Stephen King: Under The Dome (2009)

The genesis of Under The Dome dates back to Stephen King's earliest years as a writer. In 1972, King began work on a novel entitled Under The Dome. (1976 and 1978 have also been given as possible starting dates.) He returned to the idea in 1982, retitled it The Cannibals, but eventually abandoned the manuscript.

"I've got about four-hundred-and-fifty pages done and it is all about these people who are trapped in an apartment building," King said at the time. "Worst thing I could think of. And I thought, wouldn't it be funny if they all ended up eating each other? It's very, very bizarre because it's all on one note. And who knows whether it will be published or not?"

(In September 2009, King posted a 61-page excerpt from The Cannibals (the first four chapters of the original typescript) to his website. An additional 63 pages were posted the following month. These pages are still available for download.)

King has said these two unfinished works "were two very different attempts to utilize the same idea, which concerns itself with how people behave when they are cut off from the society they've always belonged to. Also, my memory of The Cannibals is that it, like Needful Things, was a kind of social comedy. The new Under the Dome is played dead straight."

King:

From the very beginning, I saw it as a chance to write about the serious ecological problems that we face in the world today. The fact is we all live under the dome. We have this little blue world that we've all seen from outer space, and it appears like that's about all there is. It's a natural allegorical situation, without whamming the reader over the head with it. I don't like books where everything stands for everything else. It works with Animal Farm: You can be a child and read it as a story about animals, but when you're older, you realize it's about communism, capitalism, fascism. That's the genius of Orwell. But I love the idea about isolating these people, addressing the questions that we face. ... We have to conclude we're on our own, and we have to deal with it.

King, on UTD's politics:

I was angry about incompetency. Obviously I'm on the left of center. I didn't believe there was justification for going into the war in Iraq. And it just seemed at the time, that in the wake of 9/11, the Bush Administration was like this angry kid walking down the street who couldn't find whoever sucker punched him, and so turned around and punched the first likely suspect. Sometimes the sublimely wrong people can be in power at a time when you really need the right people. I put a lot of that into the book. ... The [Bush-Cheney] administration interested me because of the aura of fundamentalist religion that surrounded it and the rather amazing incompetency* of those two top guys. I thought there is something blackly humorous in it. So in a sense, Under the Dome is an apocalyptic version of The Peter Principle.

On an otherwise normal October afternoon, the small Maine town of Chester's Mill is thrown into chaos when some type of barrier cuts it off from the rest of the world. The barrier (or force field, perhaps) conforms to the exact boundaries of the town. It rises to a height of five miles, while also extending at least 100 feet into the ground. No one can come in or leave - and that includes deliveries of food and medicine.

This sounds promising, but the book (well, as much of it as I could stand) is a huge bore. King takes his time introducing the various characters and how they relate to each other. The narrative moves way too slowly - and there is no need for this book to be more than 1,000 pages long.

Big Jim Rennie is a town selectman, who yearns to run Chester's Mill his way. When the chief of police is killed on what becomes known as Dome Day - he stands too close to the dome and his pacemaker explodes - Rennie sees his chance to grab control.

Dale Barbara, a former Iraq War vet, had been working in the town and was about to leave when the dome appeared. As the US government takes an interest in the Chester's Mill situation, Barbara becomes the government's point-man inside the dome, much to Rennie's dismay.

I gave up after page 250 or so when it seemed like King was determined to explore the secret life of every single person in town, in minute detail. There are a couple of murders early in the book and we learn that Big Jim has been both embezzling from the town and running a meth lab (with the consent of one of the town's pastors).

When I looked online to see how the story was resolved, I was very glad I quit when I did. The New York Post's review noted that Under The Dome's finale "pales to the buildup. King is better at characters and situations than causes and reasons." And John Dugdale of The Sunday Times echoed the thoughts of other reviewers when he stated that readers deserved a more satisfying payoff for staying with King for 1,000 pages:

King's inability to raise his game—to relinquish the methods of his more straightforward tales of the paranormal—prevents you taking his socio-political vision seriously. The simple division of characters into goodies and baddies, the use of magic, the homespun style, the sentimental ending, the vital role played by a dog in defeating the forces of evil—all of these belong in fiction for older children, not the grown-up novels he's bent on emulating.

*: How can King (or anyone else, for that matter) think that the Bush administration was incompetent? Those motherfuckers did just about every legal and illegal thing they wanted to do - and no one stopped them. When you look at things from their point of view, their time in power was an enormous success. And then Obama continued and expanded their inhumane plans for another eight years. Mission Accomplished!

Next: Full Dark, No Stars.

Stephen King: Just After Sunset (2008)

Just After Sunset is Stephen King's fifth collection of short stories, following Night Shift, Skeleton Crew, Nightmares & Dreamscapes, and Everything's Eventual.

Twelve of the 13 stories in this volume appeared in publications ranging from The New Yorker and The Paris Review to Cavalier and Playboy; one story ("N.") was previously unpublished. And except for "The Cat From Hell" (1977), the stories all date from 2003-2008.

In his introduction, King states that his desire and ability to write short stories had stagnated and it was his work as an editor on the 2006 edition of the Best American Short Stories that kick-started his creativity. The first story he wrote after that - "Willa", about a group of travelers abandoned in Wyoming after a train derailment - begins this collection.

Most of the stories in Just After Sunset did nothing for me, but a there were a few that grabbed my interest. The best, by far, was "The Gingerbread Girl". After the death of her young daughter, a young woman begins running. Eventually, she leaves her husband and moves to her father's beach house in Florida. One day while jogging past one of the nearby McMansions, she sees what she thinks is the body of a young girl hanging out of the trunk of a car. When she gets closer, she is knocked unconscious - and awakens in the house's kitchen, duct-taped to a chair, and sees a man washing off a knife in the sink. Emily attempts to escape from the house.

This is a stunning piece of work, right up there with King's finest work. The San Francisco Chronicle called it "A story of abuse, psychosis and loneliness, it is physically exhausting to read — an astounding thing to say for a short work of fiction." The Toronto Star described it as "a flat-out suspense novella that could have been penned by Richard Bachman, King's literary alter ego".

The spirit of Bachman also lingers over "Rest Stop", in which a traveller overhears a man beating his wife/girlfriend. In "Mute", a man picks up a hitchhiker who is apparently both deaf and mute. As they drive along, the driver starts complaining about his wife and the affair she has been having. In light of subsequent events, perhaps the hitchhiker was not so deaf after all. And if you have ever wondered what it would be like to be trapped in a tipped-over port-o-potty with no way to escape, then "A Very Tight Space" will answer all your questions.

Next: Under The Dome.

Stephen King: Duma Key (2008)

Edgar Freemantle has made a lot of money with his Minnesota construction business before a horrific accident on the job leaves him with a damaged memory, a broken body, and a missing right arm. Along the way, Edgar's marriage falls apart. Depressed and thinking of suicide, Freemantle talks to his therapist, who suggests a change of scenery and a hobby, as "hedges against the night".

Edgar moves to the west coast of Florida, into a beach house he calls Big Pink, and begins drawing and painting - something in which he took pleasure when he was younger. His house overlooks the Gulf of Mexico and he begins painting sunsets. However, the subjects of his paintings soon change, and it's clear that Edgar has gained some paranormal power. He is at his easel constantly, producing an extraordinary number of emotionally-charged paintings in a relatively short period of time. He's not entirely clear on where this talent or creativity is coming from. His paintings eventually attract attention and he has a wildly successful showing. But all is not sunshine; there are some dark forces at work, as Edgar soon learns.

King's narrative is highly readable and enjoyable as he recounts Edgar's friendship with Wireman, a gregarious sage who lives down the beach as the caretaker of the elderly Elizabeth Eastlake, whose father once owned this particular strip of Florida coastline. King clearly draws on personal experience in describing Edgar's long and painful recovery from his accident (King was struck by a van and nearly killed in 1999) and he offers his thoughts on the creative process throughout the book, though he seems to hint that those impulses can come from a very dark place. It's only in the book's second half that Duma Key drifts into boilerplate horror.

Duma Key received good reviews, from the New York Times, Esquire and Pop Matters, as well as Kevin Quigley, who runs a website devoted to King and his work. However, while I enjoyed Duma Key more than the last few King novels in the Project, it disappointed me. I agree with the Telegraph (UK) reviewer who wrote that Duma Key "starts promisingly but descends into an overlong, self-indulgent stinker. ... The novel, in which King starts to weave a multi-layered tale of loss, hope and recovery, concluded with ghosts, zombies and killers."

One-third of the novel's 600 pages could have been cut with little negative impact on the plot. I enjoyed King's focus on painting/creativity, but my interest flagged as Edgar (with the assistance of two friends) attempted to vanquish the island's evil spirits and save both himself and his loved ones. I can accept some supernatural activity in my fiction - my favourite book of all-time features at least one wraith, after all - but I draw the line well before colossal reptiles and levitating lawn jockeys.

Next: Just After Sunset.

Stephen King: Blaze (as Richard Bachman) (2007)

Stephen King refers to Blaze as "a trunk novel", written in late 1972/early 1973 and then packed away. "I thought it was great while I was writing it, and crap when I read it over." Many, many years later, King revised his thinking.

"I thought it was pretty good - certainly better than Roadwork [published in 1981 as Richard Bachman's third novel], which I had, at the time, considered mainstream American fiction. ... I thought Blaze could be re-written and published without too much embarrassment ... I thought it could be a minor tragedy of the underclass, if the re-writing was ruthless. To that end, I adopted the flat, dry tones which the best noir fiction seems to have ... I worked fast, never looking ahead or back, wanting also to capture the headlong drive of those books ... I also determined to strip all the sentiment I could from the writing itself, wanted the finished book to be as stark as an empty house without even a rug on the floor."

Kevin Quigley: "The story is unrelenting. True to his intentions, King has crafted an economical read, as quickly paced as the earliest Bachman novels. ... In tone and speed, Blaze recalls the doomed march of The Long Walk; the more complex and tragic back story brings to mind Bart Dawes in Roadwork. ... [T]here's little actual hope to be found in these pages, so what we are left with is a suspicious sort of compassion."

I completely agree with Quigley. For the most part, King succeeded. The sentences are short and sharp - the tone and rhythm was a significant change from the last few King books I have tried to read (from the mid-00s). It's hard to know without seeing the original manuscript, but there were times when a sentence felt redundant (or included a brand name) and I wondered if this had been one of King's later additions. The tone and bleak outlook of Blaze is in keeping with the other early Bachman novels, all of which are worth reading except for one. Stay far away from The Regulators (which is not an early Bachman novel).

Clayton Blaisdell Jr. is mixed up in petty crime and eventually finds a protector and friend in George Rackley. The two men pull many cons together, but roughly three months before the book begins, George is knifed to death during a card game - and Blaze is alone. (During the first few months after George's death, Blaze swears George is nearby and he can hear his voice talking to him. Fortunately, there is nothing supernatural going on. It's simply in Blaze's head.) Before he died, George talked about pulling one last big con - stealing a baby and holding it for ransom. When Blaze reads in the paper about the baby of a very rich family living nearby, he sets out to do the job himself. Of course, Blaze is doomed to fail.

King's narrative alternates between the present day, as Blaze prepares for and pulls off the kidnapping and is then forced to care for a three-month old infant during a cold Maine winter, and incidents in Blaze's past. It is a very depressing tale. Blaze's mother dies shortly after giving birth and his father is physically abusive, at one point throwing the young child down a flight of stairs. This results in a large dent in Blaze's forehead and his slow mental faculties.

Blaze is placed in a group home called Hetton House. He is periodically "adopted" by various couples, but it usually turns out to be a farmer and his wife looking for free labor during harvest time. Once the crops are picked, Blaze is returned to Hetton House because the situation "simply didn't work out".

While a reader knows Blaze cannot possibly succeed in getting away clean with the ransom money, the story does have its uplifting and tender moments, as Blaze bonds with the baby, at one point thinking that the money is unimportant and as long as the two of them are together, they will survive. A few incidents in Blaze's past hint at happiness - when he and a friend find a wallet full of cash and go AWOL from Hetton House on a bus to Boston for a few days, when Blaze gets a job picking blueberries and is accorded some responsibility by the kind-hearted owner of the farm - which simply makes the rest of his story doubly tragic.

Next: Duma Key.

Stephen King: "Can A Novelist Be Too Productive?"

Stephen King, New York Times:

There are many unspoken postulates in literary criticism, one being that the more one writes, the less remarkable one's work is apt to be. ...

This is not a roundabout way of justifying my own prolificacy. Yes, I've published more than 55 novels. Yes, I have employed a pseudonym (Richard Bachman). Yes, I once published four books in one year (shades of James Patterson ... except mine were longer, and written without the aid of a collaborator). And yes, I once wrote a novel ("The Running Man") in a single week. But I can say, with complete honesty, that I never had any choice.

As a young man, my head was like a crowded movie theater where someone has just yelled "Fire!" and everyone scrambles for the exits at once. I had a thousand ideas but only 10 fingers and one typewriter. There were days — I'm not kidding about this, or exaggerating — when I thought all the clamoring voices in my mind would drive me insane. ...

My thesis here is a modest one: that prolificacy is sometimes inevitable, and has its place. The accepted definition — "producing much fruit, or foliage, or many offspring" — has an optimistic ring, at least to my ear.

Stephen King: Lisey's Story (2006)

When Stephen King was asked two years ago which of his many novels was his favourite, he answered, without hesitation or qualification: Lisey's Story. He gave the same answer this summer, when asked which of his books was "the most personally meaningful".

King: "I've always felt that marriage creates its own secret world, and only in a long marriage can two people at least approach real knowledge of each other. I wanted to write about that, and felt that I actually got close to what I really wanted to say." The jacket states the book deals with "the wellsprings of creativity, the temptations of madness, and the secret language of love".

Because of this, and because it concerns the widow of a famous horror novelist, and because of a Reddit comment - "Lisey's Story is really kind of an exploration of himself ... the dark places where his fame and talent came from" - I was quite curious about it.

However, I am giving up on the book about halfway through. One of the subplots has potential - a small-time hood is threatening Lisey Landon, demanding she give her late husband's papers (the award-winning author Scott Landon) to a certain university professor - but I'll have to look online to see how that turns out.

King's annoying writing tics have ruined whatever enjoyment I could get from the last few novels in this project. Has an editor ever told him that he's using a certain tic over and over and over, and some of them should be cut? Back in the 1980s, when he was consumed by his various addictions and was the most successful writer in the world, he wrote whatever the hell he wanted. No editor could tell him anything. And although King has been clean for quite awhile, perhaps things never changed.

In an afterword to this novel, King mentions his editor by name and says she marked the hell out of his manuscript. He even offers to show readers some pages if they disbelieve him. The manuscript may have been marked up, but who knows if King overruled the suggested changes.

The tic in Lisey's Story is when King alludes to some expression in a parenthetical, and notes where the character got it from, or mentions a different saying by some other person. An example: "King's writing tics really annoy me (they grind my gears, as the saying goes)." Or: "I was familiar with the situation. I had been around the block, as my father would have said."

Is this King's way of being folksy? Maybe he felt it reinforced the theme of a secret language and phrases used within the world of a marriage. As I kept reading along, half of my mind was waiting for the next example of this annoyance. I never had to wait very long. King starts doing it in the book's second paragraph:

None of Lisey's sisters was immune to the pleasures of setting the cat among the pigeons ("stirring up a stink" had been their father's phrase for it ...) (page 3)

Her husband had headed south from Rumford, where they had been living ("like a couple of wolverines caught in a drainpipe," Scott said ... (4)

They hadn't been clear on that at first; they weren't down with it, as the saying was. (5)

The man had passed on, as the saying was ... (11)

If he was, she'd meant to be there when he stepped out. When he Went, as the folks of her mother and father's generation would have said. (23)

Very zen, grasshoppah, Scott might have said. (24)

--Broken glass in the morning, broken hearts at night. That was Granny D's scripture, all right ... (30)

... speaking in his new whispering, effortful voice, sometimes just enough is just enough. As the saying is. (30)

... where the new library would stand (the word is pronounced LAH-bree in Dashmiel-ese). (31)

When he's like this, Scott could sell Frigidaires to Inuits, as the saying is ... (37)

Scott Landon hits the deck, as the saying is. (45)

And she supposes she does know some of it. The long boy, he calls it. (49)

What was old Dandy's saying? I didn't fall off a hayrick yesterday! (51-52)

... from the sort of hucksters Scott had called "phone-lice." (54)

... but Lisey always sensed it as what Scott would have called "a subtext." (54)

It's not a word she wants to hear emerging from her own mouth (it's a Blondie word), but needs must when the devil drives - as Dandy also said ... (56)

Scott almost always rents them a hideout, even if the gig is just what he calls "the old in-out" (56)

What Darla, second-oldest of the Debusher girls, would have called comfort-foot, and what Scott - with great relish - would have called eatin nasty. (62)

What he used to call "foul matter." (75)

What Scott might have called the puffickly huh-yooge ... (78)

This, however ... this bool, to use Scott's word ... (82)

According to Scott, it was the power-lines (what he liked to call "UFO refueling stations") (83)

... what Scott had sometimes been pleased to call - usually in a bad Howard Cosell imitation - "the claret." (87)

Well, turnabout was fair play, so Good Ma had liked to claim, although shite had been their Dad's word, as it had been Dandy Dave who would sometimes tell folks a thing was no good, so I slang it forth. (97)

A project, the Yankee oldtimers like her very own Dad might have said. (97)

Case smucking closed, babyluv, Scott would have said. (98)

It had been what her boyfriend would no doubt call a total smuckup ... (107)

... about her crazy fucked-up family - oh, pardon me, that's crazy smucked-up family, in Scott-talk ... (108)

He would make the scene, as the saying was. (108)

In hopes of getting his end wet. Another one of Scott's catches from the word-pool ... (108)

There was also getting your ashes hauled, dipping your wick, making the beast with two backs, choogling, and the very elegant ripping off a piece. (108)

... she thought of Darla saying, Do what you want, you always do. (108)

He was, in her Dad's words, cruising for a bruising. (109)

... could take her in until the baby was put out for adoption - that was how Jodi said it ... (110)

It's bool, another Scott word ... (114)

All the bad-gunky. Surely another postcard from his childhood. (115)

... three of what her Dad called "the fat fingers" are also cut. (117)

... has been crushed by - what do they call them in Chuckie's Insider? - recovered memories. (121)

.. and the dead mother he supposedly killed because he - how did the hotshot writer put it? - growed too big. (123)

"What's the old saying? 'Call me anything you want, just don't call me late to dinner.'" (126)

... her periods of "passive semi-catatonia," to use the shrink's phrase. (135)

In the Debusher family, where there was a saying for everything, urinating was spending a penny and moving one's bowels was - odd but true - burying a Quaker. (139)

Amanda's eyes continued to star serenely off into the distance. Or into the mystic, if you were a Van Morrison fan. (140)

Fakin like a brakeman, Dandy would have said (141)

It was what Scott called "the fame-card," ... (143)

Or, as Scott himself had once said, by injection. (145)

laying out what he himself would have called "stations of the bool." (148)

(pretty much bowled over, as the saying was) (150-51)

I know what nurses call people like her, they call em gorks ... (153)

"U.S. Gypsum," she said. "only Sparky called it U.S. Gyppum." (155)

He calls it their frontloaded honeymoon. (156)

Except when he was drunk. Then he called them The Four Cleancut Honkies. (160)

... what were called "barncats" in this neck of the woods. (170)

Big diddly, as Cantata had been fond of saying in her teenage yeras. (173)

... she was going to blow her groceries, toss her cookies, throw her heels, donate her lunch. (173)

... she was prepared to leave what Scott might have called "a huh-yoogely provocative message" ... (174)

When you were really angry - when you wanted to tear someone a new asshole, as the saying was ... (174)

... had become what Woodbody described as "sort of buddies." (179)

For the third time that day - third time's the charm, Good Ma would have said, third time pays for all ... (187)

If Dooley "checked by" (Clutterbuck's oddly delicate way of putting it) ... (189)

Perversely he hung on (hung on like a toothache, Dad Debusher would've said) ... (191)

Back to the attic, back to the spare bedroom, back to the cellar. Back to the future, Scott would surely have added ... (194)

That is an incomplete list from the first 200 pages. King's pace with this shit never lets up and this book is 520 pages long.

Life is too short to read bad books.

Next: Blaze (as Richard Bachman).

Stephen King: Cell (2006)

At 3:00 PM on a sunny October afternoon in Boston, graphic novelist Clay Riddell witnesses the beginning of the end of the world. As he later learns, an electronic pulse has been sent out over all cell phone lines, turning anyone who is using a phone into a violent, mindless zombie; people who later use cell phones - such as in response to the ensuing carnage - are also affected.

Stephen King exercises his anti-technology muscles in Cell, a 350-page book that would have worked much better for me as a novella. The main plot concerns Riddell travelling on foot to his home in Maine, hoping to learn the fate of his 12-year-old son Johnny.

Soon after the Pulse (as it is called among the group of survivors we follow), Clay meets up with a middle-aged man named Tom McCourt. At first, they wonder if this is another terrorist attack. Hearing huge explosions coming from the direction of Logan Airport, Tom cries, "The bastards are doing it by plane again." King's description of the air full of "fine dark ash" from numerous fires evokes downtown Manhattan on 9/11. The diaspora after Hurricane Katrina is also mentioned later in the novel.

A little while later, the two men are joined by a teenaged girl named Alice Maxwell. The three self-described refugees head out of Boston on foot to Tom's house in the suburb of Malden - and then head further north from there, as Clay is obsessed with getting back to his house near Kent Pond in Maine.

The theory in Cell is that the Pulse has wiped out the minds of its victims, like a virus wiping out a computer's hard drive. However, the "phone-crazies" seem to evolve quickly and are soon acting in concert and roaming around in packs. The Pulse has removed the thin veneer of civilization from many citizens and they have reverted back to a more primordial state. A university professor tells Riddell and the others that

man has come to dominate the plant thanks to two essential traits. One is intelligence. The other has been the absolute willingness to kill anyone and anything that gets in his way. Mankind's intelligence finally trumped mankind's killer instinct, and reason came to rule over mankind's maddest impulses. ... [M]ost of us had sublimated the worst in us until the Pulse came along and stripped away everything but that red core.

Besides the thinness of the plot and some rehashed ideas from The Stand (characters communicating through dreams, being drawn to something or a force they have been dreaming about), King has a number of annoying tics that ruined what little pleasure I took from the book. He has the habit of repeating facts, events, and descriptions of people throughout the narrative, as though he doesn't trust his readers to remember what has happened or who a character is. This happens dozens and dozens of times in Cell, and this one example will suffice as an illustration: On page 126, "a man with a pair of flashlights rigged to a kind of harness [on his head]" introduces himself as "Mr. Roscoe Handt of Methuen". A mere three pages later, on page 129, King writes: "... and by four o'clock they were nearing Methuen, hometown of Mr. Roscoe Handt, he of the stereo flashlights".

King also writes a lot of sentences along the lines of "Clay didn't know why he thought that, but he did." In addition, the characters spitball theories about the "phone-crazies" and sort of agree on one possibility. That is then used for the rest of the book as a proven fact and the crazies act accordingly. I see this as a sly trick to push the plot forward among a group cut off from everyone else, but it isn't very well hidden - and it happens a lot in Cell.

Online reviews of the book were mixed. Blog Critics stated that "Cell represents a refreshing, grizzly, creepy and often powerful exploration of the nature of humanity ... [T]he brilliance of Cell is how King manages to mix exploration of humanity with a powerful and engaging apocalyptic story." Pop Matters published a glowing rave: King "creates a kind of sickening dread that only gets deeper as the novel continues. ... [T]he overwhelming feeling of helplessness, fatalism and inevitability makes Cell one of King’s most potent page-turners."

Others faulted King for "flat characters and flatter dialogue". Although King is usually quite good at creating full characters, I agree with this last assessment.

Next: Lisey's Story.

Stephen King: The Colorado Kid (2005)

This short novel (163 pages) is a paperback original from Hard Case Crime, a small publisher specializing in both old and new hardboiled crime novels.

From the original press release:

"Steve is an extraordinary writer, and as much a fan of classic paperback crime fiction as we are," said Charles Ardai, Hard Case Crime's editor. "We originally contacted him to see if he'd be willing to write a blurb for our line, and he decided that what he really wanted to do was write a book for us instead. We're thrilled that he wanted to be part of Hard Case Crime and we're very excited to get to introduce the world to the baffling mystery of The Colorado Kid."

"This is an exciting line of books," Stephen King commented, "and I'm delighted to be a part of it. Hard Case Crime presents good, clean, bare-knuckled storytelling, and even though The Colorado Kid is probably more bleu than outright noir, I think it has some of those old-fashioned kick-ass story-telling virtues. It ought to; this is where I started out, and I'm pleased to be back."

The Colorado Kid is hyped on the back cover as an "investigation into the unknown", a story "about the darkness at the heart of the unknown and our compulsion to investigate the unexplained", a tale "whose subject is nothing less than the nature of mystery itself". That's giving this thin story far more credit than it deserves.

Oldtimers Dave Bowie and Vince Teague run the small newspaper serving the seaside community of Moose-Lookit, Maine. Stephanie, who is from Ohio, is an intern they have hired for the summer. As the book begins, a writer for the Boston Globe has asked around for any information for a series of articles on "unexplained events" in New England, but he has left empty-handed. Stephanie, knowing the two men have been in the news business for decades, says they must have heard of something strange and "unexplained" over the years.

Instead of a straight story, we hear about the tale of the Colorado Kid as remembered by the two men, who stop periodically so they and Stephanie can talk about various aspects of the tale. Dave and Vince insist that there really is no "story", nothing with a well-defined beginning, middle, and end. That's what newspapers want and that's why this tale is no good for the Globe.

One morning in 1980, a pair of teenagers discover an unidentified dead man on the beach. It is later determined that he choked to death on a piece of food. He is not identified and nothing much happens until about 16 months later, when a young man who had been working with the two detectives assigned to the case, has a flashback to the tax stamp on the bottom of the unknown man's pack of cigarettes. It turns out the stamp says "Colorado".

Dave and Vince mail a copy of the man's picture, taken shortly after he was discovered on the beach, to 78 newspapers in Colorado. In short order, they hear from a woman named Arla Cogen, who turns out to be the man's wife/widow. She gives the two newspapermen details about James Cogan's life (including the fact that he was never a smoker). Her information raises several questions: How did Cogan get from Denver to a small coastal Maine town in only a few hours on the day he died? And why? And what's up with the pack of cigarettes?

Dave, Vince, and Stephanie run through several possibilities, teasing each one out, trying to construct a probable narrative. But the truth cannot be known in this case - and guesswork is as far as they get. And this is also as far as King gets. The book ends with the Kid's appearance and death just as shrouded in mystery as before.

In an afterword, King acknowledges that readers will either love or hate the story. "Mystery is my subject here," he writes. "I'm really not interested in the solution but the mystery." King can count me among those who did not like the story - or thought that there wasn't enough of a story to like or not like. When King was producing his best work, he likely would have realized TCK was going nowhere and simply filed it away. Or, if he was intent on exploring the essence of mystery, he would have come up with a more engaging premise. We are told several times how excited and intrigued Stephanie is by this mystery, but we never get that feeling ourselves.

Also, King's use of Maine slang/dialect gets in the way of the story's flow. The two newspaper men repeatedly say "Ayuh" and "Gorry!", drop the "g"s from the end of words, and often remind themselves (and us) that Stephanie is "from away" (i.e., not a local). King did a masterful job capturing an authentic Maine voice in Dolores Claibourne, but he strikes out here. King even interrupts the storytelling to explain that "fair" is pronounced fay-yuh, "bury" rhymes with furry, and dinnah is the meal you eat around noon time.

Next: Cell.

Stephen King: The Dark Tower VII: The Dark Tower (2004)

I can't do it!

I made it to page 60, but I cannot force myself to read any more of the 800+ pages of the seventh and final volume of Stephen King's Dark Tower series.

I don't give a shit what happens to Roland - or any of the other characters - and I don't care what happens when the Ka-tet finally reaches the Dark Tower.

At the start of this project, I considered omitting the entire series because I thought I would not enjoy its fantasy elements. But when I found used hard covers of the later volumes, I decided what the hell. I should have stuck with my original plan.

(P.S. This also means I won't be reading The Wind Through The Keyhole, which was published in 2012 and fits chronologically into the Dark Tower series between Books 4 and 5.)

Next: The Colorado Kid.

Stephen King: The Dark Tower VI: Song Of Susannah (2004)

The events depicted in Song of Susannah take place over one day immediately following the events in the previous book, Wolves of the Calla, with members of Roland Deschain's ka-tet travelling to New York City and rural Maine.

As I have stated in previous entries, The Dark Tower series is far from my cup of literary tea, but I'm determined to plow through these books. My main interest in reading the sixth book of the series was seeing how Stephen King introduced himself as a fictional character in his own epic - and how he fits into Roland's life-long quest for the Dark Tower.

In Wolves of the Calla, Donald Callahan saw a first edition of 'Salem's Lot and was extremely confused when he read the events of his life portrayed in a work of fiction. Roland, believing the author of 'Salem's Lot to be a key in his quest, takes Eddie Dean with him to East Stoneham, Maine, to have a talk with Mr. King. They arrive in the year 1977.

But that is merely one of the book's subplots and "Stephen King" does not appear in the narrative until the chapter entitled "The Writer", on page 265. The main story is the emergence of Mia, who has taken control of Susannah Dean's body, and the expected birth of her "chap". (A fuller telling of the book's plot can be found either here or here.)

King describes The Writer as tall, ashy-pale, bearded and wearing thick glasses, "starting to run to middle-aged fat". He's a bit confused by the appearance of the two gunslingers. "I made you. You can't be standing there because the only place you really exist is here" (pointing to the center of his forehead).

"King" tells his visitors about the first Gunslinger stories that he wrote, how he felt about them ("It was going to be my Lord of the Rings), and why he ultimately left them alone ("I ran out of story - and stopped."). He tells Roland: "I couldn't tell if you were the hero, the anti-hero or no hero at all. ..."

You started to scare me, so I stopped writing about you. Boxed you up and put you in a drawer and went on to a series of short stories I sold to various men's magazines. Things changed for me after I put you away, my friend, and for the better. I started to sell my stuff. Asked Tabby to marry me. Not long after that I started a book called Carrie. It wasn't my first novel, but it was the first one I sold, and it put me over the top. All that after saying goodbye Roland, so long, happy trails to you.

Roland hypnotizes "King" and while in the trance, "King" talks of being a slave to the Crimson King since the age of seven. "I love to write stories but I don't want to write your story," he pleads with Roland. "I'm always afraid. He looks for me. The Eye of the King."

Roland tells him that he must go back to the Gunslinger story.

"... The only real story you have to tell. And we'll try to protect you."

"I'm afraid . . . I'm afraid of not being able to finish. I'm afraid the Tower will fall and I'll be held to blame."

"That's up to ka, not you."

Roland then tells The Writer something that the real-life Stephen King has said many times in recent years, that all of his novels and stories are part of the Dark Tower universe. "You'll go on with your life," Roland instructs the Writer. "You'll write many stories, but every one will be to some greater or lesser degree about this story. Do you understand?"

While some of what "King" says in the manuscript about writing the Gunslinger stories may be fictional, a lot of it rings true. The book closes with an epilogue containing entries from a journal kept by the fictional King (or the King who inhabits the particular world that Roland and Eddie currently happen to be in). The entries correspond rather closely with publicly-known events in the "real" Stephen King's life, except for the fact that this fictional King dies on June 19, 1999, after being struck by a van.

Next: The Dark Tower VII: The Dark Tower.

Stephen King: The Dark Tower V: Wolves Of The Calla (2003)

After nearly being killed by a van while walking by the side of a road in Maine in June 1999, Stephen King realized that he could have died before he finished writing what he has referred to as his magnum opus - The Dark Tower series. And so, in the summer of 2001, he got to work.

Wolves of the Calla was published in November 2003 and the final two volumes came out the following year. King also went back and revised the first volume, The Gunslinger, to bring it into line with the future plots of his extensive story; he added material, while cutting off some loose, dead ends. Finally, he gave the novels subtitles beginning with "R": Resumption, Renewal, Redemption, Regard, and Resistance.

The Wolves story has very little to do with the actual quest for the Dark Tower. Roland Deschain and his ka-tet are following the Path of the Beam, when they come upon the farming town of Calla Byrn Sturgis, and are asked by the townspeople to help them fight against the Wolves, strange creatures on horseback who come once every generation and steal away one-half of the town's many twins. While the children eventually return, something has been done to them ("whatever spark makes them a complete human being, is out forever"). They grow to gigantic proportions, live for only a few more years, and die painful deaths.

King's story covers the events in the month before the Wolves are scheduled to attack the town. Since we know early on that there will be a climatic battle, much of what happens until then is simply King telling us stories - about past battles with the Wolves, Jake's friendship with a local boy, Susannah's strange pregnancy. The New York Times faulted King for "endless pages of 'palaver', as Roland would say" and of immersing readers in the political intrigues of Calla Bryn Sturgis when we all know the ka-tet will leave the town behind and continue their quest after (Spoiler Alert!) defeating the Wolves. At 709 pages, this book could definitely have been much shorter.

King notes in his Afterword that Wolves of the Calla is his tip of the hat to Akira Kurosawa's 1954 film The Seven Samurai (which was adapted into the western The Magnificent Seven, directed by John Sturgis. (The other part of the Calla's name comes from actor Yul Byrnner.) King also mentions the work of Sergio Leone, Sam Peckinpah, and Howard Hawks.

One of the more interesting subplots concerns the town's white-haired priest, who turns out to be Donald Callahan, one of the characters from King's 1975 novel, 'Salem's Lot. Callahan's story of the intervening years is related in detail, and although it is interesting and well-told, it doesn't have much to do with the main plot. King has claimed that all of his books (and their myriad characters) are part of Roland's world(s) and this is further evidence of that interconnectedness. Callahan actually thumbs through a copy of 'Salem's Lot late in Wolves and is astounded to read about himself and his experiences in Jerusalem's Lot. "A novel is fiction! ... I can't be in a book. I am not a fiction ... am I?"

For all of its build-up, the fight against the Wolves happens pretty quickly (King describes it all in only eight pages, "one of the briefest appearances you'd expect from an antagonist", according to one reviewer) and with minimal casualties on the Calla's side.

Matthew Peckham, SF Site:

[WotC is] a collage of action, western, romance, science fiction, fantasy, meta-narrative, suspense, and horror. In addition to cinematic homage, King culls from a mix of themes: a coming of age tale with no easy transitions; an examination of village life, its politics, its gossips and cowards, and the rituals of inclusion and exclusion; the slow and vexing process of recovery (its second appearance in the series) from substance addiction. Most of all, the book circles back time and again to a theme Kurosawa first explored in Seven Samurai, the traditionalist notion of caste, fate, and acceptance of station or duty.

All of that is true, though King has done all of this much better in his earlier books.

Kevin Quigley writes:

Where Wolves of the Calla mainly succeeds is in its functionality. It neatly sums up the important themes of the first four novels and forwards those of the final two. ... It introduces storylines that will flow through the final books of the series, making these last three books read like a trilogy within the series. ... [WotC] never achieves the resonance or significance [of] the other six Dark Tower novels. Perhaps overly long and lacking cohesion until the final third of the novel, Wolves is, though crucial, the weakest book in the series.

A Book Slut reviewer said King was "remarkably slipshod when it comes to time and place". When various members of the ka-tet travel back to New York City circa 1977, they encounter things that were not present until the 1980s and 1990s (AIDS, advertisements on city buses, fanny packs).

[Baseball Note: Callahan died and entered Mid-World in 1983, so when he hears Eddie is from 1987, he has to ask: "Had the Red Sox won the World Series yet when you left?" Eddie, a New Yorker, explains all about 1986, the Mets, and Bill Buckner.]

I started reading Wolves in late March, but was bored and put it down for a few months before reluctantly returning in June. I'm not much of a fan of the series, but I am interested in the sixth volume because King is going to get seriously meta-fictional - and become a character in his own book (and Roland's quest)!

Next: The Dark Tower VI: Song Of Susannah.

Stephen King: From A Buick 8 (2002)

Stephen King completed a draft of this novel before his June 1999 accident, but its eventual release was pushed back a few years, apparently because it involves a serious car crash somewhat similar to the one that nearly killed King. He published Dreamcatcher, Black House, and Everything's Eventual before sending From A Buick 8 out into the world.

The story begins in the summer of 1979, when a mysterious man in black abandons a vintage Buick Roadmaster at a rural Pennsylvania gas station. An examination of the car raises questions about its origins: the battery is not hooked up to the unorthodox engine, the exhaust system is made of glass, the dashboard instruments are fake, and the odometer reads 000000. The local police (Troop D) eventually tow the vehicle back to their barracks and store it in Shed B.

Weird things start happening. The temperature is often 10-20 degrees colder inside Shed B than outside. When it gets especially chilly, extraordinarily bright flashes of light (the officers call them "lightquakes") emanate from and envelope the Buick. Troop D officers observing the car through the shed's windows can often hear (and feel) a low humming sound. Finally, various creatures are ejected out of the car's trunk - which is eventually believed to be a portal to another world/dimension.

The book is set during one day in 2002, as various officers tell the story of the Buick to Ned Wilcox, the 18-year-old son of Curtis Wilcox, a former member of Troop D who was struck and killed by a drunk driver when Ned was very young. Ned hangs around the barracks, doing odd jobs; he has numerous questions about his father (who was obsessed with the Buick).

From A Buick 8's message is: life is unknowable, things happen for no particular reason, and we will not be given an answer to every one of our questions. In an Author's Note, King describes the book as "a meditation on the essentially indecipherable quality of life's events, and how impossible it is to find a coherent meaning in them". King says a book's message should "arise naturally from the tale itself", but in this case he hammers his basic point home over and over.

What if you're never able to solve for x? (page 123)

[Curt realized] that he was almost certainly never going to know what he wanted to know. (173)

There comes a time when most folks see the big picture and realize they're puckered up not to kiss smiling fate on the mouth but because life just slipped them a pill, and it tastes bitter. (173)

Sometimes there's nothing to learn, or no way to learn it, or no reason to even try. ... (179)

Nothing. In the end, that's what it comes down to. If there's a formula - some binomial theorem or quadratic equation or something like that - I don't see it. (198)

All he had was a lot of questions, and the naive belief that just because he felt he needed the answers, those answers would come. (212)

The world rarely finishes its conversations. (307)

The authors of The Complete Stephen King Universe call the novel a "subtle triumph". I disagree, though there is a solid short story tucked away in From A Buick 8. At 350 pages, however, the novel is far too long. King includes pages and pages about police procedure, taking great pains to illustrate the familial atmosphere of the Troop D barracks, but all of that is secondary to the main plot.

His tale is repetitious and dull. Several "lightquakes" are extensively described, although the same things happen during each one. Curt Wilcox ventures into Shed B (with a heavy rope tied around his waist in case his fellow officers need to yank him back out to safety) to conduct some experiments regarding the Buick not once, but several times. The creatures that "come through" the Buick's trunk are certainly disgusting, but they don't strike seem particularly horrific. King wants to make these otherworldly beings as repulsive as possible, but his descriptions seem half-hearted.

Along the way, though, there are a couple of descriptions that are pure King:

Matt Babicki's radio was an endless blare of static with a few voices sticking out of it like the feet or fingers of buried men. (89)

The sun, going down in a cauldron of blood ... (106)

If King had truly retired from publishing as he vowed to do while recovering from his accident, From A Buick 8 would have been his final non-Dark Tower novel. Thankfully, his extraordinary career did not fizzle to an end with this pallid offering.

Next: The Dark Tower V: Wolves Of The Calla.

Stephen King: Everything's Eventual (2002)

Stephen King's fourth collection of short fiction - subtitled "14 Dark Tales" - gathers up what feels like a lot of loose ends. Unlike his previous collections, Night Shift, Skeleton Crew, and Nightmares & Dreamscapes, all of these stories had been released before.

Five stories were first published in a signed limited edition called Six Stories, two were previously released on the audio book Blood and Smoke, and "Riding The Bullet" was the first mass market e-book release. Most interestingly, four stories are from The New Yorker, a magazine most readers might regard as an odd venue for King's work.

The two best stories in this collection - "All That You Love Will Be Carried Away" and "The Death Of Jack Hamilton" - are from The New Yorker, and have nothing to do with horror or the supernatural. King has done some of his best work when he has stepped outside his usual genres - Different Seasons is an obvious example - and these two tales showcase his talents as a storyteller.

"All That You Love Will Be Carried Away": Alfie Zimmer, a salesman of frozen gourmet foods, sits in a motel room near Lincoln, Nebraska, holding a revolver and thinking about suicide. Beside him is a notebook in which he has collected (over seven years) graffiti from the walls of public men's rooms. Alfie considers ways of disposing of the notebook, fearing being perceived as crazy when it is found. He eventually wanders outside, and contemplates the lights shining in a distant farmhouse.

"The Death Of Jack Hamilton": This brilliant narrative concerns the agonizing death of one member of John Dillinger's gang. Told in the first person by Homer Van Meter, who was in real life part of Dillinger's group, King nails the narrative voice perfectly. It never sounds as though there is a writer behind it. It's an inconsequential story, perhaps, but entertaining and well-executed.

"Autopsy Room Four": Howard Cottrell is bitten by a snake while looking in the weeds for his golf ball. Presumed to have suffered a fatal heart attack, Howard is in fact only paralyzed and unconscious. He awakens on the autopsy table in a morgue and realizes that he must somehow signal to the technicians that he is still alive before they begin cutting him up.

Also: "The Little Sisters Of Eluria" is a light, satisfying Dark Tower tale set after young Roland's adventures in Wizard & Glass and before we meet him on the trail of the Man in Black in The Gunslinger.

Despite the high points, King misses more often than he hits in this collection.

"The Road Virus Heads North" combines two ideas King has written about previously: a painting that both comes alive (Rose Madder) and changes its perspective ("The Sun Dog"). Amusing only for the details King throws in regarding the buyer of the painting. Richard Kinnell, the author of many "numbingly successful [horror] novels", lives in Derry in a mansion dubbed "The House That Gore Built". Mainstream critics compare Kinnell's excessive prose to "projectile vomiting on the page"; however, "most of those folks were ignoramuses, at least as far as his work went, and what was more, they treasured their ignorance".

"Riding The Bullet": Alan Parker, a student at the University of Maine, gets a message that his mother has suffered a stroke and is in the hospital, and he hitchhikes 120 miles to see her. One of the cars that picks him up is apparently driven by a recently deceased man. (That ride may be a dream, however.) The second half of the story concerns Alan's feelings about eventually losing his mother. King covered similar ground years ago (and with much deeper and personal emotions) in "The Woman In The Room" (Night Shift).

Other ideas - a haunted room in an old hotel ("1408") and a maniacal machete-wielding headwaiter in a cafe ("Lunch At The Gotham Cafe") - are too thin and cliched to truly work, despite King's admirable attempts to give them life.

Next: From A Buick 8.

Stephen King: Announces His Retirement (2002)

In January 2002, Stephen King, then 54 years old, told the Los Angeles Times that he was retiring from publishing books.

King explained he had a few books in the pipeline (Everything's Eventual, a collection of short stories, and From A Buick 8, which he had completed before his 1999 accident, and he wanted to finish the Dark Tower series.

"Then, that's it. I'm done. Done writing books. ... You get to a point where you get to the edges of a room, and you can go back and go where you've been, and basically recycle stuff. I've seen it in my own work. People when they read Buick Eight are going to think Christine. It's about a car that's not normal, OK? You say, 'I've said the things that I have to say, that are new and fresh and interesting to people.' Then you have a choice. You can either continue to go on, or say I left when I was still on top of my game. I left when I was still holding the ball, instead of it holding me."

King had also hinted at retirement back in 1998, after Bag of Bones was published, saying he feared drifting into self-parody.

The Onion weighed in:

Obviously, King never retired. Indeed, he barely slowed down.

In 2007, he explained his comments: "When I said to that lady from the L.A. Times I might retire, I was still recovering from the accident that I was in, I was in a lot of pain, and I was under the pressure of finishing The Dark Tower. At that point, retirement looked good. When the pain went away and The Dark Tower finished up, retirement started to look bad."

Still going strong at age 66, King will publish two novels this year (Mr. Mercedes in June and Revival in November).

Stephen King: Black House (with Peter Straub) (2001)

Seventeen years after co-writing The Talisman, Stephen King and Peter Straub reunited for a sequel. Jack Sawyer is a retired Los Angeles policeman now living in French Landing, Wisconsin. The small town is being menaced by a serial killer/cannibal, and Sawyer - initially reluctant to lend his prodigious talents to solving the case - eventually joins the hunt for the man nicknamed the Fisherman.

Black House is also an offshoot of King's Dark Tower series. The serial killer is also working for (and possessed by) an agent of the Crimson King. In exchange for special powers, including teleportation, the killer has agreed to turn over any special children that can be used as Breakers to weaken the Beams that keep the Dark Tower standing.

While much of Black House sounds and feels like a King novel, there are extensive literary flourishes, especially in the early chapters, that are likely more Straub's style. (Also, Straub is originally from Wisconsin.) The opening is similar to King's Needful Things, with a narrator taking us around the town, pointing out the geography and some of the residents. King later portrays the townspeople as extremely ghoulish as they arrive by the carload at an abandoned shack where the Fisherman has dumped one of his victims, hoping for a peek of something, before being turned away. "What kind of person sets off on a Saturday morning to take pictures of dead children?"

Black House started off strong enough, but the last third was a chore to get through. And since that's when the showdown with the serial killer occurs and Jack and members of the Thunder Five motorcycle gang venture into the infinite space of Black House and try to rescue a young boy from a life of slavery as a Breaker, that's a very bad sign. (Also, although the book is not a mystery, the identity of the killer - who has modeled his crimes on those of Albert Fish - is fairly easy to deduce long before it is revealed.)

King and Straub gives readers very little background information on Jack Sawyer, tossing in quick allusions to people, places, and events from The Talisman. Since settling in French Landing, Sawyer has done everything he can to forget his adventures crossing the country - and crossing over into the Territories - to find the Talisman. He will have to come to terms with his hazy memories, however, and re-visit the Territories again in order to solve this case.

The infamous and well-hidden Black House - "a place stacked with vileness and layered with secrets" - is actually portal to another world (though a different other world than the Territories):

In a very real sense, touring Black House is like touring the brain of a deranged madman, and in such a mental framework we can expect to find no plan for the future or memory of the past. In the brain of a madman only the fuming present exists, with its endless shouting urges, paranoid speculations, and grandiose assumptions.

Black House recalls the Marsten House from 'Salem's Lot, and through the many threads of the Dark Tower, King links Black House to two other novels. A Mr. Brautigan (Hearts in Atlantis) is mentioned as the leader of the Breakers and the word "opopanax" is mentioned numerous times (it appears in Wolves of the Calla, the 5th Dark Tower volume).

The title recalls Charles Dickens's Bleak House, but not having read the older book, I can't say if there are direct connections, beyond the fact that Jack Sawyer is reading the Dickens novel in installments to Henry Leyden, his blind friend.

Kevin Quigley writes that the literary allusion to Dickens "is not incidental; in fact, one particularly scary section in Black House parallels the foggy opening of [Bleak House]. Also recalling Dickens are the establishing chapters, which introduce the sprawling cast of characters." Entertainment Weekly's review states that "it's no coincidence" that the title echoes Bleak House, because of the book's size and scope and its large cast of characters. (That's really not much of a connection.)

Next: Everything's Eventual.

Stephen King: Dreamcatcher (2001)

Dreamcatcher was the first novel Stephen King published after his near-fatal accident in 1999. Because he was unable to sit at his desk for extended periods of time, he ended up writing the first draft of the novel by hand, in only six and a half months.

King states (in the afterword): "To write the first draft of such a long book by hand put me in touch with the language as I haven't been for years. I even wrote one night (during a power outage) by candlelight. One rarely finds such opportunities in the twenty-first century, and they are to be savored."

Dreamcatcher takes place over a few days in November 2001. A group of four old friends from Derry, Maine - Joe "Beaver" Clarendon, Pete Moore, Henry Devlin, and Gary "Jonesy" Jones - have gathered for their annual deer hunting trip at a cabin deep in the woods of the Jefferson Tract. There have been reports of strange lights in the sky - and things begin going wrong when they find a lost and disoriented hunter named McCarthy wandering through the woods.

McCarthy is in some serious distress - there is an alien presence growing in him that will be expelled only by moving his bowels (hence, the wonderful term for these invasive creatures: "shit-weasels"). King delights in describing McCarthy's (and a few other characters') odious farts and thunderous belches as the alien grows and moves within him: "brutal and meaty", with a "sulfurous rotten-egg odor", "a long, purring fart that sounded like ripping cloth", "a deflating rubber toy", "an untalented child blowing over a piccolo". One character's bad breath is "a mixture of ether and overripe bananas" and a belch sounds like "a factory machine which has been put under severe strain".

The men eventually learn that an alien spacecraft has crashed in the Maine woods and the surrounding area is now sealed off. Everyone in the area - residents and hunters - are rounded up and placed in a military camp, in an operation led by a military madman named Kurtz. Complicating matters is that a fierce snowstorm is on the way. Dreamcatcher is the story of how the aliens' desire to spread the virus across a larger area is eventually defeated. And it is up to the four men - who reunite with an old friend from their childhoods - to stop this murderous contamination.

So: Is Dreamcatcher the tale of five friends who must bond together to overcome an alien invasion? Is it a military/alien thriller? Is it a supernatural, multi-dimensional science-fiction tale with telepathic characters? It tries to be all three. And it has elements of It, The Tommyknockers, and "The Body".

Heidi Strengell, writing in Dissecting Stephen King: From The Gothic To Literary Naturalism:

Including both dream sequences and numerous shifts in time, the complex novel has three levels. It can be viewed as a science-fiction parody, as a tale of horror, and as a comment on the absence of responsibility.

Dreamcatcher never felt parodic to me, and despite the graphic descriptions of the cancerous "shit-weasels", it was neither horrific nor scary. Indeed, the race to prevent the alien virus from being dumped into a Massachusetts water reservoir unfolded almost in slow-motion. It was clear the aliens' plan would be thwarted; it was simply a matter of slogging through the pages to see how it happened.

I would agree with Strengell that King (once again, as he has several times throughout his lengthy career) highlights the government's lack of concern for its citizens and, in this novel, its willingness to murder hundreds of them to keep the true nature of the alien menace a secret. Commenting on both The Tommyknockers and Dreamcatcher, Strengell writes:

In doing so, he shows how technology for its own sake may not be progress at all and how little the government take responsibility for its citizens. By acknowledging that scientific progress has done little for humans as moral beings, King pleads for the restoration of the dignity of the human being.

Some other random notes:

Jonesy is an assistant professor of history at a small Boston college. He is a "lifelong connoisseur of horror movies, suspense novels, and mysteries" and was struck by a car earlier in the year (suffering injuries extremely similar to what King suffered). Having read elsewhere that King was on-point in his descriptions of Jonesy's pain and rehabilitation, I was surprised that there was so little of it in the novel.

In a nod to It, there are several mentions of how children often go missing in Derry. "There have been a lot of child disappearances here over the years ... but nobody talks much about it. It's as if the occasional missing kid is the price of living in such a nice, quiet place." That confused me, because I had thought, from reading It, that Derry was a disgusting town. Even in this novel, King says Derry was built on "what was once swampland shunned even by the Micmac Indians who lived all around it". (King also mentions Derry's "ancient and incredibly complex systems of drains and sewers".)

King is still capable of some great writing. When Henry Devlin inspires the captives to revolt against the military and attempt an escape, the narrative comes crackling to life, like a small fire after some lighter fluid has been tossed on it. The reader works furiously, taking in the words quickly, feverishly, as the action unfolds. King has always been good at describing utter chaos and the complete destruction of a compound, estate, town, country, etc. And King is an expert at showing the bonds of friendship between boys on the cusp of being teenagers, though his characterizations here remain a far cry from his best work: "The Body" and It.

Jonesy's body is inhabited (taken over, really) by one of the aliens, who Jonesy dubs Mr. Gray. Towards the end of the novel, King intimates that Mr. Gray never existed; he was simply a part of Jonesy:

Mr. Gray is the phantom limb you still feel, the one you could swear is still there. ... They never existed as actual creatures aliens, ETs. The grays as physical beings were always created out of the human imagination...

This raises several questions about King's narrative, since for hundreds of pages he has been writing as though the opposite was true. This - and other plot twists - gives a reader the impression that King is simply making up stuff as goes along, whether it jibes with earlier portions of the book or not. (Also, the use of telepathy between the characters is extremely convenient as characters can magically know things they have not actually experienced.)

Ultimately, the 617-page book is a dull mess. (One site ranked it #62 of King's 64 novels.) My biggest complaint is the extended Jonesy/Gray sequences do little to move the plot forward. King could have told this story in at least 200 fewer pages, perhaps 300 fewer.

The Stand and It are huge novels, and two of King's best works. (I also have a strange affection for the well-hated The Tommyknockers.) However, since the mid-80s, King's various doorstoppers - Needful Things, Insomnia, Desperation, and Dreamcatcher - have been a big disappointments. Instead, King has excelled only when writing on a smaller canvas: Dolores Claiborne, The Green Mile, and two-thirds of Rose Madder.

Next: Black House (written with Peter Straub).

Stephen King: Hearts In Atlantis (1999)

According to the three authors of The Stephen King Universe, Hearts in Atlantis is King's "most ambitious literary novel ... an exploration of the many facets of the Vietnam War era and the way it has tarnished America's idea of itself".

Hearts in Atlantis is advertised as "new fiction" as opposed to "a novel". The book consists of two novellas and three short stories; it is a single narrative that spans 40 years and whose parts are linked by various characters.

The first novella, "Low Man in Yellow Coats", is set in 1960. Eleven-year-old Bobby Garfield lives with his mother in an apartment building in Harwich, Connecticut. In describing Bobby's friendships with Carol Gerber and John "Sully" Sullivan, King achieves the same warm, comfortable narrative he did in "The Body" (Different Seasons). Bobby befriends an older gentleman named Ted Brautigan, who moves into building's third floor apartment. Ted hires Bobby to read the newspaper to him and turns him on to various books, including "Lord of the Flies".

But this coming-of-age story takes an ominous turn. Ted also wants Bobby to keep watch around town for "low men in yellow coats", a group of people Ted is apparently on the run from. (Ted's background is connected with The Dark Tower series, and so the story eventually becomes more fantasy than Gothic.) When the terrifying low men finally converge on Ted and Bobby, the boy tearfully chooses to back down rather than fight. That decision is a harsh reality for Bobby to absorb; he may not be the person he thought he was. Also, there is an undercurrent of violence through the entire story. Bobby and Carol are menaced by three neighbourhood bullies (who later attack Carol with a baseball bat) and Bobby's mother is gang-raped by her boss and two other men during an out-of-town convention trip.

In "Hearts in Atlantis" (the novella), Pete Riley, a student at the University of Maine in 1966, becomes addicted to playing Hearts with his dorm buddies. Many of the boys forgo studying for these epic card marathons and miss numerous classes. Those that are on scholarships are in danger of losing them' being kicked out of college will greatly increase their chances of being drafted and sent to Vietnam.

King attended the same university during the same years as Riley, but how much of his own experience is in the narrative is unclear. I would venture that the account of seeing the first student with what looked like a "sparrow-track" on the back of his jacket - a peace sign - is probably close to the author's own experience.

King often refers to the games of Hearts in terms that could also apply to the war, an out-of-control event that is destroying the educational dreams of these boys: "the mad season had begun", "a kind of blind fatalism set in", "the suicidal pull of that third-floor lounge", "committing a kind of group suicide", "quitting the game was the only sane solution".

Pete becomes involved with Carol Gerber, who also attends the university and is active in the anti-war movement. Through her conversations, we learn a bit more about Bobby's childhood. And the three short stories bring the various threads up to the modern day.

In "Blind Willie", one of the boys who assaulted Carol went on to serve in Vietnam and witnessed various atrocities. By 1983, he lives in a suburb of New York City with his wife. Each day, dressed as a businessman, he commutes into the city, changes clothes, and begs for change near St. Patrick's Cathedral. He is consumed by guilt over what he did to Carol ("that occasion of sin has never left his mind") and has filled multiple bound ledgers with expressions of true regret ("penance is important to him").

In "Why We're In Vietnam" (a reference to Norman Mailer's 1967 novel Why Are We In Vietnam?), it's 1999 and John Sullivan is attending the funeral of a veteran he served with. At the funeral, he talks to his former commander, Dieffenbaker, at length about an incident in combat that could have easily devolved into another My Lai. Sullivan has never been able to truly leave his past behind, to truly leave Vietnam. Since the war, he has been haunted by an old woman that one of his fellow soldiers murdered during an attack on a village. While driving home from the funeral, he gets stuck in highway traffic, and suffers a fatal heart attack.

King seems disgusted with what much of his generation did with their anger and disillusionment. After their innocence was shattered during the 60s and early 70s, they simply gave up. Dieffenbaker tells Sullivan:

I loathe and despise my generation. ... We had an opportunity to change everything. We actually did. Instead we settled for designer jeans, two tickets to Mariah Carey at Radio City Music Hall, frequent-flier miles, James Cameron's Titanic, and retirement portfolios. ... You know the price of selling out the future, Sully? You can really never leave the past. You can never get over.

In "Heavenly Shades Of Night Are Falling", Bobby Garfield, now 50 years old, returns to Harwich for Sully's funeral. Carol is also there and we learn that she joined the Militant Students for Peace and was presumed dead after a faulty bomb set by the group killed several people. In truth, she changed her name and went underground. Unlike the other characters, Bobby and Carol each seem to have achieved some closure with their pasts.

In reading reviews of the book online, it seems that many readers felt the title novella was the weakest part of the book. I thought just the opposite. It shows that King can be an exceptional writer even when (or perhaps especially when?) he dispenses with his trademark fantasy and horror, although the fear and reality of being sent to Vietnam did not loom as darkly and intensely over the boys as I expected.

I enjoyed huge sections of Hearts in Atlantis a lot, but I also agree with the Chicago Tribune's review, which stated that the political and social concerns never truly resonate "because the horrors of the Vietnam War are never really confronted in a sustained manner, ultimately diminishing the book's power".

Next: Dreamcatcher.

Stephen King: June 19, 1999 (The Accident)

On the afternoon of June 19, 1999, ten weeks after the publication of The Girl Who Loved Tom Gordon, Stephen King was seriously injured (almost fatally) when he was hit by a minivan while walking along the side of a road in North Lovell, Maine. King, 51, was struck from behind when the van's driver was distracted and lost control of his vehicle.

Stephen King, On Writing:

The extent of the impact injuries is such that the doctors at Northern Cumberland Hospital decide they cannot treat me there; someone summons a LifeFlight helicopter to take me to Central Maine Medical Center in Lewiston. At this point my wife, older son, and daughter arrive. The kids are allowed a brief visit; my wife is allowed to stay longer. The doctors have assured her that I'm banged up, but I'll make it.

The lower half of my body has been covered. She isn't allowed to look at the interesting way my lap has shifted around to the right, but she is allowed to wash the blood off my face and pick some of the glass out of my hair. There's a long gash in my scalp, the result of my collision with Bryan Smith's windshield. This impact came at a point less than two inches from the steel, driver's-side support post. Had I struck that, I likely would have been killed or rendered permanently comatose, a vegetable with legs. Had I struck the rocks jutting out of the ground beyond the shoulder of Route 5, I likely also would have been killed or permanently paralysed. I didn't hit them; I was thrown over the van and 14ft in the air, but landed just shy of the rocks.

"You must have pivoted to the left just a little at the last second," Dr David Brown tells me later. "If you hadn't, we wouldn't be having this conversation." ...

My lower leg was broken in at least nine places - the orthopaedic surgeon who put me together again, the formidable David Brown, said that the region below my right knee had been reduced to "so many marbles in a sock."

The extent of those lower-leg injuries necessitated two deep incisions - they're called medial and lateral fasciatomies - to release the pressure caused by the exploded tibia and also to allow blood to flow back into the lower leg. Without the fasciatomies (or if the fasciatomies had been delayed), it probably would have been necessary to amputate the leg. My right knee itself was split almost directly down the middle; the technical term for the injury is "comminuted intra-articular tibial fracture". I also suffered an acetabular cup fracture of the right hip - a serious derailment, in other words - and an open femoral intertrochanteric fracture in the same area. My spine was chipped in eight places. Four ribs were broken. My right collarbone held, but the flesh above it was stripped raw. The laceration in my scalp took 20 or 30 stitches. ...

I came home to Bangor on 9 July, after a hospital stay of three weeks. I began a daily rehab program which includes stretching, bending, and crutch-walking. I tried to keep my courage and my spirits up. On 4 August, I went back to CMMC for another operation. When I woke up this time, the Schanz pins in my upper thigh were gone. I could bend my knee again. Dr Brown pronounced my recovery "on course" and sent me home for more rehab and physical therapy. And in the midst of all this, something else happened. On 24 July, five weeks after Bryan Smith hit me with his Dodge van, I began to write again.

Hearts in Atlantis was already in the publishing pipeline and was released in September 1999. At the time of the accident, King had completed From A Buick 8 and was in the middle of On Writing. Dreamcatcher would be the first novel he wrote post-accident.

Stephen King: The Girl Who Loved Tom Gordon (1999)

"The world had teeth and it could bite you with them anytime it wanted."

On a early Saturday morning in June 1998, nine-year-old Trisha McFarland becomes separated from her mother and older brother while hiking on a portion of the Appalachian trail.

Trisha leaves the trail to relieve herself, and then, after trying to retrace her steps for ten minutes, she is uncertain of where she is. "In that tender place between her chest and her stomach, the place where all the body's wires seemed to come together in a clump, she felt the first minnowy flutter of disquiet."

Trisha believes she is walking in a straight line, but is actually "turning more and more to the west without realizing it, turning away from the Appalachian trail and most of its subsidiary paths and trails, turning in a direction where there was little but deep second-growth woods choked with underbrush, tangled ravines, and ever more difficult terrain."

As the hours - and, eventually, the days - go by, Trisha tries to fight off both a disquieting inner panic and a "cold and scary voice" that speaks of her worst fears. When she hears on her Walkman's radio that a search party has been sent out to look for her, she is unaware that she is "nearly nine miles west of the area the searchers considered their highest priority".

Trisha keeps her fears at bay by listening to Red Sox games at night. Her favourite player is relief pitcher Tom Gordon, who as the team's "closer" comes into games with the lead to record the final three outs. In fact, Trisha secretly considers Gordon "the handsomest man alive"; she is wearing a shirt with Gordon's #36 on it, as well as an autographed cap. Hearing the cheering crowd at Fenway Park makes Trisha feel less alone. "The radio was her lifeline, the games her life preserver. Without them to look forward to, she thought she would simply give up."

After a week in the woods, during which time she actually crosses the border into New Hampshire, Trisha has lost about twenty pounds. Despite growing more and more physically weak, Trisha "discovered deep and totally unexpected reserves of strength within herself". She survives on berries, beechnuts, fiddleheads, and water (some of which makes her violently ill). She contends with multiple wasp stings, a long trek through a swampy marsh, and (possible) hallucinations about something in the woods that may be stalking her.

She dreams of Tom Gordon at night and he appears to her, in his blindingly white home uniform, during the day, as she tries to find her way to safety. Trisha tries praying, but does not have sufficient faith to do so. She recalls a conversation she once had with her father about God. Larry McFarland told his daughter he didn't believe in a God "that records all of our sins in a big golden book and judges us when we die", but rather in something he called the Subaudible, "some insensate force for the good".

At one point, Trisha hallucinates seeing three hooded men in long robes. The main one, dressed in black, calls himself the God of the Lost. "The world is a worst-case scenario," it tells her, "and I'm afraid all you sense [that much of life is sadness] is true. The skin of the world is woven of stingers, a fact you have now learned for yourself. Beneath there is nothing but bone and the God we share."

Heidi Strengell, Dissecting Stephen King: From the Gothic to Literary Naturalism:

The question of the nature of God is intertwined with fate in The Girl Who Loved Tom Gordon. While musing on her parents' divorce and her brother's recurring question why the children have to pay for what their parents do wrong, Trisha draws the same conclusion as a number of other King characters: just because. She survives because she accepts the facts of life and eve the role of fate in it. ...

Throughout King, God requires human assistance. ... Good often triumphs over evil both in King's mythical works related to The Dark Tower series and in the works that explore the existence of good and evil in traditional terms. In both, responsibility and compassion for one's fellow human beings can overcome seemingly overwhelming obstacles. Also, despite God's seeming passivity, he comes to the aid of those who help themselves.

Similarly, as Tom Gordon tells Trisha in one of her dreams, "it's God's nature to come on in the bottom of the ninth" - after the person has done everything she can do for herself. Trisha survives her ordeal through her own inner strength and wits. It is on her ninth day (inning?) in the woods that she finally faces down what she believes is the God of the Lost, in the form of a huge black bear.

Though The Girl Who Loved Tom Gordon is billed as a novel, it is shorter (219 pages) than some of King's novellas.

Next: Hearts in Atlantis.