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 Mentioned in this episode: * Tribe: On Homecoming and Belonging by Sebastian Junger * 1984 by George Orwell * Paradise Lost by John Milton * Carrie by Stephen King We Stood Sarah: We have been reading Stephen King’s epic The Stand, and I think we’ve come to the part where we stood. Did we stand? Laura: I think we’re still standing. Sarah: Are we standing? Laura: I think we stood. I think we did it. We are wobbling in our woo! Sarah: We would love for you to join us for our final book club meetings for The Stand. There’s obviously going to be a lot to say as we wrap up this epic novel. All of those are coming up in June. You need to check our Substack for details of our book club meetings, our final episodes, and maybe some announcements for what we’re doing next. All of that is going to be on Substack. You can join us there at slowreadbookclub.com and we’re going to have side quest conversations for you. Tomorrow our side quest will be on summer reading and summer plans. We can’t wait to talk about that with you. Laura: Yep. If you join us at the Slow Read Substack, you will get all of our side quests that we’ve been covering through this time. And they have been wide ranging, friends. Sarah: They really have. Sometimes they go along with the book. Sometimes they don’t. Laura: They don’t. But they are excellent conversations with Sarah and I, only for our Substack members. Over on Slow Read, go to slowreadbookclub.com for all of that and more. Sarah: And more. “Is That It?” — First Reactions to the Ending Sarah: We’re going to talk about chapter 72 and 73, and I deserve an award for not texting you the second I finished the section. It was hard. If I had finished this section before we saw each other in person for the first time in 12 years, I wouldn’t have been able to resist. I didn’t really plan to not read it until after, but I’m glad it worked out that way or I would not have been able to keep my mouth shut. Laura: Because you would have wanted to talk about it. Sarah: It’s so talkable. We stood. Of course I want to talk about it. I’m curious what you think reading it for the first time. Did you feel like dun dun dun? Did you feel the music swell in your head? Laura: Yeah, I definitely did. I wanted to just bare minimum text the wide-eyed emoji, but I didn’t — again, because I deserve an award. And my husband, who had been doing a good job kind of keeping pace with us, sped ahead and finished the book, so he’s been saying some cryptic stuff. It got me all keyed up. But yeah, it kind of snuck up on me, but not really. By the time you get to chapter 73, by the time you’re in Larry’s head, you’re like, okay, we’re here, we’re gonna stand. But then it’s over kind of quickly, and so you’re just like, what just happened? Sarah: I know. That’s what I kind of wanted to ask slow readers — if you’re like, “is that it?” Nicholas was definitely that reaction. Those were the cryptic comments he was making. It was very much, “Is that it, Vang?” Laura: Is that how you felt when you read it the first time? Sarah: Definitely. I was kind of just reading, bopping along, and didn’t realize that was it. I mean, there’s still a little bit more to go, but I feel like it’s a lesson in — it’s in the journey, not the destination. Laura: Yes, but I like the destination. Okay, now we’re getting too close to chapter 73. Let’s back up. Let’s do chapter 72. Chapter 72: The Walk and the Question of Fate Laura: So, chapter 72, we pick back up with our traveling party — Stu, Larry, Glenn, Ralph, and Kojak, the true star of the traveling party — as they continue their grueling walk across the United States. They’re averaging like… I really appreciated the mileage chart. I thought that was very helpful, as a person who travels a lot and plans itineraries. Sarah: I was with them in their analysis around the campfire of like, why are we doing it this way? They know why they’re doing it. Mother Abigail told them: walk with just the clothes on your back. You can’t take food. You can’t take packs. You have to survive this hundreds — 400-mile walk, or whatever it is, 500-mile walk. But I sort of was with them when they’re like, we know why we’re doing this, but why are we doing this? And like, can we cheat a little bit? Laura: I really liked this conversation they’re having about why are we doing this at the beginning of chapter 72, and we get to your theory that you’ve brought up over and over again. They’re having a conversation mainly about the wear and tear on their bodies at first, and then Glenn says: “And 50 years of confirmed agnosticism, it seems to be my fate to follow an old black woman’s God into the jaws of death. If that’s my fate, then that’s my fate. End of story. But I’d rather walk than ride, and when you get right down to it, walking takes longer — consequently I live longer by a few days anyway.” So I thought, here we are, here’s your theme. Is it just fate? Is this story just one long journey of fate? Sarah: Well, I have been talking about this for six months. But I don’t know that that is a direct correlation to them having to do it bare, you know? No food, nothing. Now, I mean, they really talk about how fasting clears the mind. I liked all that. And there’s been a walking theme as much as there’s been a fate theme through this book. Remember? Stu walked out — he walked off his fear of the hospital. Trashcan Man walked himself into delirium. Nadine’s walking. Everybody’s walking all the time. Walk, walk, walk, walk, walk. So it does feel like a sort of preparation for the mind, body, and spirit, if you will, for what’s to come. But it also feels like an unnecessary burden to have to figure out your survival. Like they’re eating chips out of people’s cars with dead people. Laura: I’m into it. Sarah: I’m into it. Laura: Because there is a grounding that happens when you are viscerally aware of your own body and its survival. These men would not have had the bravery necessary in chapter 73 if they’d just taken a car. Sarah: No doubt in my mind. Laura: Because they had to know what they’re made of. Sarah: You’ve got to know what you’re made of. You’ve got to know how far you can push your body, how far you can push your mind. And really, I think this physical experience strips away that dichotomy. You know, the closest analogy I can find in my own life is labor. I had three nine-pound babies with not a drop of drugs. I gave birth to two at home — and sort of knowing that I had to get myself through it, like me and my body and a midwife. I’m not a free birther, please don’t message me. But it’s exactly what they describe. It’s so clarifying in a way that’s not intellectual, that’s not, “I’m walking through these steps.” You do something like that, and that dichotomy of my mind, my body — it just goes away. It’s like people when they talk about running marathons, or extreme marathoners, like pushing your body but really yourself, all of you, to the brink. In this way, I think it prepares you to do some really hard shit. Laura: And these guys, they all know it. They’re on the way to do some really hard shit. Sarah: Yeah. And there’s lots of metaphors or references. I like your birth metaphor, but then there’s biblical stuff throughout, even more so in chapter 73. So there’s walking in the wilderness, there’s people taking pilgrimages. I mean, it feels like a human experience, kind of like what you’re describing — we put ourselves through this. Laura: At the end of the day, they had to put the steps in front of them. They had to make the miles. They had to get over aches and pains and hunger. They were instructed, but then they chose. You know what I’m saying? Glenn Is 57 (And the Dialogue Gets a Little Stilted) Sarah: Before we get too far into this chapter, can we talk about this long conversation about how old Glenn is, and then it’s revealed that he’s 57? What the hell, guys? Laura: I know. My husband’s older than that. Jeff is older than that. Oh my God, they’re just talking — the way they’re talking about his arthritis, I’m like, poor Glenn must be like late 60s, early 70s. 57. Steven, my dog, that’s not that old. Sarah: It might have been a little bit older in the 70s, though, in fairness. I will also say, because I’m reading the whole thing aloud, that this was the first time in the whole book where their conversations — mostly in chapter 72 — I struggled with reading aloud. It was the most stilted. It felt the least flowy. It felt the most sort of like… Laura: Preachy. Sarah: Yeah. And like bookish, as opposed to — there was not a natural cadence to these characters we’ve been with. Because I’ve read all of these characters, I’ve read them aloud for a thousand pages now. And in these exchanges — and I don’t know if that’s purposeful or not — I just was like, the dialogue here is a little weird. It felt a little more like clunky book writing, as opposed to in the past. Especially Glenn, who I love so much, one of my favorite characters in the whole thing. He’s been very flowy throughout, and this was a weird one to read aloud. I wondered how that came across in either the audio or if you were reading it in print, if anyone else noticed that. Laura: I mean, a little bit. I’ve had a stronger reaction to other sections where the dialogue feels like just Stephen King has some things he wants to get
