Ay, Estéfano Rey: The Book List

I will admit: in order to make my slog through Stephen King’s Under the Dome, I headed over to Wikipedia for a quick synopsis. I was, after all, just confirming what I already knew to be true about the book’s ending. The book was taking a long time in getting there, so I just hurried up the process for no other reason than to prove I was right. Since I was not enjoying the book, there wasn’t going to be an “Aha!” moment when everything that I thought would happen did. So Wikipedia it was. And yes. I was right.

Stephen King’s writing has been on and off for years now (on: Lisey’s Story, Duma Key for the most part, From a Buick 8; off: Cell, Just After Sunset taken as a whole, and now Under the Dome). I still read his works because a) I’m always hoping for an on and II) I like his characters. For the most part, King is able to create vivid, interesting characters who grow, change and learn in his stories. I also have an unabashed and unashamed love of the supernatural. His characters are usually distinct and memorable, and they drive the story.

So it’s a shame that both the supernatural and the characters fail in Under the Dome. The book is the tale of Chester’s Mill, a town in Maine that, on October 21, finds itself under an invisible dome that lets no one in and out, and barely allows air and moisture to pass through its transparent walls. The book is political allegory: the leaders of the town are Bush and Cheney in miniature, able to rally the town using lies, impossible promises, and escalating infringement on basic civil rights, all the while carrying out their own illegal activities without fear of exposure. While I still delight in a good hit on Bush and Cheney any day of the week, reading 1,100 pages of it was difficult. Why? Because there was no movement in the characters or the story. It was just one bad thing after another happening, built up with heavy-handed foreshadowing (paraphrase: “he was certainly wrong about that”; “he was right about it getting much worse”; “there would be no Halloween”).

The story just ends, too, with a halfhearted explanation as to why the Dome was there in the first place and why it was removed; I mean, I get that it was supposed to be halfhearted because of who put it there, but that doesn’t make the story any more satisfying. I don’t really need a reason for the Dome to be there, but I do need my characters to be distinctive and sympathetic, my resolution firm, my eyes to not be skimming long passages because I somehow know that they’re not relevant to the overarching plot.

It’s really hard to pinpoint one fatal flaw with Under the Dome; there are so many lowlights in the story, but the biggest one I can think of is this: I just wasn’t frightened. It’s not that the supernatural wasn’t present enough (it wasn’t), but it’s that inhumanity of some of the characters was so over the top as to be cartoonish. King can create the horror of detached humanity (Randall Flagg’s followers in The Stand immediately spring to mind), but the Cheney character (one James Rennie, used car salesman) was too detached; there was no conflict in his mind, there was no regret, just a sadism and hunger for control. Rennie was inhuman to the point of unbelievability; Flagg, for example, also has no conflict or regret, but that’s because he’s not human. The human followers of Flagg are responding negatively to things they see as real offenses and injuries and flaws, and the insecurity therein is exploited expertly by Flagg to create his Las Vegas enclave of evil. In the end, though, they think they’re doing things right and that’s why they continue on their path. Rennie and his cronies, though, know that what they’re doing is wrong, know that there will be a day when the Dome comes up and they’ll be accountable, but they don’t seem to care. I suppose that should be more frightening, but when my picture of Rennie resembles a fat Judge Doom from Who Framed Roger Rabbit, there’s some serious trouble with the characterization, motivation and resolutions of the bad guys.

I hope the next Stephen King is an on.

Onto the book list:

Finished:

1) The Broken Teaglass by Emily Arsenault
2) The War of Art: Break Through the Blocks and Win Your Inner Creative Battles by Steven Pressfield
3) The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peal Society by Mary Ann Shaffer and Annie Barrows
4) Shades of Grey: The Road to High Saffron by Jasper Fforde
5) Marie Antoinette: The Journey by Antonia Fraser
6) Unaccustomed Earth: Stories by Jhumpa Lahiri
7) Wishful Drinking by Carrie Fisher
8) Lavinia by Ursula K. Le Guin
9) Shakespeare’s Wife by Germaine Greer
10) The Case for Books: Past, Present, and Future by Robert Darnton
11) Under the Dome by Stephen King

Re-read:

Empty

Currently Reading:

1) Sex with Kings: 500 Years of Adultery, Power, Rivalry, and Revenge by Eleanor Herman

Waiting To Be Read (Already Purchased, Got as Gifts, Borrowed from My Husband or Otherwise Accessible without the Use of Funds, But Not an Assurance That I Will Read These Before I Buy More Books):

1) Sex with the Queen: 900 Years of Vile Kings, Virile Lovers, and Passionate Politics by Eleanor Herman
2) The World in Half by Cristina Henriquez