SLOW READ: The Stand (Chapters 1 - 4)

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 This is the second episode of Slow Read The Stand. The Circle is open! 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! Laura: Okay, here we go. Page one. Page one of 1,200. We got six months. We got plenty of time. Sarah, the circle has opened. Sarah: I don’t even know what that means yet. I don’t even know what “the circle opens” means yet. Laura: Well, I don’t think you’re supposed to. That’s the whole point. But what we’re discussing today is—he doesn’t call it a prologue, but it is. It’s like a few pages of prologue and then the first four chapters. But before we even do that, he kicks off The Stand with these quotes, these four quotes. Sarah: Music lyrics. Laura: Yeah. Well, okay, the first one... if he’d just done the Bruce Springsteen quote, I think I’d have been with him. I underlined “and try to make an honest stand.” Okay. Why did he keep going? Sarah: I mean, he couldn’t have known that Blue Öyster Cult was going to turn into a Saturday Night Live skit, in his defense. In 1978, he didn’t know that this song was going to become such a joke. So I have a little sympathy for the second one. Laura: Well, I think that he is really wanting you to “Don’t Fear the Reaper.” Sarah: But all I hear is cowbell, Laura. I also feel like... starting a book off with four quotes is a little bit amateur hour. My snobbery is going to show so early in this conversation, and for the next six months y’all just know it. Laura: Yeah, it’s like he couldn’t pick. Don’t you have an editor? But I wonder, do we know if the first edition in 1978 had all three? That’s a question I would like to know the answer to. Maybe he was like, “You know what? They made me cut the Bruce Springsteen lyric and I’m putting it back in in 1990.” Sarah: It’s just a little excessive. Was Bruce Springsteen a big deal in the 70s? Laura: Well, I think he was already, like, to the cool kids. He wasn’t mass popularity. I don’t know. My Bruce Springsteen education is lacking. Sarah: I did watch the entire Saturday Night Live 50th anniversary documentary about “Don’t Fear the Reaper” and how the song came to be and how it became a part of the sketch. I can tell you more than I really should know about this song. But I don’t understand the third one. “What’s that spell? What’s that spell? What’s that spell?” That’s not even a good lyric. What’s he doing? I don’t get it. SNL50: Beyond Saturday Night, More Cowbell Laura: Okay, well, that third quote... I wasn’t even sure that that was a real band. I had to look it up. Country Joe and the Fish was an American psychedelic rock band formed in Berkeley, California in 1965. Maybe the idea is that you listen to it—or hear the song in your head. Maybe it’s really more referential to the vibe of the music than the lyrics. But I’m squinting here. I’m really trying to give it the maximum amount of credit for these three, a little bit superfluous, lyric quotes. Sarah: Well, here’s what you need to know about Stephen King. This is true in every book I’ve ever read of his. He is a real music lover. He will put music quotes or references—like how he always has characters listening to very specific songs when they’re driving the car. He never makes it generic. It is always very specific. He is a music person. Laura: The first three are music lyrics. And then on the next page where it says “The Circle Opens,” which is the beginning of our story, there’s yet another quote. But this one is from a poet who I was unfamiliar with—Edward Dorn. Sarah: Yeah, I’ve never heard of Edward Dorn. Laura: His most famous work is Gunslinger, which came out in 1968. Sarah: The poet reckoned? Yeah, what are you doing? It’s very Stephen King to me. Laura: Yeah, it’s so literal. To me, quotes like this should really add to or create a sense of energy or vibe. This feels a little literal. But he’s such a writer for the masses, you shouldn’t need some sort of esoteric background on Edward Dorn for this to make sense to you. I’m leaning on you here. I’m just thinking, “Oh, I bet the more I read, the more these will make sense to me.” Sarah: I don’t find the quotes in any of his books or the lyrics to matter that much. I’m sure they matter to him. And Edward Dorn, this poet, his most famous poem like I said is called Gunslinger. That is also the name of Stephen King’s first novel in his Dark Tower series. Oh no, he named that after Dorn? Like he was a Dorn fan? Laura: And what’s also going to matter a little bit—it still isn’t that deep to me—but a pretty main character in The Stand is a big part of the Dark Tower series. Sarah: Oh. I didn’t know there was connective tissue like that. Laura: Oh, King’s work is very connected. He is the original Taylor Swift Easter egg. He loves to bury some of his characters as just random side characters in one story and then flesh them out in a whole other novel later. Sarah: I love that. Like Elizabeth Strout—when she started putting Olive Kitteridge and all the people together. I’m really into that approach. Laura: So I love Elizabeth Strout, too. It’s not quite like that because with King, they’re not all living in the same universe, really. No, because you got multiverse. Time travel. So like in 11/22/63, for example, which is one of my very favorite King books—and for those who don’t like the horror stuff, it’s so excellent because it’s time travel—in one of the portions where the character goes back to the 50s, he runs into the kids from It. Just a tiny scene. You could read it and never know. But if you know, you know. Sarah: Well, who are we going to run into in this book? Because everybody looks like they’re going to die. The Prologue: Charlie and Sally Laura: So let’s start then. That’s kind of the prologue where we start with this man who is waking his wife out of a dead sleep. Turns out he should have been on the night shift, and he has her get up, get dressed, get their three-year-old baby LaVon. Sarah: Why do they call her “Baby LaVon”? And also, another very 70s thing—because I know he wrote this in 1978 and then updates it in 1990—but the 70s is peeking through. She was sleeping in a baby doll nightie. Laura: As we all do. Anyway, the woman gets up. Sally is her name. Which, listen, we’re going to take so many tangents here, but I have to tell you that “Sally” is my Starbucks name. Sarah: That’s what you put on all your orders? Laura: Every time. Jamba Juice, wherever. If you have to give your name, I always give “Sally” my whole life. Because my favorite story as a little kid was Judy Blume’s book starring Sally J. Friedman as herself. Sarah: Amazing. Laura: So Sally references always perk my ear up. Anyway, back to our people. He’s woken her up in the middle of the night. She’s so disoriented. And in the chaos, we learn that they’re on some sort of a military base where he works as a security guard in one of the towers. And when he was on shift, in the night shift, he happened to notice... right when some sort of alarm went off, the lights in his space turned from green to red. Then he looked at the security monitors where he can see inside this building that he’s guarding. And everyone inside is dead. Sarah: Oh, my gosh. So there’s supposed to be some sort of immediate lockdown mechanism there that’s triggered when this alarm goes off. But he manages to get out in those 30 seconds. Laura: Well, because he sees the clock turn red. He sees the clock. He’s like, “I got whatever this countdown is to get the hell out, I guess.” Sarah: Didn’t thin… 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