ZapTown

Repeat readers will be happy to hear that I finally finished reading Stephen King’s Under The Dome.  Having closed the cover and had a chance to sit down thoughtfully with a cup of tea, it does feel like I picked the wrong season for the book. Despite its intimidating size, it was very much the sort of novel that would work best taken to the beach, or the cottage dock, I think—somewhere peaceful and sunny, where you can devour the chapters without  distraction, gazing out over the shining waters in between pageturns, and think about what you would do if a giant invisible dinner-bowl was suddenly slammed down over YOUR town, causing civilization to crumble.  I’m still not sure if it was the book’s second act (where the protagonist spends a good chunk of his time behind bars) or my own reading of it that was slowing me down, but when it started picking up steam again toward the end, it became suitably apocalyptic very quickly. The effects of King’s dome on the environment read as disturbingly plausible, and althoug there isn’t quite the sense of closure that some readers may have hoped for, it’s a book that plays fair–the story begins with the Dome slamming down around the town, and the novel ends with a neat bookend of that opening scene. I’d talk more about the apparent what and the why of the Dome itself, but that would be drift into spoiler territory (as would a detailed feud of the protagonist –a former soldier named Jim Barbara who in my mind’s eye was sort of a bearded Gary Sinese-type, with the antagonists: Big Jim Rennie, Selectmen Extraordinare and his psychotic son).

Suffice to say that in the same way that The seventh book of the Dark Tower series felt like it could have been a natural spot to King to retire on, if he chose to, a sort of philosophical metafictional capstone, if I can get a little bit crazy with the labels, Under The Dome has the same heft. The town of Chester Mills and its fictional inhabitants, though singularly themselves, also fill a cornucopia of types that King’s dwelled on in the past–there’s the hypocritical housewife, the overly-bright teenager, the shambling, insane derelict who unwittingly brings aid and destruction, the crazed minister, the well-meaning minister with a crisis of faith, the heroic corgi, and on and on…..the effect is rather like watching a magician who spreads ALL the cards on the table, face up and says ‘Here….for my next trick, I’m going to use them all…………’ The characters are undeniably themselves—Big Jim and his fixation on eating, for instance, is a nice little vivid character detail that also serves to provide a slice of subtext.

Readers who are (I suppose there must be some) new to King shouldn’t feel that anything’s lacking if they haven’t read Salem’s Lot or Insomnia or The Stand, for instance, but readers of those books–I imagine a lot of them have a nice comfortable, RELAXING sensation, like sliding into a tub full of warm suds at the end of a hard day. And in that sense–which may be a reach, but it was my point of view going into the second half of the novel, there’s some interesting commentary here. Because the characters spend most of their time feuding with each other and tearing each other apart, rather than dealing with the source of the dome. In a sense, the (curiously, somewhat science-fictional) source of Chester Mills’s imprisonment could be seen –again, not wanting to give spoilers here–as a bit of a stand-in for the author himself. And in that sense, I was reminded of nothing more curious than the end of Shakespeare’s The Tempest by the end of the book. I don’t think this is King’s last book–I’m pretty sure there’s more down the road–if he’s still putting out big, enjoyably DENSE novels like this and Duma Key, that seems a sign that there’s more to be harvested next season—but it can be taken as an intriguing commentary on a writer’s relationship to his characters–and coming from a man who penned both Misery and The Dark Half, I’d doubt that the thought hadn’t occurred to Mr. King himself. An entertaining read that can now intimidate visitors on my bookshelf.