SLOW READ: The Stand (Chapters 61 - 64)

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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 cr