Welcome to SLOW READ, where we tackle the books you’ve always wanted to read at a pace you can handle. Hosted by Sarah Stewart Holland and Laura Tremaine We are currently reading The Stand by Stephen King (unabridged version) You can find our full Reading Schedule here Join the SLOW READ 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 episodes 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: Lord of the Rings by Tolkein Carrie by Stephen King Knives Out Wake Up Dead Man (movie) Blazing Eye Sees All: Love Has Won, False Prophets, and the Fever Dream of the American New Age by Leah Sottile The Green Mile by Stephen King Shawshank Redemption by Stephen King ___ Laura: This is Slow Read, where we tackle the books you’ve always wanted to read at a pace you can handle. We are already about a third into The Stand by Stephen King. And today we’re going to be talking about chapters 35 through 42, which will bring us to the end of book one. And things are starting to come together or fall apart. I’m not sure which one. Initial Impressions: The Lincoln Tunnel and Mother Abagail Laura: Okay, Sarah, chapters 35 through 42, the end of book one. In this section, we get the infamous Lincoln Tunnel scene. We meet Mother Abagail for the first time, sort of. And to me, it feels like the threads of this story that we’ve been reading for 400 pages are finally starting to come together. What do you think? Sarah: Well, I understand why that scene is infamous, because it was bananas. Bananas. Bananas. Oh, my Lord. I just was like, dude, there are other ways to exit the city. What are you doing? So that was very intense, even as a person who doesn’t get scared usually with text on a page. Very intense. Sarah: And I was ready for Mother Abagail to show up. I know enough to know about her a little bit. I knew she was like the Randall Flagg—the hero to his villain, sort of. So I was like, okay, I’ve spent some time with Randall. When is the light going to show up in the face of all this darkness? So I was really excited for her to show up. Sarah: And there is a little more grotesqueness than I expected. I don’t know why. Because I think when you hear about Stephen King and you hear “scary,” you think maybe just violence primarily. And so the gore and strong aversion I feel reading some of it... it hasn’t caught me in total surprise, but I guess it was a little unexpected. But it’s not taking me out. I’m fine. I’m not having nightmares. Laura: That’s interesting though, that when you think of Stephen King, you think the scariness is going to be violent. I think most people think of monsters. Sarah: Yeah, like the monster, the violent dad in The Shining. Oh right, I see what you’re saying. As opposed to like Pennywise the clown. But Pennywise is still—I mean, I don’t know if I’ve read it or seen the movies—I’m assuming he actually kills people. Laura: Yes. Okay, so there you go. Violence. I hear what you’re saying. I think I’m less afraid of the actual violent act as I am the anticipation of it happening. Whether that’s a monster or a psychologically damaged person or both. That fear factor is what’s super scary to me. Sarah: I will say this: I continue to be so impressed. I think one of our commenters, Michelle, talked about how good Stephen King is at articulating the emotions, particularly articulating fear and fear responses and terror and the way you shut down and shock. Man, he’s just so good at it. And it’s probably because he sees the universe of threat so much bigger and wider than I do. His galaxy of fear is so wide. Chapter 35: Larry Underwood and the Smell of New York Laura: Is the story itself what you expected? Sarah: Well, we’re going to get into it. Because the timeline was never what I expected. From the beginning, I’ve said, like, I just never thought it was going to be such a short timeline. This happens in, like, a couple of weeks. That’s the part that’s been the most unexpected to me. Laura: Okay, well, then let’s get right into it. So, all right. Chapter 35. It opens with Rita and Larry playing house in her apartment like nothing’s going on. Larry’s inner monologue is like: everything seems to be fine except for the smell. The city is starting to smell. Sarah: Yeah. And again, because of this timeline, so many things are coming to my attention that I had not thought of even living through a pandemic. You’re like walking into the rooms and they’re like decomposed corpses and you’re just like looking at bones or whatever. And you just don’t think about, like, well, they had to get to that point. And this is the summer in New York City. And if everybody dies, oh, it’s just so bad. I can’t fathom. Because part of me was like, why wouldn’t you just stay in New York City? You’d get the hell out because it would smell. Of course you would. Laura: I want to circle back to this because obviously this section that we’re talking about today is kind of when they all start to be on the move. And I guess I have questions about that because I don’t know that that’s what I would do. Now, all these side sort of side character vignettes that we’re getting, not everybody is on the move. Some people are just staying put in their houses. And I feel like that would be me. Sarah: Maybe you want to find other people, I guess, if you’re alone. I think that’s what he does a good job of articulating over the section, like the quiet. You don’t realize like, oh, I really do. Even if it’s as annoying as someone like Rita, you just want somebody. You’ll stick with Harold? Fine. It’s somebody. We’re social creatures. It’d be like, you know, so many people just immediately in solitary confinement. Laura: What is interesting about how Stephen King is playing that out is he’s not hitting us over the head with that logic necessarily. He’s sort of just letting it be a human reaction for why they’re all on the move. Sarah: Well, here since I just complimented him, here is my critique: this is what’s wearing me out. I really struggle with how he describes time. So the beginning of this chapter, Larry’s like, he remembers meeting her in the park. Well, yeah, I hope you remember it. It was like two days ago. He says that a lot as if they’ve been together for months. He writes about some of these relationships as if they’ve been hanging out for months. And I’m like, what? They just met. Critiquing the Women: Rita and Franny Laura: I have a critique here in this section of—well, it’s kind of a big picture critique, actually. But first, let me start by saying in this section where they’re hanging out in Rita’s apartment in this chapter, I think we’re getting the first hints that maybe Rita was abused or something. She’s very afraid of him. Not afraid of him in, like, a stranger way. Afraid of him in, like, a man-woman dynamic way where she really doesn’t want to disappoint him. She eats the eggs like an abused woman. Now, we know from Larry’s kind of inner monologue that he ain’t a nice guy. But it’s not like he’s hit her or anything that we can see. Sarah: Maybe this is generational. She’s older. Yeah, I think it’s—listen, I have just decided to, in my mind, ignore any attempts he has made to move this timeline to the nineties and just keep it in the seventies where it was originally written. To me, this is all taking place in the seventies. And to me, that makes a lot of sense for a woman of her age in the seventies. And like Franny’s attitudes make a lot of sense for a woman of her age in the seventies. Laura: Yeah, that was my point. The women characters, and so far there are very few of them that we’re getting to know on a deep level. Really, Rita and Franny. That’s it. Well, I’m just not loving the way he’s writing women. Some of them feel a little bit more caricature-y to me than the men do. And I don’t love that. There’s just some like fantasy of a woman, like the short description of Rita being like very sexually in charge. Like I was like, really, is this necessary? Sarah: At the end of the day, a book that is as plot-heavy as this book is, it’s just going to lose something character-wise. It’s just hard. It’s really, really hard to do, I think, to have this many moving parts. Laura: Well, I was just infuriated about Rita starting on their walk to nowhere in silk pants and strappy sandals. And I’m like, she’s not dumb. This woman’s supposed to be older, she wouldn’t do that unless she literally has no data that you cannot walk in those. Sarah: A New Yorker, like even a New Yorker with a driver, is not planning to walk to New Jersey in her Valentinos or whatever. She’s just not. No. It made me mad because it diminished Rita. I know no New York woman—not the same woman who’s gonna walk into a dark Lincoln Tunnel, I can tell you that much. The Lincoln Tunnel Scene Laura: Okay, tell me your impressions of the Lincoln Tunnel sitch. Again, first of all, there are other ways to exit the city! The Brooklyn Bridge, for example. I did look it up. It is 1.5 miles long. And to walk that in the pitch black, oh, hell no. I kept this line: “The solid darkness provided the perfect theater screen on which the mind could play out its fantasies. Or nightmares.” I was like, no, no, no, no, no. I wouldn’t do it. Sarah: Well, also just like get a flashlight. Word. You went to stores. Everything’s available to you. That was such a gaping hole in the story because it’s not the medieval times. Like you need more than your Bic lighter. Laura: I guess now that I’m trying to be fair about it, maybe Larry Underwood with his Bic lighter is the equivalen
