At long last I have finished reading Stephen King's massive novel, Under the Dome. Weighing in at nearly 1100 pages, Under the Dome requires both a commitment of time and muscle, and there were several times when, after picking up the book, I felt my rotator cuff tear twinge under the heft.
To date, this is not one of King's better efforts, and in his postscript, he mentions that he tried to write this book back in the late 1970s, but couldn't complete it. I wish he had stopped writing this one in 1979 and called the shortened version, Under the Petrie Dish.
Like many of King's more recent works, Under the Dome cannot be categorized as horror or science fiction, though it contains elements of both genres. Rather, King's more immediate concerns center on social-religious-domestic-universal-human interplay. I do like the dome imagery, and his various social and religious allusions were not lost on me, but do we really need 1000-plus pages of domestic study to make one point about our own home towns and our militaristic-politically torn- socially inept world?
I'm glad I killed off King and put him under glass (at last) . . . and I can't imagine another writer in America who would be given carte blanche permission to create a 1000 page book. Scribner is mighty gracious, and as far as publishers (and writers!) go, more power to 'em.
I'll await King's next novel hoping that a window opens somewhere in the dome and lets in some fresh air.
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