiting to go off, right? Everybody has this one particular combination that could unlock good or bad, creativity or disaster, whatever. With somebody like Trashcan Man — it just feels like we could have all seen this coming. It’s another sort of Flagg hubris. You thought you were going to be able to control somebody who could find weapons and can’t even explain to you why or how. Laura: It just feels like a nod to history too. If you look throughout so many wars — if this hadn’t happened, this might have happened. In this case, if Trashcan Man hadn’t blown up the pilots — it’s a sliding doors moment. If he hadn’t been triggered by some offhand remark, if he hadn’t blown up the pilots and the helicopters, would the Vegas contingent have completely annihilated the Free Zone? Maybe. Sarah: Trashcan Man was a liability always. Even if they’d taken out the Free Zone, Trashcan Man was gonna stay a liability. Laura: But without Trashcan Man, they wouldn’t have had their weaponry. So you have those people that are both a liability and an asset depending on the day. Sarah: And you realize — everything Flagg is putting together is so fragile. Yeah, he has a Trashcan Man, but he has so few pilots. That’s it. There are no other pilots. And yes, he can draw Nadine to him — but when you draw someone that way and make them so fragile, they might throw themselves off a roof. I just think Randall Flagg’s fundamental weakness is that he sees everybody as pawns. And what Stephen King is sort of saying, particularly in this section, is: these are not pawns. These are people. And people are inherently messy, complicating. Chapters 70-71: Defection and the Final Balance Sarah: So we get Chief Whitney and Horgan coming and saying, we’re out, we’re leaving — which is not something you would have predicted hundreds of pages ago when they were crucifying this dude in front of everybody. Laura: I was mad that the chef came and told Lloyd he was going to bounce. Why would you do that? You know Lloyd is loyal to Flagg. Why would he keep your secret? I guess he’s giving him an opportunity to come with them, or giving him the respect of not just leaving in the night — but I just was like, why would you ever trust Lloyd? Laura: I liked it because I thought it was showing that they have built real relationships here. There is trust between the members in Vegas. And I think it was also meant to show us how far the understanding that Flagg has weakened has gone — not just that they’re willing to bounce, but that they’re willing to tell Lloyd about it. One of these lieutenants is like, he ain’t the same. He’s slipping. Laura: What did you think — and I’m asking you this because a lot of our Slow Read community has discussed this in the comments on Substack, y’all — you’ve got to get into the comments on Substack. We have the best Slow Read community. People say the smartest, most interesting things. They pick up stuff Sarah and I miss. You could be one of them. Go participate on Substack. But what did you think about Dana and Nadine dying in such similar ways, out the windows of the MGM? Sarah: Is this lazy storytelling? Is this purposefully a parallel? Is it a Shakespeare allusion? I meant to look that up and I forgot. Sarah: Usually the safe bet is yes. Bible or Shakespeare, you’re probably pretty safe if you cover both those bases. I think it is a metaphor for his power. He’s at the top floor. He’s in this penthouse. He is at the pinnacle of his reach and vision — you can see from far up there. It’s supposed to represent that he’s at the top. And then that is ultimately twisted and used against him. It’s a metaphor for the inherent vulnerability of that much power. Laura: But both of the women who are betraying him dying in this way — it was a smidge unsatisfying for me. Sarah: Oh, I don’t know how else they could have gotten away from him. They’re not going to fire a gun. She tried to pull her knife, he turned into a banana. What else are they going to do? These are their options. I think it was a really smart way for them to use the bare minimum of what they had at their disposal to get out of there. Laura: And in this chapter — the women angle has been discussed so much on Substack — in general, this is a very male-dominated section. It is all men. Yeah, we have Trashcan Man out there looking for the bomb, we have Randall Flagg, they’re looking for the Free Zone guys coming this way, and we spend a lot of time with Tom Cullen. Sarah: There’s just a lot of journeying. Tom is journeying. The Free Zone guys are coming. Randall Flagg starts out in the desert. There’s just a lot of traveling going on. Laura: Yeah. Chapters 70 and 71 are both short little looks at what’s happening, including — Trashcan Man is in the desert. And he has, by his own ways of divination, found a bunker that has what we can only assume is a nuclear warhead. Sarah: This is wildly unbelievable to me. You don’t think it just feeds into all the conspiracy theories of this is where America hides our bombs, in the desert outside of Vegas? Yeah, but they hide them really good. Laura: Do they though? Sarah: I feel like there have to be so many security protocols — if it loses power, if something like this happens — I’m not saying you couldn’t get to them, but you couldn’t get to them as like one random guy, and you sure as hell aren’t bringing out one on a cart. That’s not how nuclear weapons work. Laura: Listen, when I first read this, as a teenager and in subsequent readings, I’ve always been kind of confused by this section. Not by the logistics — he’s obviously found a bomb and trying to bring it above ground — but it’s like, suddenly in this section things got weirdly technical. I’m just going to skim this part because I don’t understand all these things. Laura: Yeah, I don’t love where this story is going, logistically speaking. Sarah: I do buy that Randall Flagg still has this vision. And I certainly buy that Kojak understands that he’s there and looking at them. I want to say that for sure. Laura: Also — we have been given a nugget hundreds and hundreds of pages back that Kojak is going to live for like eighteen more years. I hold on to that like the hope that it is. Sarah: Because it is. I was disquieted by this moment at the very end of chapter 71. When Randall Flagg is spying on them — peeking at them through his eye — and Kojak can see him: What he had forgotten was so staggeringly simple that it was humbling. They were having their problems too. They were frightened too. And as a result, they were making a colossal mistake. I thought that was such a powerful turn. He’s not all-powerful — but look, neither are they. Laura: Yeah. And they’re without their — I don’t know, spiritual leader. I’m not sure what you would even call Mother Abagail at this point, but as far as we know, they’re working in human realm only. Sarah: They’ve lost their leader. In Vegas, it’s the opposite — he’s lost his people. Laura: Oh, so smart. Laura: It’s true. And it feels like — obviously with all the things we’ve parsed through that are storytelling or silly or supernatural — what you just said is the part that feels the most human about this story. Leadership and warring factions making mistakes, making assumptions, but also having some similar parallel problems. Getting Close to the End Sarah: Laura, we’re getting so close to the end. Laura: I know. Laura: What do you think? Are you excited for the end? We only have 100 pages left — less, maybe. Sarah: I don’t even know. I’ve just been hanging out with these people for so long. I’m stressed about who’s going to die because I know some people are. I’m feeling a lot of stress about that. And I feel like I’m gonna get to the end and be like, okay, but so now let’s go back to the Free Zone — you tell me what happens for the next hundred years in the Free Zone. Which I know I’m not gonna get. But I mean — I’m excited. I’m ready for them. Let’s have it out. Let’s do this. I’m not scared. It’s go time, Laura. It’s go time. LauraThe Stand is coming. And hopefully we’ll see all of you on the other side. Sarah: But I don’t think we’re going to see all these characters on the other side. Laura: I hope you come and tell us at our book club meeting — our May book club meeting next week — what y’all think as we enter these last hundred pages. I also just want us to think about — because this is my first Slow Read and we’ll dissect all of this when we get to the end — the difference that it makes in your reading life to have spent six months with these characters. It’s really changed me. Both the Slow Read aspect of it with a book I’ve read multiple times before, and the reading aloud — which I know I’m the only one doing it that way. There’s going to be a lot to say as a Slow Read community that I want us to talk about in terms of just the experience. It’s a little bit separate from the book itself. Because you know — it’s never too late for an old dog to learn new tricks in terms of shaking up your reading life a little bit. This has been really, really good. Sarah: I bet Kojak’s going to learn some new tricks over the next eighteen years. Laura: Come on now. Yeah, I bet he is. Sarah: All right. Well, we look forward to seeing all of you at our book club meeting next week. We will be back covering chapters 72 through 73. And until then — see you on the other side. Laura: See you on the other side. Next Up: Chapters 72–73 This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit slowread.substack.com/subscribe [https://slowread.substack.com/subscribe?utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=CTA_2]

SLOW READ: The Stand (Chapters 61 - 64)

Welcome to SLOW READ [https://slowread.substack.com/], where we tackle the books you’ve always wanted to read at a pace you can handle. Hosted by Sarah Stewart Holland [https://www.instagram.com/bluegrassred] and Laura Tremaine [https://www.instagram.com/laura.tremaine/] We are currently reading The Stand [https://urlgeni.us/amzn/thestand] by Stephen King (unabridged version) You can find our full Reading Schedule here [https://slowread.substack.com/p/the-stand-reading-schedule] Join the SLOW READ [https://slowread.substack.com/] community on Substack for bonus episodes, book club meetings, and Side Quests with Sarah & Laura If you prefer to read instead of listen, below is a cleaned up transcript of the episode as well as links to all the books and Substacks we mentioned in this episode…and several fun bonus links and videos! Mentioned in this episode: * The Lord of the Rings [https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/33.The_Lord_of_the_Rings] by J.R.R. Tolkien [https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/33.The_Lord_of_the_Rings] * The Tune of Things: Is Consciousness God? [https://harpers.org/archive/2025/12/the-tune-of-things-christian-wiman-consciousness-god/] (Christian Wilman in Harper’s, 2025) * Moby Dick [https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/2701] by Herman Melville [https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/2701] * The Scarlet Letter [https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/25344] by Nathaniel Hawthorne [https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/25344] * Paradise Lost [https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/26] by John Milton [https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/26] * “Top of the World” by The Chicks (Official Video) [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CxRiVkdO9VQ] * Stand By Me [https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0092005/] (1986 film) — IMDb [https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0092005/] The Writing in This Section Sarah: Laura, after a very long time in the free zone, we are back with Randall Flagg and his crew, which have been varying levels of infiltrated by the committee spies. How did you feel about this section? Laura: I thought these particular chapters were some of the best written of the whole entire book. I have two standout sections that I consider the best in terms of incredible sentences and just the craft of it — this is one of them. Not a ton of wild imagination necessarily, but the sentences in this section, I was like, oh, that’s so well written. How he looped back several different things, and then the section many hundreds of pages ago with Glenn Bateman — that one felt really well written too, really poetic. But this section feels different. Like he was in a flow state, Mr. King, when he did this part. Sarah: I totally agree. I thought it was really engaging. And I also want to say — in this section as a whole, King makes a ton of literary references. He references Edgar Allan Poe, he references Lord of the Rings. I looked up the law book that Judge Ferris is reading, the one King mentions multiple times, and that’s a real book — it’s literally about racial social justice. I looked at it and was like, okay, he is doing some things. King is doing some things. This is pre-Black Lives Matter as a movement, but obviously these conversations were being had. We’re coming out of the 60s, back in the 70s when this was first written — it makes sense. Laura: And back to the writing style changing — I feel like that’s also part of the fact that we’re now in Vegas, and we haven’t been there for hundreds and hundreds of pages, and the writing is just different. It almost feels like these little sections — Judge Ferris, Dana, and then Harold — could almost be novellas with just a little more structure put in. They’re so well done. But it’s a really different tone from the time we’ve been spending in the free zone, which is a little folksy, a little quote-unquote normal novel stuff. This is really different, and that feels intentional. The Vegas parts have a different flavor. And I also like that he’s making the connection that not everyone in Vegas is evil. People are people. It’s not black and white. Chapter 61: Poor Judge Ferris Sarah: Well, let’s start with chapter 61, because poor Judge Ferris doesn’t actually make it to Vegas. Laura: God bless him. Bless his heart. Sarah: There’s a lot going on in this chapter — the plot happens, but also King is pulling together a lot of things. So we find Judge Ferris making his cross-country trip, and we know that Randall Flagg has sent patrols to stop him, to kill him — but please, please, please protect his head, because I’m going to send it back to the free zone and freak them all the way out. Some very specific instructions. At first I’m like, why are we taking this beloved character and sending him directly to his death? But there are two moments where I start to see the pieces coming together. The first is Judge Ferris is in a hotel room and a crow taps on his window. And Judge Ferris realizes this crow is Randall Flagg. He pulls a gun — and what I thought the most affecting part was, the crow slash Randall Flagg kind of panics. Oh no, if he shoots me, that’s it. Luckily for the crow slash Randall Flagg, the safety’s on. But Stephen King is giving us this insight to realize he is not immortal. He’s very powerful, but he can take on these other forms, and that means he’s vulnerable the way those forms are vulnerable. Which I thought was really interesting. Laura: Well, I also thought it was interesting because we haven’t encountered much supernaturalness for many hundreds of pages. It’s been kind of practical for a while. Sarah: What are you talking about? Are you forgetting the drive-in scene where he took over the speakers and was speaking to Nadine? Laura: Yes, but it’s all Randall Flagg–based. The percentage of supernaturalness in this story is on the lower side than I think most people might expect from Stephen King. This has been more of a practical, post-apocalyptic novel. Sarah: We’ve just spent a lot of time in committee meetings and town meetings. Even when Mother Abigail’s healing Franny, it is a moment among a lot of secretarial work. Laura: Yeah. I was like, bring it, Crow. I was ready for something like this to happen. Sarah: But there’s also — not just that the crow gives us insight into Flagg’s vulnerabilities — the whole time I was thinking, why are you so worried about him? Why are you so paranoid about Judge Ferris making it all the way to Vegas? You know he’s a spy, you hunt him out immediately. There is sort of a “thou dost protest too much” situation. Why are you sending parties all over the United States to stop this one guy? Laura: Don’t you think this is the first real glimpse we have that Randall Flagg is scared? Sarah: Yes. Exactly. I think that’s what this whole section is about — he is paranoid, he is not all-powerful. For one thing, he has to depend on animals to be in a lot of places at once, which is a vulnerability we’re learning. And then he has to depend on these dum-dums like Bobby Terry — what a name — to institute his orders, and they’re ding-dongs who can’t do it. The one instruction was: don’t shoot him in the head. And Bobby Terry kills Judge Ferris so dramatically and terribly that he’s unidentifiable. So even if they sent the head back to the free zone, they’d be like, who dis, we don’t know. Laura: I feel like there are parallels here — not just to our current moment of a wannabe all-powerful dictator, but to past moments too. There’s a lot of bravado in that type of person, but there’s an underlying fear. And also, the people surrounding them doing their bidding are statistically often dum-dums. Sarah: Well, that’s definitely Dana’s observation in the next chapter — that there are more ding-dongs in Vegas than there are in the Free Zone. Laura: Yeah, but they work harder. Sarah: They work harder. Then Bobby Terry screws up, and Randall Flagg transforms into some — I couldn’t quite put it together. Beast, man, crow? Laura: All I know is there are teeth involved. That part I picked up on. There were teeth, and he died in a very gruesome manner. I wasn’t sure — maybe weasel-y, animal-y? Sarah: Did you have to get a map out and be like, wait, the sentries are in Oregon? How do we get from the Rockies to Vegas? Laura: I was so confused. Sarah: He’s going up and around, obviously. Listen, I’m a big national parks person, so my baseline geography of the mountain ranges and the middle west to far west is probably a little better than most. Laura: It must be, because I literally was like, Oregon, where are we? What’s going on? I just think everybody — including Randall Flagg, because apparently he materializes like a ghost — is moving around awful quick in this story without airplanes or helicopters, and sometimes just on bicycles. Sarah: Okay, I didn’t want to nitpick this because I complained earlier in the book about why they were all using bikes. But now that we are into cars, like Judge Ferris doing all the driving, I do have a nitpick of — can you just stop at the empty gas stations and get gas? Laura: I mean, yes, I guess. Maybe. But it must be a big deal, because poor old Larry is still out there remembering the fact that he could have lost his fingers getting gas and that Harold had such a better way of doing it. Sarah: And also, I am living in 2026, but they did address it — he got a key from the empty front desk and just let himself into a room. Laura: I’m assuming it’s a physical key, because now everything would be digital. This is the 70s, where they had physical keys. You’d need electricity to program the key cards. Sarah: I did think that would be a different thing if this type of super flu took out everybody in 2026. The digital dependency we have now would add a layer of complication. Laura: Alright, Judge Ferris. You’re the best. R.I.P. Next chapter. Chapter 62: Dana Juergens, Absolute Badass Sarah: Dana Juergens. What a badass. Laura: What a badass. What a badass. Why has he been keeping Dana Juergens from us this whole time? I’m kind of angry. Sarah: Did your book have an illustration of her? Laura: Yeah, but she looks — it’s a weird illustration. It’s not how I picture Dana. She looks like a man. And I just don’t think that would be Lloyd’s type, because that’s who she’s sleeping with. I was picturing her as curvy and— Sarah: I love where he writes that she always thought women looked best on their backs. Like, are you saying that, Stephen King, or is she saying that? Laura: I feel like you’re just sharing your thoughts, dear sir. Sarah: I did like the Vegas of it all — she’s in a round bed with a round mirror. That tracks. So she’s sleeping with Lloyd, gathering all kinds of information, like the fact that they’re putting together weapon systems out there. I thought the part about Trashcan Man was so creepy — Lloyd is like, he’s so smart, he’s as strange as the big guy himself, and how he just disappears and sniffs out weapons all across the country. Laura: Isn’t it funny that Lloyd, who was a common criminal in pre-pandemic life, is interpreting Trashcan Man’s abilities as genius? I’m not disputing that it is a level of genius, but we have experienced Trashcan Man differently as the reader. I think it puts some things together though — that chaotic, vulnerable internal dialogue we’ve seen from him, paired with the prioritization Randall Flagg clearly places on having him there. And Trashcan Man is working under a totally different set of rules — he can come and go. Whereas the rest of Vegas has these really defined work assignments. Dana’s been there ten days and she’s assigned to a crew, they work nine to five. It’s very serious and structured. Sarah: Kind of like it or not, what Dana is doing — manipulating Lloyd through their relationship — is part of the women’s stereotype that some people critique King for. But she is doing so much more. She’s gathering intel way beyond just that relationship. She’s building relationships, she’s working, she’s putting pieces together. And the way she’s so thoughtful and smart even to the very end — when Flagg tells Lloyd to wait, she was like, I knew immediately that wasn’t what was going to happen because he would have jumped the second you said go. Like, she’s so sharp about the motivations of everybody around her. And what she gives us is all this color and texture around the fact that not everybody there is a monster. She talks about one guy and says something like, the odd thing is, he sounds really genuinely sorry — too bad he’s also so genuinely scared. She’s adding so much nuance. It’s not just a bunch of Trashcan Mans out there. There are regular people who are just terrified of Randall Flagg. Laura: It’s like giving Voldemort the whole chapter. They won’t talk about him, they won’t say his name. He was “the great there, not there.” His presence is lurking even when he’s not in the room. Sarah: Weren’t you fascinated by her friendship with Jenny? Laura: I was. And I also thought that was actually, if we’re going to talk about the way he writes women — if she’s manipulating Lloyd, she’s also trying to find a bestie. She’s really friend-crushing on Jenny. She likes her and doesn’t understand why Jenny would have been drawn to Vegas in the first place, but she knows she can’t really ask her without showing her cards. Sarah: Well, that’s because Dana is a badass and is not motivated by fear at all. That little pep talk she gives herself — “my name is Dana Roberta Juergens and I’m afraid, but I’ve been afraid before. All he can take from me is what I would have to give up someday, anyhow — my life. I will not let him break me down. I will not let him make me less than I am. If I can possibly help, but I want to die well, and I’m going to have what I want.” That is not the motivation of people terrified out of their minds. That is a completely different orientation to the world. Dana’s a stoic, I think. Laura: That speech is so good. But I do think King is also trying to show us why people end up on the quote-unquote bad side. It’s not because they’re evil or want to torture people. It can be because they’re scared. It can be because, as he’s alluded to in the past, they’re techie — so they’re excited to work on the airplanes and get the power grid going. And some of the good people in Vegas are out there loving on little Denny, right? He’s trying to show that they love this child. They want what’s best for this child. It’s complicated. Sarah: I really hooked on how Dana described Flagg as “glamorous” at one point — especially when we find out Julie Lawry is in Vegas in the next chapter. Some people are drawn to that. Jenny kind of articulates it: I know what I’m getting. I know he’s in control. I might not like it and I’m scared of it, but I know somebody knows what’s going on and is figuring it out. And there was some of that in the free zone with the worship of Mother Abigail too. Laura: When you get these little short lines, these small tangents and backstories to characters who are inconsequential to the main plot, you are understanding the layers of why people do what they do — or why they’re numb to their own actions and end up in these situations. That’s what makes this book so epic to me. Even to the guys who killed Judge Ferris — we get a few nuggets of backstory to understand how scared they are, how bored they are out there. It gives the story so much richness. Sarah: And we’re getting complex portrayals not just of everyone in Vegas, but of Flagg himself — who gets bested by Dana. She figures out immediately that he’s playing her, that he’s smiling. The theme of this book, by the way, is that smiling is creepy. Does Stephen King smile? Laura: I think maybe not, based on what I’m picking up from this novel. Sarah: So Randall Flagg is smiling at her, being like, listen, babe, we’ve got no reason to — we can both live beside each other. Why are y’all sending spies? I don’t want to hurt anybody. It’s so creepy. Laura: But she says it was goddamn persuasive. And hypnotizing. There is an element — even without the supernatural part, it can be persuasive. We know people like this who really make us falter. But he is also employing his voodoo, his hypnosis, and she has to keep fighting it. Sarah: Who the other spy is — I saw Tom Cullen at the top of the cherry picker while she was changing streetlights, and I was afraid Tom was just going to be like, “Hey, it’s my friend Dana!” and blow her cover. That’s why they show up — as the transcript says — at four in the morning, “the hour of the secret police.” Loved that line. And then she realizes pretty quickly, because she’s a badass, what information Flagg is actually trying to get from her. Her mind keeps going back to Tom, and she’s worried he can read her mind, so she’s trying not to let him get inside her head. Laura: Sarah sent an article last month that was actually about consciousness — I think Stephen King would really like this article. We’ll put it in the show notes. But one of the things it also discusses is the historical precedent of religious figures levitating. I did not know enough about big-C church history to realize, when we first see Randall Flagg levitating, that this is a reference to saints who reportedly levitated — who would fast themselves from a religious point of view and that would give them powers, like levitation. There’s historical documentation of this. I didn’t fully understand that reference when it first appeared. Sarah: I just think he is doing such a complex dance. Flagg is powerful — everybody’s terrified of him, he made one guy go crazy just by looking at him, he can become a predator anywhere in the world. But he’s not all-powerful. He’s not immortal. I loved it at the end when Lloyd says, “I think he’s around somewhere. I think he’s around waiting for something to happen. I don’t know what.” Even his acolytes in Vegas are seeing the chinks in the armor, just as we the reader are picking up on it. Laura: And I think there has become a bit of an equality — which we didn’t get in the beginning — between Randall Flagg and Mother Abigail. My initial impression was that Mother Abigail, as the one with a direct connection to God, would be in the stronger position. But we see all the ways in which she is vulnerable. And then the same with Randall Flagg. Both of them are emissaries. They are not God or not-God themselves. Chapter 63: Julie Lawry, You Suck Sarah: Next up in chapter 63 — ugh. If Julie Lawry ends up getting Tom Cullen killed, I’ma be so mad. Laura: You know what’s funny? I saw a comment from our slow readers — if y’all aren’t in the comments over on Substack, please go see. People say the most interesting, thoughtful things. We’re having great conversations over there. But someone said a few chapters back, “I’m so glad to be done with Julie.” And I was like... we’re not done with Julie. Sarah: Denny, this little boy who apparently has a rotating cast of mothers, is at the park with his newest mother Angelina, and she’s sitting next to this woman who’s going on and on about her obnoxious life and sex — and we should have known from the second she mentioned sex four or five times that it was Julie Lawry. Because Tom Cullen comes through the park too, the child loves Tom Cullen, Julie Lawry realizes it’s Tom, and is Cheshire Cat grinning at the thought of blowing his cover. It’s a very short chapter, that’s all we know, but this is such a big reveal. Remember — right before this chapter, someone notes the moon’s almost full. So I’m like, oh, maybe it’ll just be in time — Tom, get out of here before Julie gets with somebody and puts this all together. Fingers crossed. Laura: Although I feel like when Angelina tells Julie that Tom Cullen got booted out of the free zone — that’s actually a kind of decent cover story. And we know why they believed it: because Flagg can’t read Tom Cullen’s mind. He can’t give them the same intel he gave Harold and Nadine. But also — this is amazing storytelling. She was always going to show back up. That’s definitely where she was going to end up. Sarah: She sucks. She just does. Chapter 64: Harold Comes to Rest Sarah: Chapter 64. Oh, Harold. How do you feel? Laura: I felt bad for him. That’s rough. That’s a rough way to die. I was picturing that Ali Wong TV show where they end up in the desert and injured in the exact situation Harold is in — it looks brutal. You are thirsty, you are hallucinating. It’s not fun. Sarah: So Harold and Nadine are fleeing to Vegas, and Harold wipes out on an oil slick — which he now thinks, after many hours suffering alone in the desert, was probably Randall Flagg. Because where did the oil come from? It’s been months. He suffers multiple leg breaks, he’s lying there, he tries to crawl back up to Nadine, and she refuses to help him and leaves him to die. He tries to shoot her, but he feels like Randall Flagg also interferes and pushes him out of the way. And I think that’s what else King is telling us: the more you let Flagg in, the more he can mess with you. Dana didn’t let him in — so Dana had the capacity to take back a little bit of her life and take some action he didn’t control. But Harold had let him in so far that he could put an oil slick down. He could shove you away from shooting Nadine. You let him in, dude. You knew you shouldn’t have. Laura: Oh, Harold. So he sits there, suffering. He got his punishment for killing Nick and the other members of the committee. But over the course of his suffering, he does seem to regain some of his humanity as he continues writing in the ledger. Sarah: This is the chapter I was referencing — the most well-written in the whole book. I underlined so many things. As Harold is coming to his conclusions, writing longhand — he’s been writing his whole life, he got really good at it, he feels this connection between writing longhand and how important that is. “That was the whole world after all. Nothing but thoughts and plots.” And then he talks about the great works written longhand — Moby Dick, The Scarlet Letter, Paradise Lost. Again, King pulling from so much literature in this section. But then when he’s like, I could have been something in Boulder — and when he signs off as Hawk, his name from the Free Zone — he has so many moments of self-clarity and self-realization. He says he had fallen victim to his own protracted adolescence. Well, I believe it. I’ve seen it. And then: “when the end comes, when it is as horrible as Goodman always knew it would be, there is only one thing to say to all those good men — approach the throne of judgment: I was misled.” Like he tries to kind of foist off responsibility — and then ultimately is like, no. It wasn’t. It wasn’t anybody’s fault but my own. Like, I did have my own free will. Laura: I thought the last moment — where he’s talking about other people jumping off the quarry but how he could never do it, which was part of what led him to his demise — and ultimately he jumps and shoots himself in the head, and that’s what kind of saves him, gives him back a little bit of control over his own life. It was just so sad. Sarah: Because he realizes, as I’m sure many people have in the last moments of their life, like — I just ended up like everybody else. Quote-unquote misled. I just ended up like everybody else. I could have been something in Boulder. I love that. It reminds me of the Dixie Chicks song “Top of the World,” about the man sitting in his living room letting his family live their life in the other room. The song is like, I could have loved Jesus the way my wife did. I could have been different. It’s giving Harold in this moment. I just let it happen to me instead of taking the moments that I knew I had. Laura: And he’s still — even here, you still get glimmers of the insightful Harold we knew. It’s not like he offered nothing. Like, I thought it was so smart when he pushes back on Nadine saying Randall Flagg feels someone who would betray one side would probably betray the other. Harold’s like, really? You think you passed that? He’s arguing with her, sharp to the very end. And when he takes Hawk as the way to sign off — “on my school papers, I always signed my name Harold Emery Lauder” — it’s like he’s saying, I lived as Harold, I made all these choices as Harold. But I’m going to die as Hawk. Sarah: And it’s such a bummer. I know he has been sort of the villain and we’ve been as annoyed with him as Franny has been. But this is heartbreaking. A hawk is not a crow. Not a crow. I love a hawk. I hate a crow — it is the only bird I hate. Laura: Did you see the parallels to Harold shooting at Nadine, and the surprise on her face, her not even moving — to the Judge shooting at the crow who suddenly panics and is like, oh my God, these people are actually going to fight back? They’re going to fight to the very end. Sarah: Yes. Just like Dana — they’re going to do what they can do, and you won’t be able to control it always. I think that is definitely the takeaway of this section. Is This the Book You Expected? Sarah: We didn’t talk about it, but this section we just read was the beginning of Book Three, and there are opening epigraph quotes, including lyrics from “Stand By Me” — the song. I love that he quotes those lyrics, because obviously this book is called The Stand, but then his probably most beloved adaptation is a short story originally called The Body— the movie version is called Stand By Me. And I was just like, God, he loves an intertwining sitch. Laura: He does. Sarah: And I’m starting to feel, at the end of this section, all those branches coming together. I’m feeling more comfortable in where he’s taking us. I think it’s going to be rough, but I get where we’re going now. Okay — I want to ask you this, because I haven’t in a few episodes, but as we’re now sliding into home: is this book what you expected? Laura: No. I’m not really sure what I expected, but this wasn’t it. This has been such a different journey. The only other Stephen King book I’ve read was Carrie, which is so short and so contained — so the expansiveness of this has been really surprising. There are some elements I was prepared for because I’ve watched enough Stephen King movies. But it’s been much bigger and more complex and interesting, and definitely went places I didn’t expect. I didn’t expect we’d be talking about sociology and the best form of government. That’s for dang sure. So no — it’s been a very pleasant surprise. Sarah: In a slow read context, do you look forward to picking it up and doing your pages? Laura: Yeah. And I think the closer we get to the end, the harder it’s going to be to stick to the schedule. Sarah: For sure. Well, I’m scared about what happens next. Next Up: Chapters 65 through 71 — and if you can’t wait, become a subscriber on Substack and check out our side quest, which is going to be all about Viva Las Vegas. Also, two book club meetings left for our Slow Read members — two crucial ones. You are going to want to talk with your fellow slow readers about these last sections of The Stand. If you can’t make it live, you can always watch the video or listen to the audio replay. Until next week — see you on the other side. 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SLOW READ: The Stand (Chapters 56 - 60)

Welcome to SLOW READ [https://slowread.substack.com/], where we tackle the books you’ve always wanted to read at a pace you can handle. Hosted by Sarah Stewart Holland [https://www.instagram.com/bluegrassred] and Laura Tremaine [https://www.instagram.com/laura.tremaine/] We are currently reading The Stand [https://urlgeni.us/amzn/thestand] by Stephen King (unabridged version) You can find our full Reading Schedule here [https://slowread.substack.com/p/the-stand-reading-schedule] Join the SLOW READ [https://slowread.substack.com/] community on Substack for bonus episodes, book club meetings, and Side Quests with Sarah & Laura ______ Mentioned in this episode: * Giants in the Earth by Ole Edvart Rølvaag * The Handmaid’s Tale by Margaret Atwood * How to Change Your Mind by Michael Pollan * Contagion (film, 2011) Living Inside the Book Laura: And after a few hundred pages of peaceful community building, some stuff really happens in this section finally. Sarah: I’d say so. I found myself traveling recently to Vegas of all places. And I was driving and I looked up at the moon and it was like fully half. And I’m like, oh, we’re not to the full moon for Tom Cullen. As if I have to wait for the full moon in my life for him to come back. I’m like real in it. I noticed every mention of Boulder. I noticed every mention when I was walking around Vegas. It feels like almost at the pace it’s happening. I’m a little stressed and I’m just in it. The anticipation of what’s going to happen next, especially after this section, is very, very high. Laura: I am having a similar experience by doing this so slowly. I’m reading it so differently than I would read any other novel, which changes your relationship to the character. Of course it’s a reread for me. Where if you’re mildly irritated by a character, you’re just reading so fast that you don’t really sit with those emotions. You’re like, well, that’s sort of annoying, and you just keep it moving because you’re propelled by the plot or by finishing or whatever. By doing it slowly, it really changes the way I think about the characters because, like you said, we’re kind of in it real time, like they’re friends. In the past, when I didn’t have much sympathy for Larry Underwood because he just seemed very narcissistic, on this read, doing it slowly, I’m sort of seeing the fullness of his character differently—and having a lot of sympathy for him until we get to this section and he wore me slick. Sarah: This is always my experience with slow reads. I read War and Peace last year and I just felt like I lived about 20 percent of my life in Russia all year long. When you do a slow read, you also live a little bit in the book. You’re not hopping in and out. You’re not speeding through. You’re just existing there and soaking up all the slow changes and the atmosphere and the annoying people and the people you like and everybody’s choices. That’s why I like it so much. Laura: Because when you read quickly, you get the high level of what an author is doing with a character. You understand if they’re meant to be manipulative or the hero. But when you go slowly, you just feel like you know them. You can sort of think about this book when you’re driving around town doing your errands, like you would think about people you know in real life. It’s just really a different experience, but I’m loving that part. Sarah: Yeah, it’s the best. I love hanging with characters like that. Even when they’re all dying. Even when they’re all dying. Laura: Which brings us to the bummer of this section. Chapter 56: Babies, Bombs, and Bad News Laura: Chapter 56, we start out — are the babies dying? This is rough. I feel like this theme is going to hit the mothers among us. The beginning of this chapter, Ralph stops Stu and tells him that a new group is coming in to join the Free Zone. There’s about 40 of them. Wonderful news. There’s a doctor among them. But not so great news is that one of them, Mrs. Wentworth, was pregnant with twins. She delivered on the road as they were walking. And both of her twins die under mysterious circumstances. Everyone’s mind immediately goes to: did the babies breathe air and immediately get the super flu? Sarah: That doesn’t make sense virology-wise, because I’m an amateur virologist now. It would not hang out that long with no host for months and months in the hot summer sun. Laura: But you don’t think the immune people might carry it, but they’re immune to it? Sarah: I mean, I guess, but it has to have something to live off of. There are real virologists listening right now being like, hey, this is why you’re an amateur. Laura: But I wonder if — was there something to what they were trying to say about because the babies were conceived before the flu hit? Is there something then, or if their biological dad had it, does that make a difference? Sarah: Yeah, that seems to be their theory. The smaller story of Mrs. Wentworth is so much like a story in a book I read for Well-Read Mom called Giants in the Earth, which is about Swedish pioneers in like Minnesota, 1800s. This woman along the way loses a child and she kind of loses her mind a little bit, doesn’t want anybody to have the bodies. It really, really reminded me of that story. The idea that if you were traveling to what you perceived as safety with your children or while pregnant and then to lose one of them — I think it’s just a really unique psychological trauma. And with this, the whole conversation got me thinking about with the “no more babies” — this is what I always say about Handmaid’s Tale. Like, people are like, it would never get that bad. I’m like, I don’t think you understand how quickly people would go crazy if there were no babies. I 100% believe people would lose their ever-loving minds and would be able to look past or accept any manner of horror and abuses if they thought it would get them babies. Laura: Well, and it makes King’s choice to have Franny be pregnant such a stroke of genius to this particular story. It really came together in this section because it raises the stakes. Not just Franny’s pregnancy, but like all of humanity’s pregnancy. And it just makes it all more emotional. I’m a little worried — she hasn’t felt the baby move but one time. I keep thinking that too, but she’s not due till January and it’s August. And you don’t feel them as early with your first baby. Sarah: I lost a pregnancy at 20 weeks and then got pregnant way too soon afterwards with Felix. And just that obsession — like all-consuming obsession with feeling the baby move and making sure everything is okay. I remember my doctor being like, come in anytime, anytime. And Felix — he was such a jerk. Anytime they would do an ultrasound, he’d be asleep. I’d be like, move, you jerk. Don’t you understand my stress level? And the doctor’s like, no, he doesn’t. And he doesn’t care. Laura: With your first one, you really don’t know. Eventually it becomes unmistakable that the baby is moving. But there are so many twinges and little flutters, and you want it so badly to feel it that you sometimes will it to happen. Franny being pregnant is really becoming an important part of this story. And story-wise, it also really matters that Stu is not the biological dad. There’s a lot happening here. Sarah: That feels... Mary and Joseph. Laura: Biblical, yes. This whole book has so many biblical things. Well, and we find out later in this section that Nadine’s going to get impregnated by the dark man, which sounds unpleasant to me, personally. Sarah: Cold. Ew. Nadine, Leo, and the Question of Loyalty Laura: So at the beginning of Chapter 56, Nadine is back in her original house, packing up. And she doesn’t even realize that in the corner, Leo — formerly known as Joe — her little savage companion, is sitting in the corner in his underpants. Are we supposed to love him or what? Because I’m creeped out by him. Sarah: I mean, Stephen King plays around a lot with powerful, psychic kids. And I don’t think they’re supposed to be deeply comforting. Because there is something about when it’s coming from someone who fundamentally doesn’t understand the world yet and isn’t mature enough to have a prefrontal cortex, it just hits different. It reminds me of Michael Pollan’s book How to Change Your Mind — he talks about what happened in the ‘60s and why people got so freaked out by psychedelics. In traditional cultures, when you’re expanding your consciousness, it’s like your guide is old. But in the ‘60s it was teenagers, and everyone was like, whoa, everything’s upside down, this is no good. That’s what Leo reminds me of. I’m interested in what he has to say, but it’s in a container that feels like it’s not capable of containing it. Laura: Well, and also it’s interesting that Nadine has a real moment of self-awareness here where she realized she preferred him as Joe, when he was nonverbal and violent and she was the one keeping him in check. Once he meets Mother Abigail and becomes Leo, remembers his name, starts speaking — he chooses to be in a more traditional situation with Larry and Lucy more often and didn’t have as much attachment to Nadine. She discards him, which she realizes about herself. And it’s just telling you a lot about Nadine. She keeps trying to distract herself from what her mission is. She is being called to the dark man and she keeps trying to find reasons not to go. She’s trying to self-sabotage, but she stays on the path ultimately. Sarah: What confuses me is that Leo has this advanced perception of what’s going on. He has some sort of psychic connection. He understood that Mother Abigail was going to make it across the river. So why is he drawn to Nadine? He won’t enter the house with Harold, but he’s so sad Nadine is gone. I’m like, dude, either you understand who’s on the light or the dark or you don’t. Laura: I know. You can’t even argue that it’s because she’s wishy-washy about it all, because so is Harold. Back and forth they kind of go. And I don’t know why Leo has this relationship with Nadine. Sarah: You’re right. It doesn’t really make any sense. I do like that Harold gets so mean to her in this chapter. Like he’s just over her. I think that is good and accurate and interesting — if a relationship is built only on everything but. Laura: A lot of things are happening there. They’re both realizing that they’re about to have to leave the Free Zone and they both have complicated feelings about it. Which is what makes this book better than just everybody in Vegas is bad, everybody in the Free Zone is good. A lot of humanity is going to fall somewhere in the middle. Nadine and Harold are doing some exceptionally odd things, but they’re still having some sadness and regret. They’re sort of attached to the Free Zone despite their own mission. They’re not just one-dimensional evil people. Sarah: Yeah, I mean, I think Harold still loves Franny. Shows you the knife’s edge of love and hate that he’s planning to kill her. But I think he still kind of feels connected to her in some way. It’s also revealed in Chapter 56 that Harold is building a bomb. Spies, Consent, and Tom Cullen’s Mission Laura: We find out Dana is a lesbian. Sarah: Could you blame her after the time in the harem? That might put you off men. Laura: I know, but before that — Sue gives a little backstory to Dana. She had a real brute of a husband back in the day and then just realized, you know what, maybe I like girls. But it’s funny — not like funny haha, because I’m not insulting anyone here — but why in the world would Stu be just shocked that Dana is a lesbian? He’s really bothered by this. Sarah: I bought it even in the ‘90s. I think people were still — and also he was living in teeny tiny Arnett, Texas. How many lesbians do you think there are in Arnett, Texas? Laura: Not that many. Laura: But then they all go to set Tom off on his mission. And listen, I’m sorry. I find this cruel. I do. Sarah: I’m just too interested in what’s going to happen to be wrapped up in the ethics of it. Is there some ableist assumptions in seeing it as cruel? You’re assuming that he’s not up for it. What Nick is arguing, and what I buy to a certain extent, is that he is uniquely suited for this. Not ill-equipped — uniquely suited. Sarah: So it’s not necessarily... Now, is there some consent issues? I feel like he feels coerced.Absolutely. But I mean, I think you could also argue that hypnosis is not mind control, right? It’s a little bit in a gray area. Laura: Except you’re potentially sending him to his own death. It’s not like they’re coercing him to be the local PE teacher. Sarah: Tom has — he loves his house. He loves his whole situation. He is not in the mood for this. But you have to think about what Stephen King is telling you in the scenes way back in the beginning with the tornado. When push comes to shove, he has instincts and capacity that others do not, and can save lives. I can see the case they’re making. I’m not saying I would do it. I’m just saying I don’t think they’re evil and completely cruel to do it. I understand how they got there. Laura: I can see objectively how they got there, but it does feel like they’re taking advantage of someone who is pretty incapable of saying no to them. That said — he also can’t understand his own capacity, and they can. Chapter 57: Destiny, Free Will, and the Drive-In Sarah: We both underlined “this is a job for a weasel, not a lion.” I underlined that so much. It’s an interesting quote because you would usually think the opposite — except who are the good guys and who are the bad guys here? The weasels are supposed to be Flagg and his people. We’ve had literal weasel scenes where it’s Flagg. Now suddenly the good guys are the weasels. Because it’s a David and Goliath situation. They’re not going to battle him strength to strength, obviously. Laura: David and Goliath. The ones who do consent well — the judge, Dana — they both seemed like they are fulfilling their destiny, which is the whole book to me. The whole book is asking these questions of destiny, fate, our path, our soul’s mission. Every single character is walking through that in all their different ways. Sarah: Don’t you feel like that happens in real life all the time? Those hard moments where something intercedes and really changes the direction? Laura: I think life is more of a soft merge than a hard right. Almost always. Sarah: Well, I think things happen daily that are nudging us. Like last night I dreamed about a person I hadn’t thought of in years. And I was like, oh, should I reach out to them? I used the term “the Holy Spirit at work” all the time — because something happens or I bring up something and someone’s reading the same book. To me, that is the connective energetic exchange that leads us in directions. But in this book it’s dialed up to like 15. This is not a small child reading your thoughts and telling you to talk to somebody. Laura: If that happened to me, I’d be freaked all the way out. Sarah: Definitely. And may I remind you — in a couple of chapters — literal pushes. Literal “get out of the house” pushes. Laura: That’s what I think the book is doing for us, though. Like, that’s why I read fiction. It’s not because I anticipate a little Mowgli character telling me to go have a certain conversation. It’s because I feel like, oh gosh, this happens in life. You can’t even deny your own path, even if you want to, even if you try. Sarah: I like to think I’m more in control of my path than that. The choice to move home was my choice. Nobody was pushing me to do that. My husband didn’t want to do that. It was me taking the reins and saying, no, I want to go this direction. Laura: Because that was your path. Sarah: Yeah, I mean, maybe. I didn’t think it was at the time. I wanted a certain life, and so I chose a path that would get me to the life I wanted. It’s like a balance. And I think that’s kind of what he’s playing with — we’re dealing with psychic children, and also, can everybody go turn all the appliances off, please? So the place doesn’t burn to the ground. I just like that real balance of pragmatic and psychic going on through all these chapters. Laura: Then we get my favorite scene. Nadine is tasked by Harold with leaving the bomb in the closet at Ralph’s house — that’s where they’re going to have the committee meeting. She breaks into the house, leaves it in the closet. She keeps thinking, should I go in and take that out? Should I dismantle this bomb? But then I love this scene where she is sort of transported by — the dark man enters her. Like possesses her. Sarah: And he was cold. Which is scary because until then he’s been sort of warm and loving to her. She’s drawn to him. He’s attractive. But now suddenly he’s cold. He sort of possesses her, drives her Vespa as her, to the drive-in movie theater. Laura: You like this scene because you clearly don’t go to drive-in movie theaters, because now I’m going to freak out next time I go to our drive-in movie theater. Sarah: I’ve never been to a drive-in movie theater. Laura: What? It’s so fun. It’s the best. Sarah: Well, this scene is so Stephen King. It is so cinematic. It’s obviously an empty drive-in movie theater. And all of the speakers — all of the speakers in the parking spots — fall down onto the ground and start emitting a message. Randall Flagg’s voice. And there’s no power yet when this happens. So it’s just so cinematic. This is my favorite kind of horror. And I got chills. The speaker is the dark man being like, Nadine, Nadine. Talking to her. He communicates with Nadine so differently than anyone else. It’s very dramatic. Even before all this, when she was in college. He is communicating with her in a totally different way. I don’t know if that’s because she won’t hear him otherwise, or because she’s meant for such an important mission that he has to get through to her. But he’s also scaring her. Laura: Wild. Especially the singing at the end. A creepy song really is the cherry on the sundae for me. I thought when he starts singing “I’ll Be Seeing You” — the weirdest. And she is fighting it, but she really can’t, because he’s like half-occupied her body. And then her hair goes totally white. Sarah: Totally white. Wild. So when she goes back and tells Harold — he is so cruel to her. He’s like done with Nadine. D-O-N-E. Laura: Not quite yet. When he sees her white hair, he’s a little freaked out and gets a little hesitant. Like, I don’t know that we should be doing this. And she’s like, it’s too late. Emotions at war on Harold’s face. Anger, horror, shame. Little by little, they drained away. And then like some terrible corpse coming up from deep water, a frozen grin resurfaced on Harold’s face. Sarah: They are back and forth playing with who is hesitating. Maybe we shouldn’t do this. And then the other one is like, it’s too late. That’s something they both said several times. And you kind of want to be like, no, ding-dongs, it’s never too late to do the right thing. The Twins Motif and Twin Flames Laura: Another thing I want to mention — it keeps coming up in this section — from the beginning with Mrs. Wentworth, but then multiple times things are mentioned about twins. Not just her twins, but I circled a few different references to twins. Which made me think immediately — hashtag Taylor Swift — it made me think of twin flames. Sarah: Well, the drive-in is called Welcome to the Holiday Twin. Laura: That’s one of the things I circled. Twins in all kinds of traditions, mythology, even current traditions — twins and twin flames represent a conjoined connection, a soul connection, a mirror. And it’s different than a soulmate because it can also be a dark and a light. It can be like a mirror. And I feel like he’s playing with that sort of balancing — new way, old way, the choices we make, destiny. There’s definitely this balance beam that feels like it’s constantly happening within the story. Chapter 58: The Bomb, the Committee Meeting, and RIP Nick Sarah: Chapter 58, Stu reads Harold’s ledger and they’re like, oh, no. Laura: But they don’t know exactly. They don’t know he’s going to bomb the committee meeting. They go to the damn committee meeting. There’s a few things that they really misjudge. Sarah: Also, this is the first inkling I have that I’m like, I don’t love Stu right now. Laura: Why? I love Stu. Sarah: I know we’re meant to love Stu. I’m just like, I’m going to need a little bit more from you. Also, I’m impressed with the burial subcommittee. I mean — 25,000 corpses and better than 8,000 a week. Holy crap. They’re not individually digging graves, but that’s a lot of corpses to move. Laura: I mean, listen, that is the Lord’s work right there. That’s rough. From a storytelling point of view, I love that King is doing this. Not only do you have the committee members, but you also have these subcommittee people — the burial guy, the power guy — basically the main leaders of anything good happening in the Free Zone. Sarah: And then Franny’s like, we got to get out of here. I think the implication is that she also has — something is going on. Everybody has the dreams. And she’s fighting it more than a small child would or an old woman would or a Tom Cullen would. It has to be a very intense, very pivotal moment for her to not be able to deny that energetic connection. There are also some themes here of women in particular — but really anybody — denying their own instincts or defaulting to politeness instead of safety. She doesn’t want to look hysterical. She doesn’t want to interrupt the meeting. They’re saying important things. Like, after everything y’all have lived through, you should feel comfortable being like, I don’t know how to explain this, guys, but we got to get out of the room. You’re having drinks about the dark man. This is a safe space in which to exclaim, I think we should go. Laura: I agree. But it’s really hard to shake off the old ways of being. Sarah: There’s a seeding of control when you acknowledge that these messages come through and you don’t understand them, but you have to listen to something you don’t understand and follow instructions you might not understand. I think that’s a lot for a human mind. I want to feel like I’m still more in control than maybe I am. I want to feel like I have my hands on the reins and I’m not just riding a horse with no idea where it’s heading. Laura: Well, Franny in particular is really powerless in this section. She’s feeling a lot of fear around Mrs. Wentworth’s babies dying. She didn’t get a say on Tom Cullen being sent on his mission. She didn’t get much of a say in making Stu her partner as marshal. She has no power right now. Sarah: It’s about to get worse before it gets better, Franny. But she did have the instincts. She has the ethics. But she’s not being listened to, and that dampens your voice. That makes you not want to shout to the committee, we’ve got to run. But she did. And saved her life, and saved Larry’s life, and saved Stu’s life. Maybe not Nick. Laura: So the bomb goes off. Nick is in the closet trying to get it. But listen, RIP. So sad Nick died. Also, we were really reaching the limits of having a deaf-mute involved in the plot. You understand? Like, there’s only so many times you can say, well, he had to read out loud what he wrote down. Sarah: No, I disagree. It felt so different to me, the earlier parts of the book where we were with Nick and we were in his head. Now, when he’s just a participant in all these committee meetings and we have to wait for him to communicate through Ralph or Glenn — no. That was getting a little awkward. Laura: Did you call me ableist at the beginning of this episode? And now I’m going to call you ableist. Sarah: I’m not ableist. Nick is the reason I’m standing by Tom Cullen getting sent off. I like him. I’m just saying, story-wise, plot-wise, it was getting a little tedious. I did like how his sixth sense — not his intuitive sixth sense, but because of his lack of abilities, he can hear or sense things differently. He’s the one who felt like there was a bomb. He gets into the closet, he’s trying to dismantle it. But it ends up being the end. And we’re really out of luck because the burial guy also got killed. Who’s going to bury all the pieces of Nick? Ultimately, nine people die in Harold’s explosion. Laura: Could have been worse. He killed two of the guys that were nice to him on the freaking burial committee. Nick, we lose. Sue, we lose. Four random townspeople. Two more die later. But here comes Mother Abigail. She’s back. Sarah: She’s back. She’s eating herself, which is information I did not need from Dr. Richardson. Did you need to know that her poop had sticks in it? Laura: I didn’t need to know that either. We wanted a doctor, but I’m not sure everybody was hungry for this level of information. The Second Community Meeting: Mob Mentality vs. Leadership Sarah: I say that like I did not enjoy his vibe at the house — but I thought his vibe when they all go to see that she’s barely alive was really beautiful. How everybody was just intuitively gathering outside Lucy and Larry’s house. And at the second committee meeting, the big meeting with everybody, his vibe was good. It was a little bit giving Dr. Fauci. Just like, I’m going to show up, I’m going to tell you what you need to know, and you can get mad at me or not. I didn’t create the situation. I’m just reporting on it, friends. Laura: Well, you see the community itself — the whole Free Zone community — go from kumbaya, we were all drawn here by our dreams, we love each other, to being ready to defend themselves at all costs. And I feel like we’ve lived through this. We lived through this with 9/11. We went through a week of kumbaya before we were ready to go to war. We lived through this with COVID, where we went through a month of kumbaya, we’re all in the same boat, to a deeper divide than we’ve ever had. Sarah: And I feel like King captured it pretty well here. Going from kumbaya to how are we going to defend ourselves against the dark man mob mentality. I really liked Glenn’s approach so much better than Stu’s. Stu was just sort of freaked out and disappointed. Glenn’s approach of having a little plant that could shout something and kind of ease some of the tension — let some steam out of the kettle — I thought that was such a smarter approach. Just accept that this is a natural human tendency in a group to leave the kumbaya moment. But that doesn’t mean we just go, oh, no, what do we do. Let’s exhibit some leadership. Laura: I thought that part was really good. And also I loved this Glenn quote: they talked like people who have kept the huddled-up secrets of their guilts and inadequacies to themselves for a long time, only to discover that these things, when verbalized, were only life-sized after all. My friend calls this the parasite theory. You just put the parasite on the table, and then we can go, ooh, you might need more medicine for that one. Or, see, look, it’s not that bad. I got a parasite about that size too. Sarah: You call it manipulation. I call it leadership. Laura: Wait, that’s merch. Sarah: They’re not saying you don’t have a right to feel or talk or think about all these things you’ve bottled up. They’re just saying, let’s do this first before we take a vote. Let’s not take the committee vote from a place of bottled-up fear. They’re afraid, and before they can get it all out — if someone had nominated someone they liked, they would have accepted it. They didn’t like Ted Frampton. You get a Ted Frampton from a scarcity mindset. Those are the people that exploit scarcity. You have to let people process and get it out and be a little less afraid in order to really weigh their options. Laura: I think it’s so condescending to be like, you can have your feelings, but we’re really going to do what we want to do behind the scenes. Sarah: No, it’s not condescending. Feelings are relevant, but they are not always reality. Listen, you’re talking like somebody who’s never run for office, so I’m going to pull that card right now. I have run and served in office. And you get in a meeting where people are just spilling their stuff all over the table and you’re like, what is the point of this? And I’m supposed to empower these people to make decisions right now when all they really want to do is just be mad? It’s just acknowledging how humans are. It’s inevitable that they go from kumbaya to let’s eat the young. You don’t want to empower people in those moments. You want to use a process to direct them to a more reasonable state of mind. It’s not that you’re going to cheat them out of their vote. The founding fathers spent a lot of time on this — let’s slow the process way down with checks and balances so that it’s not easy in these passionate moments to do a lot of dramatic things. Laura: It’s anti-populist. Sarah: Yeah, a little bit. And you know what? Fine with it. Sounds good to me. This particular moment in America’s history. Mother Abigail’s Final Instructions Laura: But then before she does, Mother Abigail has some things to say. And in like the span of 12 hours, the power comes back on. The day after the committee meeting, Mother Abigail summons the committee to her bedside where they are shocked at how bad she looks. Sarah: How do you feel about the great, god-ordained character being so weakened? Laura: I think that’s great. How did Jesus die? Not in a blaze of glory. Surrounded by criminals on a cross. I think he’s really playing with these threads — Randall Flagg is all powerful and wants that power and exerts it over other people, whereas she has this power but sacrifices it because of her own pride, to empower others. They could not be in sharper contrast to each other. Sarah: But I think it’s crazy he never tells us more about her journey in the wilderness. We never got a glimpse of her on that journey. Like, it’s just a black box. She’s coming back and pooping sticks, and that’s all we know. Except that she knows the instructions. Laura: She did come back with some pretty hardcore instructions. Y’all are going west. One of you is not going to make it. There’s going to be a stand. I won’t be there because I’m dying. Sarah: This is the dun-dun-dun moment of the book when she says, it is there that you will make your stand. And then: with God’s help, you will stand. So this is where we get what the book is now coming to. I kind of like that she says it so explicitly. And I think the title is so strong. It’s not standoff. It’s not standdown. You know, it’s the stand. It’s really a strong, but a little ambiguous, title. What does that even mean before you read it? Laura: But here’s the thing — she’s telling them some things very explicitly, but then she’s leaving a lot open-ended. She tells them they have to go — and Franny, no likey this instruction. She is very upset to the point where Mother Abigail grabs her wrists and heals her of her hurt back and messed-up neck from the couch falling on her during the bombing. And she sees a vision of an empty nursery. But when Franny’s like, is the baby going to make it? Mother Abigail is like, rah, rah, rah. See you later. I’m dying now. So she doesn’t get the whole thing. Sarah: The mission Mother Abigail has spelled out is that the four men — Larry, Stu, Ralph, and Glenn — have to start walking west. They can’t take anything with them. No food, provisions, luggage, nothing — weapons, I don’t even think. They have to wear the clothes on their back and just start walking. Laura: But they did put on better shoes. And you know what? Kudos. Let Rita have not died for nothing. All I’m saying. Wear better shoes. Sarah: But we’ve talked completely through this whole book about how he is treating women in this story. We killed off Sue. Franny is a hysterical, hormonal woman. Nadine has very little agency — she’s basically just a vessel apparently for Randall Flagg’s devil. I defend a lot of what King does with women and I do not think King is anti-women at all, having read so much of his work. But in this story, it feels like he always just sort of wanted to ditch the women and get down to the men making this walk. Laura: Yeah, a little bit. I think so. The baby has to be a boy because she’s the Virgin Mary who’s not really a virgin, and the baby is Jesus. Except for — Franny being pregnant is the X factor here. I kind of respect Franny being like, this god sucks, I don’t want to follow this god. At least she tries to fight back. Then she gets healed. Sarah: No, it does feel a little bit like that to me. Like we just had to get down to these four guys and then they start walking. And Larry says, I feel like this is the end of everything. And I’m like, me too. What the hell are these four dudes going to do? Maybe with an assist by Judge Ferris and Tom Cullen, perhaps. Fingers crossed. How the hell are they going to take on Randall Flagg? Laura: I have concerns. Sarah: I have concerns. I also think it’s interesting that he’s picking up the walking again. As someone who just drove three hours from Utah to Vegas going 80 miles an hour — this is a hell of a journey they’re about to take from Boulder, Colorado to Las Vegas on their feet. Laura: He loves to walk. Larry took a walk. Stu took a walk. Stu’s walk was healing. Larry almost died. Trashcan Man was walking. Flagg is called the walking dude. There’s always walking. There’s power in walking. Sarah: I’m just saying this is a long walk with no food and no water and just better shoes. This is my beef with Hadestown at the end. I’m like, this is just men on their bullshit. Follow the directions. It’s not that hard. Laura: Well, we should end with Larry’s quote. Sarah: I feel like this is the end of everything. Laura: I hope not, because our sign-off is “see you on the other side.” So I hope there’s another side. Sarah: There’s another book — a whole other book left. Next Up: Book Three begins! In the meantime, Sarah and Laura are also discussing the film Contagion — watch it, binge it, rent it before the next episode so you’re ready for the conversation. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit slowread.substack.com/subscribe [https://slowread.substack.com/subscribe?utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=CTA_2]

SLOW READ: The Stand (Chapters 52 - 55)

Welcome to SLOW READ [https://slowread.substack.com/], where we tackle the books you’ve always wanted to read at a pace you can handle. Hosted by Sarah Stewart Holland [https://www.instagram.com/bluegrassred] and Laura Tremaine [https://www.instagram.com/laura.tremaine/] We are currently reading The Stand [https://urlgeni.us/amzn/thestand] by Stephen King (unabridged version) You can find our full Reading Schedule here [https://slowread.substack.com/p/the-stand-reading-schedule] Join the SLOW READ [https://slowread.substack.com/] community on Substack for bonus episodes, book club meetings, and Side Quests with Sarah & Laura If you prefer to read instead of listen, below is a cleaned up transcript of the episode as well as links to all the books and Substacks we mentioned in this episode…and several fun bonus links and videos! Mentioned in this episode: * The Stand [https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/149267.The_Stand] by Stephen King [https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/149267.The_Stand] * Cujo [https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/233666.Cujo] by Stephen King [https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/233666.Cujo] * Kojak (CBS, 1973–1978, starring Telly Savalas) [https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0069599/] * The Message (Bible in contemporary language) [https://messagebible.com/] * Erin Hicks Moon’s Substack [https://erinhmoon.substack.com/] * Homeward Bound: The Incredible Journey [https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0107131/](the 90s movie with the two dogs and the cat) [https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0107131/] Welcome to Slow Read: The Stand. We are your hosts Sarah Stewart Holland and Laura Tremaine. This is episode [N] of Slow Read: The Stand. If you prefer to read instead of listen, below is a cleaned up transcript of the episode as well as links to all the books and Substacks we mentioned in this episode…and several fun bonus links and videos! Mentioned in this episode: * The Stand [https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/149267.The_Stand] by Stephen King [https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/149267.The_Stand] * Cujo [https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/233666.Cujo] by Stephen King [https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/233666.Cujo] * Kojak (CBS, 1973–1978, starring Telly Savalas) [https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0069599/] * The Message (Bible in contemporary language) [https://messagebible.com/] * Erin Hicks Moon’s Substack [https://erinhmoon.substack.com/] * Homeward Bound: The Incredible Journey [https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0107131/](the 90s movie with the two dogs and the cat) [https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0107131/] Chapter 52 - Mother Abagail’s Crisis Sarah: We are now deep into Stephen King’s The Stand. Laura: Deep. Sarah: Deep. And this week we’re talking about chapters 52 through 55 and all the ridiculous things it contains. Do you like what I did there with “ridiculous things”? Laura: Oh yes. God. Killing it. Laura: All right — we are now in the heat of August and the chessboard is being set. We spent all our time in this section in the Free Zone, where society is forming, spies are aligning and alighting on their missions. We are burying bodies, having elections, thinking about law enforcement. But first, we start in Chapter 52, where our Free Zone fearless leader is actually a not-so-fearless leader. We start with Mother Abagail, who seems to be having a bit of a spiritual crisis. What did you think of this section as a whole? Because I was reading it thinking — is this a horror book? Is this a literary book? What are we doing? Sarah: I got a little bored when I was writing up the summary and kind of getting ready for this episode. A lot of things happened that I thought were interesting as I was reviewing it. But while reading it, I kept putting it off. I think I was just a little — I’m ready for something to happen. And I’m also terrified one of these people I like is going to get killed. So I’m both ready for something to happen and dreading it. Laura: Well, what was interesting is that we are deep into this book. This is the final third, maybe even the final quarter. And this felt like a lot of world-building. We are world-building 800 pages in, which is interesting as a writer and a craft storyteller, but as a reader it definitely changes the pace. Also, because I’m reading every word of this book aloud, I stop and underline or make little notes when I get to interesting things I want to talk about. And this section, more than any section we have read thus far, I made the least amount of notes. Almost no notes or underlines until Chapter 55 — the last chapter we’re going to talk about today. And then I had several, all kind of coming from the same source, which is Judge Ferris. But in general, this hundred-page section — it was not a nothing burger because there are a lot of important things that sort of happen here, but nothing super notable or memorable to me. Sarah: Yeah. I would be interested in how much this got changed between the 70s version and the 90s version. It was too much logistics for me. Though I mean — this first section in Chapter 52 with Mother Abagail, where she’s really battling it out, I thought was incredible. I’m always struck by Stephen King’s knowledge of the Bible. I underlined: Acts was the last book in the Bible where doctrine was backed up by miracle. And I was like, wow, that sounds true. Did I double-check it? I didn’t. But it sounded true. Laura: So much religion. There’s always a lot of religion in this book. And it’s really humming in the background in this section, because what we get from this first moment is that she is struggling Sarah: — she feels like she’s battling pride, and she also learns that it was not God who saved her from the weasels. It was Randall Flagg who called the weasels off. I thought that was really scary. She kind of feels like God has gone silent, so she pieces out. And that changes the dynamics of so much within the Free Zone, because she’s not there as their guidance. Laura: Did this change the way you think about her? Sarah: No, because I felt like this was very true to who we knew she was — someone very centrally focused on her relationship with God, consistently hesitant, even afraid, of what she’s been called to do. The way she was battling with this, and seeing the way they kept leaning on her and leaning on her, which was building her pride and changing the way they were thinking about themselves — it rang really true to me. What about you? Laura: Well, it’s very Jesus-y to take to the wilderness and pray about it. I thought it did change things for me a little, because it can read as abandonment — of your post. Maybe not the initial day she leaves, but as the week to ten days goes on and she’s still gone. I mean, I guess you can also see it as a fulfillment of her role. She got everyone here. That was her main part in this history, and now she’s going to peace out. But as she’s wrangling with her pride and who really called off the weasels and going into that mind swirl — I didn’t totally believe her. Whereas in the past, every inner monologue we got from Mother Abagail, you believed her. You had a lot of trust in her discernment and her connection to God or the universe. In this section we’re meant to follow her mind swirl as she tries to get right with God, but because that has wavered, it made me waver in her. And not to jump ahead, but as time goes on and she’s still not there and they come to the conclusion of like, we’re running this society without her — I also felt sort of the same way. Sarah: Well, and I think that’s the point. They were becoming too dependent on her and it was affecting her. It is one thing to be locked in through a process of discernment when you’re by yourself. You know, it’s super easy to discern when my kids aren’t here. But once you have hundreds of thousands of people all looking at you like, what should we do? Should we bury the body? Should we form a law enforcement agency? Should we be in charge? Do you want to be our president and veto everything? I can see how that would disrupt the signal, if you will. The idea that this is about her and God — this is not about her being the leader of this community. So she has to go and get back to that. And the fallout is big within the community, but largely positive, I felt like. Sarah: I mean, from the moment this happens, you have so many people who want to go searching for her and save her, and they have to debate — should we go search for her? She left of her own accord, but she’s an old woman. And I think it was very interesting that in the face of all this debate, it became an opening for Harold to assert some leadership and build some goodwill with Stu and Ralph, and go look for her. Laura: Except that, for the democracy of it all, you’ve removed your main check and balance. If you take away the person who has the veto power — she’s not in charge of everything, but she had that — someone has abdicated the throne here. Sarah: No, that’s exactly it. You live in America in 2026. The temptation, when you have one person, to continue to consolidate power within that one person and make it easy on the rest of us who don’t have to go through the messy work of democracy — it’s oh so very tempting. The check is the people. The check is the other people on the committee — who are voting in concert right now, but that might not always be true. Sarah: What we’ve seen over the last several years, several decades in America, is it’s just so easy to organize around, to just be like, well, we’re really just dealing with the one person in charge. Laura: Our actual real-life America in 2026 moment in time is what has this top of mind for me — why it felt more prominent as a theme than maybe when I’ve read this in the past. I agree with what you’re saying theoretically, but I also feel like with Mother Abagail — she wasn’t trying to rule the whole thing, she was just a check, a balance, a veto power, because she does have a connection to the above. I mean, she wasn’t wanting it, but they wanted her to. And I don’t necessarily think that’s a bad thing. I hear what you’re saying about the power belonging with the people, but they haven’t established enough of a hierarchy or structure to check one another. Sarah: We’re getting to the town meeting. Laura: I know, but what I’m just trying to underline is that it does change the way I think about her character. It does, for me. Harold, Franny, and the Return of Kojak Sarah: They do decide to go search for her. There is a search party — Stu, Ralph, Harold. Harold goes on a real journey over the course of this section, and it starts here when they’re out in the middle of nowhere and he brings a gun and thinks about just killing Stu and Ralph right there. He’s a little bit disarmed by Stu’s kindness, but he’s still giving in to the dark impulses. He’s thinking constantly about his ledger — which could be some sort of psychic connection, because at the very moment he’s thinking about it on the search party, Franny’s breaking into his house to see if she can find confirmation that he, in fact, read her journal. She breaks into his basement and goes up into his living room, at which point Nadine Cross knocks on the door. I just want to say — I hate scenes like this. I hate every moment in a horror movie where you’re sneaking around in the dark and you just know somebody. I’d rather just a chase scene. I’d rather a murder scene. I hate the tension of them. Laura: I think Harold just plain chickened out on shooting Stu. He’s still a literal teenager. He’s even though he has now physically changed — he’s fit, lost his acne, looking different — in his mind he’s still this scared, nerdy, pimply kid who cannot shoot someone in the woods. I think he just plain chickened out, which — good. We’re all the better for it. Franny breaking into his house — again, not totally sure how consistent this is with her character and what we know about preggos. Sarah: I was going to say, pregnant people are not looking to bring on a lot of risk. Though you could argue that hormonally it might make you do something crazy. But there is a lot of this — leaving an imprint in the store, with her shoe in the dust, because he gets home and realizes the door is open and sees the imprint. The way he was kind of trying to stalk her shoes at several points in the story — I was like, okay, we get it. I just think all of this, the thumbprint, the shoe print, is fitting together a little too neatly for me. Laura: Yeah, this is the part of the story that is the most sort of bookish. We talked about this on the last episode Sarah: — he would never write something like this now. He’s a much better writer. Laura: The finding the smudge in her diary, and then her piecing it all together. This just seems very far-fetched. You know, this is a side note, but I am finding it very fascinating how people chose the houses that they chose. Harold’s house is far out, on the edge of town, dark, wood-paneled, shades drawn, door locked. For some reason I don’t totally understand, Franny and Stu have chosen some kind of an apartment. Tom Cullen’s house — to jump to the end of the section — they describe as really zany. They’re choosing their places of dwelling, and it’s just kind of interesting. Sarah: Oh, it would be so fun to go into town and be like, where do I want to live? I can live anywhere. Laura: Right! Why would you choose the random condo? Sarah: Okay, the last section of this chapter is big. It is the Return of Kojak. Now, you tell me things reappear — I just want to confirm, this is not the Kojak from Kojak the novel. Laura: Are you talking about Cujo? Sarah: Oh, Cujo! I thought it was Kojak. Laura: No, Kojak is a dog name. I think that is a famous dog name. I think there was a 70s, 80s TV detective named Kojak. Sarah: I think that’s like a popular dog name at the time. Sarah: Well, Kojak is a crime drama TV show. Telly Savalas. It aired on CBS from 1973 to 1978 — so again, super relevant when the book came out, and in the 90s people were like, what? But now that Kojak has made his hero’s journey from being abandoned by Glenn Bateman up in New England, following him to Nebraska, getting attacked by wolves, hiding out and recovering under Mother Abagail’s porch, and making it all the way to Boulder — maybe I will name my next dog Kojak. Because damn, brother, what a journey. Laura: I know. If you’re a dog lover, this is kind of a heartbreaking part. Sarah: Well, it’s the 90s movie. What is it with the two dogs and the cat? (Homeward Bound: The Incredible Journey [https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0107131/]!)I watched it with my kids. It actually holds up pretty well. I also skipped the part that we start here with Glenn Bateman, where he’s musing about the passage of the age of rationalism. At the end of all this rationalism is a mass grave. And he says now we’ve moved into dark magic. And this is my favorite part — when he’s talking about Randall Flagg, he says: Maybe he’s just the last magician of rational thought, gathering the tools of technology against us. And I wrote — sounds like Elon Musk, no? Laura: Yes, yes. Right? Little Jeff Bezos? Sarah: There’s also a bit of foreshadowing when we’re talking about Kojak — did you catch it? Laura: Yeah, he lives another sixteen years after Glenn Bateman. Sarah: Yep. Also — was this dog a puppy, or is this dog supernatural? That’s a long time for a dog to live. Chapter 53 - The Town Meeting Sarah: Chapter 53, we’re to the town meeting. This was one of my favorite parts in this entire section. Laura: It doesn’t surprise me. Sarah: Not even just the meeting — this moment. Stu gets up here to start the meeting and the people cannot stop clapping. And Larry is watching all this. And he says: We’re applauding ourselves, Larry thought. We’re applauding the fact that we’re here alive together. Maybe we’re saying hello to the group of selfie-in. That’s so good. I loved it so much. Laura: I thought that was really emotional. It reminded me of in Los Angeles the week of 9/11 — there was a thing at the Hollywood Bowl, which is the big outdoor amphitheater, and they played the national anthem, patriotic songs. This was the Friday after 9/11. And it was very much like what’s being described here, where people just stood and cheered and clapped and cried. I mean, so magnify that situation with what this would be — so much even more so. But if you’ve ever been to a church service where something like this is sort of happening, where there is this collective noise-making that’s really emotional and bonding at the same time. Sarah: Well, and they do all those things — they adopt the Constitution, the Declaration of Independence, Franny leads them in singing the national anthem. But then, because this is Stephen King — we get Larry being like, yeah, but America’s gone. America was gone. We can do all this all we want. But America was gone. I thought that was very intense. Laura: Isn’t it interesting what Larry’s doing in this section? First of all, we’re so invested in Larry in the first half of the book. We know so much of his backstory. We’re following him on the journey from New York to Boulder. Larry is a big part of The Stand. And now his relationship to the story and to the reader, I feel like has shifted a little. In the beginning where we’re getting to know Larry and he’s like a budding celebrity and he’s not a nice guy — we’re reading him kind of like a character. Well, now suddenly he seems as relatable as anyone else. He’s almost a stand-in for the reader in some ways. He’s having some skepticism. He’s observing the ad hoc committee. And we’re sort of seeing that observance for us — like every other section when you’re in it with Stu and Ralph and Glenn, you’re in it with them. And Larry is a little bit on the outside of the circle looking in. Sarah: I like his growth. I like that you hear his internal debate. Because he’s even right up until the official vote like, oh my God, should I really be on this committee? I can just say I don’t want to do it. But Harold doesn’t give him a chance, because Harold raises up and nominates them as a block — Stu, Fran, Nick, Glenn, Ralph, Larry, and Susan — to become permanent Free Zone committee members. This wound that he nurses, the same committee he was excluded from. And Stu sort of recognizes what a power move this is — to shut down any sort of debate and be the one whose great idea it is to put them all on the permanent committee. And it passes. Laura: Do you feel like this is how this would really go down? Sarah: No. People love to debate. They’re so excited to be voting again — you think they’re just going to be like, okay? I mean, maybe, because he does say they spent hours and hours on Mother Abagail’s sudden disappearance. So maybe they were so concerned with her that they’d just speed past this part. That makes a little sense to me. And then they get this great moment with Judge Ferris, where they discuss her leaving and the Bible verses she wrote on the back of her note. Here, I thought this would be helpful — Erin Hicks Moon, who I know you know as well, has really converted me to the Message, which is the Bible in contemporary language. [LINK] So I looked up these two verses in contemporary language. The first, Proverbs 11:1-3: Without good direction, people lose their way. God hates cheating in the marketplace. He loves it when business is above board. The stuck-up fall flat on their faces, but down-to-earth people stand firm. The integrity of the honest keeps them on track. The deviousness of crooks brings them to ruin. And then Proverbs 21:28-31: A lying witness is unconvincing. A person who speaks truth is respected. Unscrupulous people fake it a lot. Honest people are sure of their steps. Nothing clever, nothing conceived, nothing contrived can get the better of God. Do your best. Prepare for the worst. Then trust God to bring victory. Laura: That is some relevant language to what we’re facing here in the Free Zone. That’s much better than the old King James language he was using. I’ve got you, Mother Abagail. I’ve got what you’re laying down. I liked the chess-move piece of Harold just nominating the slate and having it go through — he gets to look like the hero even though he’s not even on the slate. My whole hesitation with this section, though, including that scene, is that Harold is a teenager. Sarah: Right. Like, you buy Judge Ferris leading them through the scripture discussion. You buy that they would applaud Stu. But Harold — listen, we know Larry followed Harold’s son, but he was probably not the only one. Especially since they left signs in Nebraska where everybody was being drawn to Mother Abagail first. So maybe there’s this idea of people knowing him. Yeah, he’s a teenager, but he has this reputation or perception of a little bit more than that. Laura: And maybe it’s because you and I both have teenage boys in our home and I’m just trying to imagine them leading a group of 800. Sarah: My oldest — he could lead people now. He’s got whatever it takes to speak and have people follow. He’s got a little bit of his father’s competency that people just inherently trust, even at 16. So I buy it a little bit. Sarah: So we go through the meeting, we go outside, Franny and Harold and Stu are talking, he’s staring at her feet again — I’m like, you’re wearing me down with this. Then after the meeting, Larry’s walking back with Lucy. They’re holding hands. Nadine — a lot of words are used to tell us that she doesn’t have any underwear or anything else on underneath her clothes. We have to visit that several times just in case y’all missed it. Nadine’s not wearing any panties. Okay. So she steps out of the shadows, scares both of them, Lucy is like, son of a bitch — I loved Lucy in this scene. She was like, oh, I knew it, fine, and she just runs into the house. He’s left alone with Nadine, who basically breaks down and is like, let’s do this. And you feel this desperation. She says some language like, this is my last chance. He’s kind of caught off guard. He’s freaked out. But, amazingly, says absolutely no. I’m going back in to Lucy. Which I think means our little boy’s growing up. Laura: Well, that didn’t surprise me, actually — that he turns her down. I think we’ve seen this in Larry. He makes the right choice here. He’s been wanting to make the right choice all along. He knows he misstepped with Rita, or he feels like he did. He is in redemption mode. What I was more surprised by is this is where we see Nadine, who has lived her whole adulthood waiting on this dark man to take her virginity. She isn’t totally clear what she’s waiting on until recently — but now she’s pretty clear what it is. She has been holding out, and now she has suddenly decided to throw that away. She is risking her whole twisted view of salvation. She has wavered on the dark man. We’re going to see this from both her and Harold. I feel like you just can’t be that clear on what’s coming unless you’re completely disconnected from reality like Trashcan Man. You can’t be that clear on how scary he is and what this means and not have a moment of wavering. Laura: That’s getting to what I think this whole book is about in some ways. The wavering is natural. But Larry turning her down — which she thought was a sure thing, let’s be clear, she’d completely made this decision to give it all up to Larry — which screws her up. Him turning it down, on his own trajectory and for his own reasons, gets to the heart of what I actually think The Stand is about, which is fate, destiny. You can’t escape your path in some ways. Even if you try to change your mind and redirect and pivot — the world doesn’t let her. Larry doesn’t let her. Sarah: But that’s such a paradoxical situation to illustrate, because it does feel like Larry is choosing a different fate. It would have been easy for him to follow who he had been and just go, okay, cool. Especially — can I just say — after he describes Lucy as having a movie magazine mind. Fucking ouch, man. Laura: I know, right? Sarah: That is such an insult. I think that that goes Laura: — that’s not fate, that’s personality or something. Fate is the choices that you make. Sarah: But that’s what I mean. He didn’t choose the way he used to choose. He’s stepping up and setting a new course for himself. At the same time, Harold and Nadine seem powerless too. Laura: Well, their powerlessness and power goes in and out. All of them, by the way, goes in and out of wavering, staying on their path, trying to pivot and being sort of unable to. Sarah: And it’s really brilliant of Stephen King because — since you’re in LA, I know you’ll love this example — it’s how I feel about Warner Brothers, Paramount, Netflix. I don’t want anybody to head in. You know what I’m saying? Because you’re like, oh, don’t do it, Larry. But you’re like, no, kind of do it, Larry, because then she won’t be a virgin for the dark man. And maybe then — you want what’s best, but there’s no great outcome here. Laura: Right. But I think that is, again, the root of the story — how other people play a part in your fate or don’t. Other people’s decisions, other people on their own path. If you’re asking yourself an existential question of, can I be derailed from my path? Can I sabotage myself? I mean, we all have stories where maybe yes, but then you’re like, I don’t know — maybe that was the plan all along. You didn’t really sabotage yourself. That was the path. Sarah: It does feel like this is not playing out equally on the good and the bad. It does feel like it’s much, much harder for Harold and Nadine to pull themselves out than it is for Stu and Larry and all these people to stay on their path. Nadine’s Ouija Board Laura: Well, that’s why I think in this section, the character — I read this aloud, so it’s very hard to know how to pronounce his last name, but the character of Charlie Impening, or whatever his name is, who defects in the night. He tries to sort of challenge the slate or whatever. He’s kind of just a little bit of a disruptor or a contrarian. When it doesn’t work in the community meeting, everything’s moving along, clipping along at its path — Charlie defects. He leaves in the night. He doesn’t cause a big drama about it. He’s just like, yeah, I’m not on this path. He goes, ostensibly, toward Vegas. And there’s this one throwaway line — they’re like, we don’t know how many other people have also come to that same conclusion. Maybe they’re in the middle. They’re not instantly drawn to Vegas. They aren’t instantly attracted to the dark man and his dreams. Sarah: They’re independent voters, Laura. They’re swing voters. Laura: They have changed their direction. Sarah: Well, I don’t think it’s a throwaway. But first we have to tackle Nadine’s Ouija board flashback. Oh my gosh. So intense. So the planchette — which I didn’t know was the name for the pointer in the Ouija board — she grabs one and goes out to this amphitheater alone. And you’re like, what the hell are you about to do? But she has this memory from her college days where she walks in on some girls using a Ouija board, puts her hands on it, and it spells out this incredibly terrifying message about how she’s going to be the queen in the house of the dead. All these other girls are like, what the hell? And you understand that she is there to accept messages from Randall Flagg. And wouldn’t you know — right after that she goes and moves in with Harold. Laura: My daughter, who’s a teenage girl, was at a sleepover. Her group of friends went through a phase where they played with a Ouija board, and I was like, absolutely no. I didn’t let her do it. I made her come home. We don’t do that. I do not F with dark magic. I do not. Sarah: You don’t. Laura: I do not. Sarah: Do you do tarot cards? Laura: Nope. I mean, I have. I actually should say — years ago I did a tarot reading, and I’m not anti-tarot necessarily. I’d say I’m neutral on tarot. Ouija boards, I won’t do it. Laura: My daughter’s name is Lucy. I was like, you got to come home. And she knew it. She didn’t even beg. And then they went through this phase, maybe a couple of months, where this was happening at the sleepovers, and my daughter was like, I can’t. Sarah: I have never played with a Ouija board. I have had a tarot reading that was incredibly cool — for a listener who’s a Wiccan and who does tarot readings. I thought it was really cool. Sarah: Have you ever been to New Orleans? New Orleans is full of dark magic. Laura: Yes. And what’s weird is I like New Orleans a lot. I really love it there. I believe it. I don’t hate it. I just don’t tempt it. I don’t play around with it. Sarah: You take it seriously. Laura: And I actually don’t want those messages. So I avoid them for myself, but I also don’t want my teenage daughter messing with them either. Maybe because I have a respect for it or whatever. Sarah: I found this scene really creepy. But it was interesting — again, there’s so much of Nadine that I think is conflicting. The fact that she’s supposed to be queen of the dead this whole time, and she’s picking up random children along the journey and taking care of them, but then once they don’t need her anymore, then she’s got to go move in with Harold. It’s just — it’s so gross. Chapter 54 - The Committee Meeting, Burial Committee, and Harold’s New Path Sarah: The morning after this exhausting town meeting, they hold a private secret session where Glenn posits a very controversial idea — at least to Franny — which is that Stu needs to be the sheriff and that basically they need to start detaining people who could be leaving and trying to flee to Vegas and sharing intel. As these people consider themselves founding fathers and mothers of the Free Zone, it reminded me very much of Benjamin Franklin’s quote: Those that will sacrifice liberty for security deserve neither security nor liberty. But they are struggling with this. He says, you know, if we have law enforcement without a court system, that isn’t justice. So they know what they’re talking about. But I think because they’ve already broken the seal — as it was with sending the spies on perhaps a suicide mission — they’re getting more and more comfortable with decisions that involve some really unfortunate trade-offs. Laura: I just think it is so human nature to want to jail people. To contain people, to silence them, to cage them. I’m not saying it’s not justified in some cases — if you had someone who was perpetrating harm upon one another, sure. But their excuse for jailing the Charlie Impenings who were sneaking away — I was like, I don’t know. Are we even there yet? You guys don’t have electricity or water and we’re going to jail people first? It just felt so human nature to me. Sarah: A couple things. One — I think setting the stage here, as we know, two of these sleeper cells are now sleeping together with Harold and Nadine. And you’re like, oh crap. So there could be a place where Harold and Nadine are ready to go off and join the dark man, and the Free Zone people are like, not so fast. We don’t let people leave now. It’s smart knowing what we know, that they do have these sleeper cells in this city. But I think he’s doing a lot here — because the other interesting contrast is you have this group of people in a house making these calls, while some people are just doing the hard, dirty, manual work of burying people. That’s what society is actually built on — people who are ready to just do the work, not create scenarios in which they protect everybody from something hard. They’re actually doing the hard thing. And I thought that was a really smart contrast. And Harold, who was excluded from this committee, is the one out there with the burial committee doing the hard work. Laura: Do you mean Hawk? Sarah: Hawk! Where he gains this new nickname. And he likes the nickname. And again, you see these glimmers of redemption — like, I could just turn away. I could lean in. These people like me. They’re not making fun of me. They need me. Laura: Because you know what will transform a heart? Belonging. And that is what he’s starting to feel — belonging, value. He has a nickname, people are clapping him on the back. He felt like his town meeting chess move was strategic, which it actually was, but he was maybe surprised by people thinking so highly of him. He’s never had that in his whole life. And it is putting him in conflict. Sarah: You know what else will transform a heart? Laura: Sex. Sarah: Apparently a really, really good blowjob, some anal sex thrown in for fun, some kinky play with honey — this is all that Nadine offers, along with the oh but we can’t do the real thing. Who cares, just a little. This is my favorite. And she’s like, it’s just a small thing, what’s the big deal? And he was like, how would you know, you’re a virgin? And she says: I know because sex is life and small, and life is tiresome — time spent in a variety of waiting rooms. You might have your little glories here, Harold, but to what end? On the whole, it will be humdrum, slipping down life, and you’ll always remember me with my shirt off and you’ll always wonder what I would have looked like with everything off. Sarah: What a bleak, nihilistic view of life. Time spent in a waiting room. That is not my experience. I grew up in the Southern Baptist Church. It is an important couple inches, man. It makes all the difference. It’s all pretty empty if you can’t do the real thing. Just saying. Laura: He does seem after — not the main thing, but after they spend a few nights playing around with what they are able to do — he seems conflicted by it. Like he likes it in the moment and then he feels gross about it. Yeah, because this chapter ends with him succumbing to his destiny. I wrote “boo” across the bottom of the page. But in Chapter 55, he wakes up and he’s kind of like — and you’re like, yeah. But again, he wrote this before True Love Waits, but I want to be like, whoever wrote this has lived through True Love Waits. And even Nadine, where she’s like, how pure am I going to be if you’re letting Harold do everything six ways to Sunday for me but this? Laura: She also really does want it, but she can’t. And there is a resistance. She is having to exert a self-control. Sarah: Nadine definitely — over the course of this section, at one point she looks up and feels like she sees Randall Flagg’s face in the window. And Larry Underwood hears boot clicking as she’s walking away after she’s sort of offered herself to him. Laura: That is just straight leave room for the Holy Spirit kind of language. Sarah: And he shows up in the amphitheater and controls the Ouija board with her. Her presence is clearly, to me, the number one antenna — the strongest signal that is connected to the dark man. Well, I don’t know. I say that, but we’re about to get to the hypnosis of Tom Cullen, so maybe I’ve spoken a little too soon. Tom Cullen’s Prophecy and Judge Ferris Sarah: Before we get to Tom, in Chapter 55 we sit down with Judge Ferris as he’s about to leave on his adventure. Man, I love him so much. Laura: Me too. He’s literally one of my favorite characters. Sarah: He says: I wonder if we need to reinvent the whole tiresome business of gods and saviors and ever afters before we reinvent the flushing toilet. It’s so good. He knows what Larry’s going to ask before he asks it. He was like, yep, I’m ready. Let’s do this. What a cool guy. This book makes me really think about how not strategic I am in my life. Like everyone’s figured out — oh, so we’re going to have to send spies, right? Laura: That would not have occurred to me. I wouldn’t even be in Boulder. We wouldn’t have to make the call. Laura: I’ve been thinking about that too. I don’t know if I would have gotten to the spies as quickly as they did. But I do, especially as I’ve gotten older, have more of a security mindset. Thinking about where’s the weak point here. Though if I were in the Free Zone, I would only be obsessed about how that baby’s going to get out of Franny. Sarah: See, I wouldn’t think about that. I’d be like, babies come out all the time. They have for thousands of years. It’ll be okay. Laura: But I am thinking so much more about — it’s really bothering me that we’re now approaching a thousand people in the Free Zone, maybe even tipped over a thousand, and they’re trying to tell me there’s not a single doctor there. Sarah: You guys got a doctor in there somewhere. Come on. All you got is a vet? No. Well, here’s what they should have done. They should have maybe asked Tom while he was under hypnosis, because he was full of information. He channeled something other. When they said that line — the voice of the man forever denied — I was like, ooh, Steven, that’s really, really good. They put him under hypnosis using a phrase from previous sessions that drops him into this form. And he’s the Other Tom. He has incredible psychic clarity. He knows that the dark man’s true name is Legion, calls him Legion, King of Nowhere. He’s terrified of him. Confirms that Mother Abagail is still alive, but that she’s not right with God and that she will die on the wrong side of the river. Which is exactly the moment when Ralph is like, I don’t want to hear anymore. Sarah: But he says, I am God’s Tom. And he also says that Randall Flagg, Legion, is afraid of them. He’s afraid of us. He’s afraid of inside. What the hell does that mean? Laura: I wondered — and I’m going to try to say this sensitively — of those among us whose brain works differently, like Tom’s, is closer to God in some way. It’s giving telepathy tapes. Not only these other senses — because we already got from Tom that he was closer to God in some ways — but this is like a sixth sense, seventh sense, eighth sense of something. Sarah: I don’t know, but I would have spent all day there with him. They cut it off pretty quick. I’m like, dude, ask him some more questions. Just ask him what happens. I’m very stressed about this. Laura: I’m back with Franny in the original conversation around this — I am mad that they are sending Tom West. Sarah: I like Nick enough, I’m willing to trust his instincts here. And someone like Stu mentions this perception that people with different mental abilities have a connection. I think you see this a lot in folk art — there are a lot of really famous, prolific folk artists of differing mental abilities and capacities. And I believe in consciousness and shared consciousness to a certain extent. So it doesn’t surprise me at all that somebody who perceives the world so differently would have a different channel of consciousness. So overall, I really like this scene. It is hard to hear them instruct him to kill someone if he comes along a single person. That is — giving him all these instructions to send him out on this really, really dangerous mission. Laura: What gave me a little bit of a squidge is when he becomes God’s Tom and he’s speaking with a totally different voice, speaking completely articulately. Then it almost becomes like possession. Sarah: They have that moment where they’re like, are you the Tom we know? Almost like — you have to tell us if you’re Randall Flagg just taking over his body right now. You got to tell us. Sarah: That didn’t seem to be what it was to me. It did seem like he was tapping something. He just has access to a different radio channel. I think Stephen King’s overall argument with the dreams is that when something changes your life and your ability to move about in the status quo dramatically, all of us — through trauma or whatever you want to call it — can suddenly tap something different and deeper. That’s why our subconscious, through the act of dreaming, is calling up these images and connecting to Mother Abagail and having dreams about the dark man. If you’re someone like Tom Cullen, who lives in a perpetual, much altered state with regards to your perception of reality, of course he has a different capacity to tap into this subconscious other realm. Laura: I like what he’s positing here. I think it’s really interesting. And I also think collective consciousness — which is a lot of what this story is exploring with the dreams and Tom and even Nadine — the collective consciousness that is available to us, that seems to only come out under a world-shattering event. This was something talked about a lot in the 70s, and I feel like it fell out of favor. But now, maybe just my algorithm, as world events are really tenuous right now in 2026 — my algorithm is serving up a lot of collective consciousness content. It is kind of a conversation people are having again. Sarah: Well, even though I found this section tedious in parts, when I went back through it and definitely through the course of our conversation — Stephen King is doing some really interesting work here. Some of the questions he’s posing are fascinating and the pieces he’s laying in place — I can’t say I loved every page of putting them in their place, but I’m excited to see what comes next. It’s about to get real is my intuition right now. Laura: I agree. This might not have been the most enjoyable reading section, but some really important things are building and happened. We’re really building on the layers of these characters that we’re getting to know now in a completely different way, now that they’re at the Free Zone and they’re not in immediate trauma traveling. It’s just been a shift. Sarah: Well, and the best part of all these interesting questions is that we get to talk about them together in two days — Wednesday, April 22nd at 6 p.m. Pacific, 9 p.m. Eastern. We’re going to have our book club meeting. The other ones have been so fun. We have so many interesting things to discuss, particularly after this section. We hope that you will subscribe at slowread.substack.com and join us on Wednesday night for our April book club meeting. No spoilers — we’ll be talking at this meeting through this section, into Chapter 55. Come with your opinions, your thoughts, bring us your Ouija board stories. Laura: Yes! And until then — see you on the other side. Sarah: See you on the other side. Next Up: Book club meeting on Wednesday, April 22nd at 6 p.m. Pacific / 9 p.m. Eastern — covering through Chapter 55. Subscribe at slowread.substack.com [https://slowread.substack.com/] to join! This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit slowread.substack.com/subscribe [https://slowread.substack.com/subscribe?utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=CTA_2]

SLOW READ: The Stand (Chapters 49 - 51)

Welcome to SLOW READ [https://slowread.substack.com/], where we tackle the books you’ve always wanted to read at a pace you can handle. Hosted by Sarah Stewart Holland [https://www.instagram.com/bluegrassred] and Laura Tremaine [https://www.instagram.com/laura.tremaine/] We are currently reading The Stand [https://urlgeni.us/amzn/thestand] by Stephen King (unabridged version) You can find our full Reading Schedule here [https://slowread.substack.com/p/the-stand-reading-schedule] Join the SLOW READ [https://slowread.substack.com/] community on Substack for bonus episodes, book club meetings, and Side Quests with Sarah & Laura _____ Mentioned in this episode: Careless People [https://urlgeni.us/amzn/2p1UI] by Sarah Wynn-Williams  Set This House on Fire [https://urlgeni.us/amzn/9CsoNY] by William Styron In His Steps [https://urlgeni.us/amzn/AixrgY]  by Charles Monroe Sheldon This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit slowread.substack.com/subscribe [https://slowread.substack.com/subscribe?utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=CTA_2]