The plan is to reread all of Stephen King’s works in the order that they were published. Richard Chizmar of Cemetery Dance had the vision. I’m doing it because I am a writer and I want to improve my fiction. And I love Stephen King’s stories. I think there is something to be learned through this process.
You can also go back to the beginning and read Before Carrie or any of my other posts up through this one and beyond by checking out this link to the Master List of all my #StephenKingRevisited posts.
No Treats only tricks. The pink stars are falling.
In the 1074 page novel Under the Dome, Stephen King manages to unravel the entire fabric of society in this isolated town in less than a week. The right kind of bad guys help, but they lost it fast. I tend to believe that timeline more now in recent years.
I liked the television version of the story despite all its flaws. They had to really pull back the evil of the bad guy characters to make it work over an extended period of time. Still, there is enough darkness there to make the balance tenuous. There in lay some of the big flaws in the small screen adaptation.
The list of character names is overwhelming. It’s a big cast of characters. I didn’t even bother with the character list in the front. The novel was easy enough to follow as the story progresses.
The airplane and the woodchuck are such great pieces of the iconic opening of the novel.
Chester’s Mill, the domed town, is south of the wooded and unincorporated TR-90. This strange little tract of land has played a part in Bag of Bones and The Girl Who Loved Tom Gordon.
Every pulp truck in Stephen King novels is loaded way past the legal weight limit. All pulp truckers are deadly outlaws looking to run people down and risk blowing themselves up in the name of profit in these books.
The movie version of The Mist is mentioned.
This novel is full of references to pop culture and current to the time politics. Several real life reporters from CNN find themselves around the dome reporting on the fate of the town. A couple Fox News correspondents are mentioned by reputation but not name. The National Threat Advisory left over from the September 11th Terror attacks is mentioned here. A Rudy Guliani reference to his popularity after handling the terror attacks has not aged well. President Obama makes an appearance in the story and is referenced often. Lost the TV show is referenced again as it has been in previous novels. A character has pictures of himself shaking hands Sara Palin, Dale Earnhart Jr., and Tiger Woods. Gregory House from the show House is mentioned. Girls Gone Wild on pay per view. Senator Lindsey Graham bought a fake rug in Iraq according to one character. Facebook is referenced. Snapple iced tea is mentioned. Brad and Angelina. Hillary Clinton crying before the New Hampshire primary is referenced.
Dale Barbara “Barbie” is the Jack Reacher-esque ex military thriller character every male author strives to create. Ironically, Lee Child’s Jack Reacher character is mentioned twice in the novel. Jack recommended Dale Barbara and one other Chester’s Mill character to the president of the United States.
A pastor struggling with her faith refers to God at various times as Not There, the Great Maybe, and the Omnipresent Could Be.
The impromptu protest ends with a brilliantly failed experiment. In some ways this sets off the chain of bad events as much as the dark dealings of our evil characters.
I completely forgot the radio station and drug dealing subplots. That strikes me as odd seeing how they were so pivotal to the novel. I found I forget many big and small plot points since the first reading.
The girl’s basketball analogy for drive and the darkness behind a particular character is long but brilliant. Not many authors could get away with that.
A frame job of the good guys comes together with no outside help to stop a terrible rise to power.
I forgot about the second plane too.
“Let us take a look at…” I first saw this narrative device by King in the cowritten novel Black House. I don’t like this gimmick. The author speaks as if we are floating through the story in a meta fashion when this device is used. I didn’t recall in from the first reading of Under the Dome. It didn’t bother me as much this time like it has in previous works.
Grandpa exercises to deal with sorrow. Once again, grief is the primary motivator for exercise for Stephen King characters.
The Southern dialect Stephen King describes for one character isn’t great and he sort of abandons it as that character’s arc progresses. The use of the word y’all was randomly placed in the character’s dialogue.
Cross purposes collide in the story in really great complex ways. We have a double climax at the end with gun fire in town and a shootout in a field that ends in cataclysm.
Ants under a magnifying glass underscores the culmination of the novel nicely. Under the magnifying glass, it will always be an end by fire one way or the other.
A great long novel, if you have the time.
“I love you, Chef.”
My next post in this series will be Before Full Dark No Stars which will be linked on the Master List of all my Stephen King Revisited posts.
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