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)

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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 by J.R.R. Tolkien

* The Tune of Things: Is Consciousness God? (Christian Wilman in Harper’s, 2025)

* Moby Dick by Herman Melville

* The Scarlet Letter by Nathaniel Hawthorne

* Paradise Lost by John Milton

* “Top of the World” by The Chicks (Official Video)

* Stand By Me (1986 film) — IMDb

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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