SLOW READ: The Stand reading schedule
Welcome to Welcome to Slow Read The Stand. We are your hosts Sarah Stewart Holland and Laura Tremaine
This is the third episode of Slow Read The Stand.
If you prefer to read instead of listen, below is a cleaned up transcript of the episodes as well as links to all the books and Substacks we mentioned in this episode…and several fun bonus links and videos!
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Sarah: All right. Where are we overall? We’re in it now. Like 100-plus pages.
Laura: We are reading this thing. I’m kind of obsessed.
Sarah: Like more obsessed? You feel like you are experiencing it in a new way? You’re noticing things?
Laura: Yes. So this is my third or fourth read of The Stand. And I feel like maybe it’s because I’m reading with an eye on having to discuss it like this. I’m doing no skimming because I’m reading it out loud to myself. And I am just really noticing... you know what I’m noticing the most in this read is it’s funny.
Sarah: Yeah, it is funny.
Laura: There are funny parts that I feel like maybe I gave a little chuckle or a wink to in the past, but I was maybe more focused on the plot. And this read, I’m like, I’m so enjoying this. This is not my favorite Stephen King book of all time, but maybe it will be by June.
Sarah: What if it rises in the rankings? Rereading reminds me of rewatching The Sopranos. I was just so in it the first time that when I rewatched it, I would laugh out loud. I think the first time through you miss something. So much of the humor or the absurdity—in the reread, you really do get it.
Laura: Well, and clearly when you reread something and you already know what’s going to happen, you’re catching the red herrings or you’re catching the foreshadowing in an entirely different way. Especially in a book like The Stand where there’s 40 bajillion characters.
Chapter 5 - Larry Underwood & The 70s
Sarah: Chapter 5. We’re starting with Larry Underwood.
Laura: This is our introduction to Larry.
Sarah: We’re finding out Larry is a one-hit wonder. Spoiler alert. Well, I guess he’s not going to get a chance to do any more hits now that I think about it. So we’re with Larry, and we’re understanding the backstory of what happened to him in L.A. I underlined in this chapter every time drugs were mentioned. And let me tell you something: It’s a lot. Larry’s doing a lot of drugs. It was the 70s.
Laura: It didn’t even bother me.
Sarah: It didn’t even bother me, it’s just... oh, there’s a lot. He’s with “hop heads.” He is taking uppers. He’s also doing dope. He’s taking cocaine. There’s an eight ball. There’s “Reds.” An amphetamine hangover. I’m telling you, there was pot and there was coke.
Laura: Am I just going to be the jaded Los Angeles person? I didn’t even bat an eye. Not because I live in a drug den—although, weird spoiler, I actually do live in a former celebrity drug den house.
Sarah: I love it.
Laura: But I felt like that part describing Larry’s life in L.A. was a little cliche—music industry hangers-on, Malibu—until he goes on the walk on the beach with his friend. Or colleague.
Sarah: Who is a trust fund baby so he doesn’t get “gobbled” up. Oh no, I said gobbled. Oh God. Now it’s infecting my own language.
Laura: That part was interesting to me because the guy ran a bunch of numbers. He was sort of talking about how much he’d spent on the drugs, how much he’d put down on the car, how much the rent on the Malibu house was. It was like a behind-the-scenes. You don’t really see the lived reality of sudden fame and the toxicity of that. It’s not enough money to maintain what people expect of you. It runs out really, really fast.
Sarah: We get a lot of Larry’s backstory before we get to Larry getting to New York. King has this line about New York had “all the charm of a dead whore.” I thought that was a real impactful sentence.
Laura: Stephen King loves a dead whore. They’ll show up in every book at some point. But there was one throwaway line about how when he throws everybody out of the house, they’re going to act like “you’ve gotten too big for your britches.” And I have seen this. Someone getting healthier or rising to meet their success moment makes other people feel left behind.
Sarah: There is a line from an Oprah Winfrey Show episode that has lived rent-free in my brain for 30 years. A woman had lost a dramatic amount of weight and she said, “All of my friends were supportive until I got thinner than them.” That feels really true and reflective of human behavior. If you are the friend that’s a mess, I want you to clean up to a certain point. And then after that, you’re not fulfilling the role in my life that I had for you.
Laura: Since we know this is a pandemic book, we can kind of see what’s about to happen to the world. Larry getting his success like weeks before... what a bummer.
Sarah: Yeah. What a bummer. You’re going to make it—like winning lotto tickets right before Captain Trips kills everybody. That sucks.
Laura: What I really like about this chapter is Stephen King quickly shows you that he’s not going home because it’s some soft place to land. He’s not going back to his mother because she is some super nurturer. Alice is a tough cookie.
Sarah: I did underline at the very end of the chapter: “He was the only one allowed inside his heart, but she loved him.” It’s really... as I was reading all these chapters, one moment I’m rolling my eyes at a dated reference, and then the next minute, he will just land something that you’re like: Whew. That is true. He will just sucker punch you with something that feels so true.
Chapter 6 - Franny, Peter, and The Workshop
Laura: Chapter 6. We’re back in Maine with Franny and her father, Peter, and she is telling him that she is pregnant.
Sarah: Lots of parenting. I don’t know if you picked this conglomeration of chapters because there’s so much parenting going on here, but wow.
Laura: You have Larry and Alice. We know almost nothing about Larry’s father. But everything with Peter and Franny is through the lens of Peter’s relationship with Franny’s mother, Carla. I didn’t feel like at any point Stephen King was making an argument about good parenting or bad parenting. I think he was just saying: Here’s a bunch of parenting types. Here’s a bunch of marriages. And it felt so true to me.
Sarah: When she says she loved it when her dad talked this way... “It wasn’t a way he talked often because the woman that was his wife and her mother would and had all but cut the tongue out of his head with the acid which could flow so quickly and freely from her own.” That is some true-ass shit. I have seen that. Have I maybe cut my own fair path of acid with my own tongue? Perhaps. I admit nothing.
Laura: Peter is great. I love the line: “64 has a way of forgetting what 21 was like.” That makes me cry. And I thought the way he spoke about abortion... he just was like, look, do you know how much healthier our national abortion debate would be if everybody stated how they felt about abortion with their own experiences?
Sarah: I underlined the whole passage of him talking about abortion because, even if I would come to a different conclusion than Peter does, you kind of can’t fault where he’s coming from. It was such a good example as opposed to Carla, which I also underlined: “She slapped three coats of lacquer and one of quick dry cement on her way of looking in things and called it good.” God, Carla.
Laura: Poor hateful Carla. We’re going to get to that. We’re not to the parlor yet. We’re still in the workshop with beautiful, grace-filled Peter.
Sarah: I do wonder why we’re not really given an explanation for why Franny has come to the conclusion that abortion is not what she chooses. She just says, “I have my own reasons.”
Laura: I honestly think that’s pretty realistic. I think a lot of people will say, “This is what I want to do, and I really can’t explain why.” Especially for someone as young as Franny.
Chapter 7 - The Spread & The Fear
Sarah: Chapter 7. Vic Palfrey dies. Vic, I hardly knew ye. I’d love to be sad, but I forgot which one you were.
Laura: This is where we start to sort of understand the pandemic part.
Sarah: It is affecting and frightening to read. It reminds me of The Lovely Bones. You’re so busy being afraid of it in an avoidant way, but then when somebody writes it first person... I didn’t think about how horrifying it must be to live it. To know you’re going to die and feel like that’s coming for you. Just to think: I’m here, I’m drowning in mucus. I’m going to die.
Laura: It’s just scary. I would rather sit with a monster or the rat eating the cat’s body in New York than I would with that scene of knowing that it’s coming. These are the scenes we’re scared of. These real-life human people scenes are so much scarier. It’s not the extraterrestrial. It’s the humanity, the vulnerability of humanity that’s so scary.
Sarah: Also in this chapter, we spend some time with Stu, who is starting to put the pieces together because he is, in fact, not drowning in phlegm.
Laura: A couple of things about Stu. He is likely smarter than his other gas station counterparts. He is bringing his past life experience to this hospital table. And thirdly, for me, this is the first hint that we get that Stu Redman might be attractive.
Sarah: Oh yeah. I very much hung up on the description of his tan.
Laura: Well, also, he just has a confidence that is attractive. He’s not easily bullshitted. Is that a verb? I just made it one.
Sarah: He feels like a cowboy. I am reading some Westerns alongside this, and he definitely has that vibe. He has a certain type of quiet swagger. Don’t you love a quiet swagger? I’m looking at you, Tim Riggins.
Sarah: I would like to point out that he used the word “pissant” again in this chapter, which I think we should bring back. And another phrase I think we should bring back is “doesn’t know shit from Shinola.”
Sarah: Motion to return “doesn’t know shit from Shinola” to the vernacular. Motion carries.
Laura: Sarah, we blew past my merch idea.
Sarah: What’s your merch idea?
Laura: The entire Larry Underwood chapter... all I could think of every time I read that the name of his hit was “Baby, Can You Dig Your Man?” I put it on the Spotify playlist.
Sarah: I just feel like this is so 70s. People were not using “dig.” I don’t want to bring that one back. That one can stay dead. No, I cannot and I will not “dig my man.”
Laura: I’m going to do it, you guys. I’m going to work on that sweatshirt design. Just because it is so funny and so specific.
Chapter 8 - Everybody Gets It
Laura: Chapter 8. This one is just pandemic specifics. This is just the logistics of the very lethal chain letter that is Captain Trips.
Laura: This chapter, I’m making notes. This is the sole sentence that I wrote for Chapter 8: Everybody gets it. Everybody gets it. Everybody.
Sarah: It doesn’t matter how obscure the contact is. The virus hits and attaches. The part I underlined is where the family is driving and the dad says: “Fuck Jesse James, Ed grumped. Ed, Trish cried. Sorry, he said. Not feeling sorry in the least.” That sounds like something Leanne Morgan would describe about Chuck Morgan.
Laura: I love this kind of chapter because I feel like you’re getting these tiny slices of humanity—the bridge club friends, the poker night. It seems like Stephen King is literally enjoying himself writing these tiny little snippets. And I think this is probably my COVID lens more than anything, but I feel like there’s an aspect of this that is just... people got it because viruses spread among human behavior. Not because anybody was doing it right or doing it wrong or being selfish. Viruses like to spread. That’s what they do.
Sarah: I’ve also chosen to pick up John Green’s Everything is Tuberculosis while I’m reading The Stand.
Laura: Why would you do that?
Sarah: I don’t know. Why not? Lean in. It’s actually a great accompaniment because he talks about viruses going to virus, but also the reality that history matters. This virus was created in a lab. So it was just spreading through normal human behavior, but it didn’t get out there through normal human behavior.
Chapter 9 - Nick Andros & The Bullies
Laura: Chapter 9. Poor Nick Andros. Here comes Nick. He got the shit beaten out of him. And for what?
Sarah: I think it really bothered them that he was mute.
Laura: Another thing about Stephen King—he has some really strong themes throughout all of his work, and one of them is bullies like this. Like Biff from Back to the Future. That type of bully who is literally low IQ, maybe comes from a wealthy family, but is just violent for violence’s sake.
Sarah: I think it’s really good though, because coming off Peter, it would be easy to get in a place of “people are good and they’re doing their best.” And I feel like he shows up and is like, “Yes, some people are. Some people, however, are bad, cruel people.”
Laura: Poor Nick ran up against four of them in the dark. And it’s so true to small town life that the guy would be the sheriff’s brother-in-law. I know I probably should have felt the most sympathy for poor Nick, but when the sheriff was like, “that’s my wife’s brother,” I was like: Oh buddy, I’m so sorry, Sheriff John Baker.
Chapter 10 - The Gobbling
Laura: Chapter 10. Gobble, gobble, Sarah.
Sarah: No, no. Guys, it’s so bad.
Laura: So Larry wakes up from a hangover. And he says: “He vaguely remembered being gobbled like a Purdue drumstick.”
Sarah: That is bad enough. I wrote “Oh my God” in the side of my book. He says gobble like three more times.
Laura: He talks about it so many times! I was like, if you don’t stop with the gobbling, I’m going to throw a spatula at your forehead.
Sarah: This is what I underlined: “The girl’s name was Maria, and she had said she was what? Oral hygienist? Larry didn’t know how much she knew about hygiene, but she was great on oral.” Then he says the line about gobbling. Stephen King, stop it.
Laura: She’s making him breakfast topless.
Sarah: Always how I fry bacon. In a half slip. That’s always how I cook hot, greasy foods. Is in a half slip with my tits out. Makes perfect sense to me as a woman.
Laura: But I do like the refrain of “I thought you were a nice guy.” In some ways, she’s his conscience. We’re getting the sense that, dadgummit, Larry is trying to be a nice guy. It is not in his nature, actually. He has that “it factor.” He has that thing. But how that plays out in real life is hard.
Chapter 11 - Alice Underwood & The “Taker”
Laura: In Chapter 11, he’s trying to get to his mother. He gets there and she says: “Sometimes I think you’d cross the street to step in dog shit.”
Sarah: I must steal that. Because I absolutely know people like that.
Laura: And then she says: “I think you’re a taker. You’ve always been one. It’s like God left some part of you out when he built you inside of me.” The taker part really got to me. It made me think of Scott Galloway talking about being a “net surplus” to society versus a net negative. Larry, you’re a net negative. You’ve got to be a net surplus.
Laura: Are we going to get to see what would have been if the virus didn’t wreck everything? Because what if his music would have been the net surplus? How many times do we hear about great artists—like the Steve Jobs or whatever—who are really selfish in real life, and yet their contribution to the world is an outsized benefit?
Sarah: I do want to take a hard turn and say... Should we chalk our child’s first bad word on their forehead and make them walk around the block?
Laura: Wait, was that brilliant?
Sarah: I think it was. Alice Underwood did that to Larry. I don’t know if you’re picking up on what I’m laying down here, but I’m not really a proponent of gentle parenting. So I think it’s a great idea..
Chapter 12: Carla in the Parlor
Laura: How are we not going to applaud Alice when the next chapter we get Carla in the parlor?
Sarah: God, okay. The parlor is scary. I don’t ever want to go to the parlor.
Laura: Did you have compassion for Carla, given she’d lost her baby boy?
Sarah: 100%. I know people who have hardened in the face of hardship, exactly as Peter describes her. When Peter gets onto Carla... he says to her: “If she decides to keep this baby, you are going to give her the best baby shower.”
Laura: Listen, small town life. I have witnessed the withholding of a baby shower from someone who got pregnant out of wedlock. It is cruel. That just knifed my heart a little bit.
Sarah: Carla is mean. She tells Franny she’s a “bad girl.” I just love the “bad girl.” That’s kind of like a joke I tell my children. I’ll be like, “You’re a bad baby.” And one time I said it to Felix when he was pretty little, and he went: “No, I amn’t.”
Laura: The most interesting part was when Peter comes in and he takes responsibility. He says: “I let you harden... I was not the sandpaper that should have showed up... so I hold responsibility for this, too.” That’s a really complex portrait of parenting. We cannot control each other, but we can influence each other.
Laura: Did you feel a difference between Carla slapping Franny and Peter slapping Carla?
Sarah: I just felt like there was a lot of slapping in the 70s, honestly. Just a lot of face slapping. I’ve never been slapped in the face.
Laura: Well, I have. And let me tell you, it is humiliating. It is degrading. To me, when Carla slaps Franny, it is meant to be degrading.
Sarah: When Peter slaps Carla... at least the vibe I felt like Stephen King was trying to put across is it was disruptive. It was to snap her out of it. Like Cher in Moonstruck. “Snap out of it!”
Laura: I hear you, except then he says “you’ve been needing that for a long time.”
Sarah: He could have left that out.
Laura: Also, when Franny came in covered in blood... Carla’s immediate reaction was about the rug. But then she switched.
Sarah: Who as a mother hasn’t said something they didn’t mean to say out their mouth? I have had a child bleed all over my house who then wept because he thought I was going to make him sleep outside because I had threatened them if they got my new paint job dirty. Bonus: Blood actually comes out of paint real easy.
Laura: But then Peter ruined it a bit for me when he called Carla “it.” He kept calling her “dry,” like a dry age.
Sarah: I did like the imagery of how he would retreat to the workshop to heal his heart, and she would retreat to the parlor where she could have a mask on of perfection.
Chapter 13 - The CDC and “The Man With No Face”
Laura: Chapter 13. We’re back with Stu at the CDC facility in Atlanta. His standoff, refusing to get his blood pressure taken, has worked. And Dick Deetz, another military man, comes in.
Sarah: I do not understand the thing he is wearing to block his nasal passage and why that would matter if your mouth isn’t covered. He says it looks like a two-pronged silver fork. What the hell? Was he breathing in something else? Can’t it just be a mask, Stephen? You’re overthinking this, buddy.
Laura: So Deetz comes in and he’s basically like... I’m not all the way up the chain of command, I can’t tell you everything. But, fun fact: Everyone from Arnett that came in with you is dead. You are not. We do not know why. And I loved this line when Stu asks the question everyone asks: “Whose fault is this?”.
Sarah: Deetz says: “Nobody... On this one, the responsibility spreads in so many directions that it’s invisible.” I thought, oh man, that is so good. That is so true in so many circumstances. People hate to hear that. They want to blame somebody. They want justice.
Laura: “It was an accident.” Do you believe him?
Sarah: Yes. Even if this is a military-created virus, even in something as big as the United States military, it’s not going to be one person who says, “This is my idea... and I authorize it”. It’s never going to work like that. There’s going to be a million people who allowed it to advance. It’s just too big of a bureaucracy.
Sarah: And this is also where Stu has a very vivid dream.
Laura: Yes. This is big.
Sarah: A vivid dream of cornfields and crows. Something dark is in the corn. “He sees two burning red eyes far back in the shadows... Those eyes filled him with the paralyzed, hopeless horror that the hen feels for the weasel. Him, he thought, the man with no face. Oh, dear God. No.” What does it mean, Laura?
Laura: This is the first time that he has been referenced in The Stand. The man with no face.
Sarah: Stephen King loves dreams. He likes mind control and dreams.
Laura: So pay attention when there are dreams. Also, if you don’t know, a very scary story that Stephen King wrote is The Children of the Corn. He loves to put some scary evil in the cornfields.
Sarah: What’s he got against corn? Well, and Stu says it must have been Iowa or Nebraska... but he had never been in any of those places in his life.
Chapter 14 - A Gary Cooper Exterior
Sarah: So Chapter 14, Deetz is recording his official report. This is where we learn that he has a “Gary Cooper exterior,” Stu Redman.
Laura: Yes. Okay.
Sarah: And that he dreams a great deal.
Chapter 15 - A New Day?
Laura: Then the last chapter, Chapter 15, we get a little visit from Patty Greer, the nurse.
Sarah: I thought this was really good, too. Again, I think this is my post-COVID lens, but he talks about how she sneezes and... she didn’t even catch it. She didn’t even catch it even though there’d been signs everywhere saying “report any cold symptoms no matter how minor”. She didn’t even think about it.
Laura: It makes me think about how people get frustrated telling people the same thing over and over again. Or like the famous Disney World example where people will ask “What time is the five o’clock parade?”.
Sarah: It’s so easy to roll your eyes at people asking stupid questions or doing what we think is stupid. But I thought it was very empathetic and great how he wrote about it. She wasn’t doing anything wrong. She didn’t even think about it. She didn’t even clock her sneezes as a minor symptom. But guess what? That’s so human to me. And this chapter ends with: “A new day had begun.”
Sarah: I don’t think a new day begun. I think all the days are coming to an end. We’re sunsetting a little. It’s a closing.
Next Week:
We will be reading Chapters 16-25 for next week’s episode, but if you want extra credit, check out John Green’s Everything is Tuberculosis or watch out for our Outbreak rewatch episode.
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