Under the Dome by Stephen King
It's been a long time since I stayed awake into the wee hours, eyes propped open, finishing a book. My string ended over the weekend at the hands of thriller master Stephen King. It was definitely a guilty pleasure: no one ever calls King a literary genius, after all. The man can definitely put together a story, though; so when he puts the hammer down, it's "Katie, bar the door!" because that hammer ain't coming up until the last page! And by golly, his latest is no different...
Dale Barbara, affectionately known as Barbie, missed getting out of Chester's Mill before the dome appeared: he was soooo close. Once he'd realized there was no way out, Barbie turned back to join the others suddenly trapped by a giant invisible... thing. In its first minutes of existence the dome claimed half a dozen lives, and it was just getting started.
On the other side, the military threw ever-larger weapons at the dome, but the only result was a forest fire set by their cruise missile. The dome was transparent to light and radio waves and let through a little air and water, but nothing else could pass. The two thousand or so citizens of "the little town shaped like a boot" were in for the duration - however long that duration might prove.
In a perfect world, a hero would step forward to lead the frightened citizenry. Chester's Mill, on the other hand, got Big Jim Rennie -- big fish in small pond, Bible-thumping megalomaniac, the kind of used-car dealer that used-car dealers (and ambulance-chasing lawyers) avoid like the plague. Chester's Mill's problem? Big Jim took over and made the town his personal fiefdom. The man was a master manipulator, and his captive audience (emphasis on "captive") was just putty in his chubby hands. From murder and frame-ups to Rennie's personal version of the Hitler Youth, the course was set. Barbie would be just a speed bump under Big Jim's Hummer, even if he had been designated the leader of Chester's Mill by none other than the President of the USA.
Over everything remained the small matter of that damned dome - impenetrable artifact, origin unknown. As supplies dwindled and the air became foul, it became clear that it might eventually make no difference who was in charge Under the Dome.
As a kid, I watched dozens of oaters with the same formula: a silent drifter crosses the rich and decidedly evil rancher / banker / mine owner who rides herd on Dry Gulch; often initially clashing over the wealthy and beautiful widow "Big Jim" intends to wed. The sheriff's in Jim's hip pocket, and an endless supply of hired guns are eager to do his bidding. On the other hand, the hero has only the valiant newspaper editor to watch his back... I think that's the plot of "Pale Rider," "Shane," and "High Plains Drifter," for instance. Of course if the old saw is true, there are really only seven basic plots, anyway: who could blame King for choosing one that's been proven time and again?
Hard to set aside in the procedural sense, though less so in the physical sense: at more than 1000 pages and about three inches thick, Under the Dome is a massive undertaking for the reader. Like other King works, it'll never be nominated for the National Book Award or a Pulitzer; but (also like other King works) it'll make Steve a boatload of cash. That's rather a pity, because die-hard fans will gobble up this thirty-five dollar doorstop as if chocolate-covered, then slavishly await his next book. Instead, they should be holding Steve's feet to the fire for a multitude of sins; like a gleefully derivative plot, characters of cartoon complexity, and a patently ridiculous ending. There are other faults, like the thread of precognition that runs through the volume without grounding even in King's phantasm of a cause for the dome. Not least among his sins is King's legendary inability to make a point just once. When he released The Stand in 1978, it was a monumental work -- when he re-released the "complete and uncut" version in 1990, it had become bloated like a week-old corpse. In Under the Dome, Stephen King once again demonstrates first, that few pop writers are his equal; and second, no editor appears capable of reining in his word processor.
As an old saying might have it, "Excuse the length: it would have been shorter, but I ran out of time." A few more months in the editing hopper would have improved Under the Dome, not to mention leaving it about one tree smaller. It's a three-star book that would have reached four at two-thirds its length.
Instead, it's like the Energizer Bunny: it keeps going and going...
It's been a long time since I stayed awake into the wee hours, eyes propped open, finishing a book. My string ended over the weekend at the hands of thriller master Stephen King. It was definitely a guilty pleasure: no one ever calls King a literary genius, after all. The man can definitely put together a story, though; so when he puts the hammer down, it's "Katie, bar the door!" because that hammer ain't coming up until the last page! And by golly, his latest is no different...
Dale Barbara, affectionately known as Barbie, missed getting out of Chester's Mill before the dome appeared: he was soooo close. Once he'd realized there was no way out, Barbie turned back to join the others suddenly trapped by a giant invisible... thing. In its first minutes of existence the dome claimed half a dozen lives, and it was just getting started.
On the other side, the military threw ever-larger weapons at the dome, but the only result was a forest fire set by their cruise missile. The dome was transparent to light and radio waves and let through a little air and water, but nothing else could pass. The two thousand or so citizens of "the little town shaped like a boot" were in for the duration - however long that duration might prove.
In a perfect world, a hero would step forward to lead the frightened citizenry. Chester's Mill, on the other hand, got Big Jim Rennie -- big fish in small pond, Bible-thumping megalomaniac, the kind of used-car dealer that used-car dealers (and ambulance-chasing lawyers) avoid like the plague. Chester's Mill's problem? Big Jim took over and made the town his personal fiefdom. The man was a master manipulator, and his captive audience (emphasis on "captive") was just putty in his chubby hands. From murder and frame-ups to Rennie's personal version of the Hitler Youth, the course was set. Barbie would be just a speed bump under Big Jim's Hummer, even if he had been designated the leader of Chester's Mill by none other than the President of the USA.
Over everything remained the small matter of that damned dome - impenetrable artifact, origin unknown. As supplies dwindled and the air became foul, it became clear that it might eventually make no difference who was in charge Under the Dome.
As a kid, I watched dozens of oaters with the same formula: a silent drifter crosses the rich and decidedly evil rancher / banker / mine owner who rides herd on Dry Gulch; often initially clashing over the wealthy and beautiful widow "Big Jim" intends to wed. The sheriff's in Jim's hip pocket, and an endless supply of hired guns are eager to do his bidding. On the other hand, the hero has only the valiant newspaper editor to watch his back... I think that's the plot of "Pale Rider," "Shane," and "High Plains Drifter," for instance. Of course if the old saw is true, there are really only seven basic plots, anyway: who could blame King for choosing one that's been proven time and again?
| In the case of Under the Dome, it works once more. No matter how hackneyed the plot, no matter how obvious the casting of "good" vs. "evil," King proves as facile a manipulator of his reader's emotions as Big Jim Rennie is of his townspeople. Even when King's methods are the predictable reaction of teenaged jocks upon getting guns and badges or the cognitive dissonance of fundamentalist Christians running a giant meth lab, his touch is deft. Perhaps no other mass-market author could populate a novel with so many, so stereotypical characters and manage to pull it off with such élan. His villains are the kind of detestable people who kick puppies and his heroes almost shine with divine light; yet once King dials the pacing up to eleven, the book becomes nearly impossible to set aside. |
As an old saying might have it, "Excuse the length: it would have been shorter, but I ran out of time." A few more months in the editing hopper would have improved Under the Dome, not to mention leaving it about one tree smaller. It's a three-star book that would have reached four at two-thirds its length.
Instead, it's like the Energizer Bunny: it keeps going and going...
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