Shoulda Been Shorter - Review of Stephen King's Under the Dome

It shoulda been shorter.

Reading through the world wide web of comments about Stephen King’s Under the Dome, the biggest concern seems to be its intimidating length. At 1,074 pages, it’s certainly not for the faint of heart.  Many feel that reading a book longer than 1,000 pages is more of a chore than a pleasure and wouldn’t even attempt it. Others are willing to consider the tome … but wonder if it could possibly keep their interest for the 10 or 15 or 30 hours it’ll take to climb this particular mountain.

I realized recently that since graduating from Dr. Dolittle and R.L. Stein, King is one of only two authors of whose books I’ve read more than two. In a distant second place is Malcolm Gladwell, who’s written three – all non-fiction and all short, easy reads. But the King count tops a dozen, even before I start looking at the “novellas” and short stories.

Among these dozen-plus books are some of the most memorable passages of prose ever written: Carrie stopping her mother’s heart; Annie Wilkes hobbling the helpless Paul Sheldon and cauterizing the wound; the last word of Pet Semetary; and the horrifying death of Eduard Delacroix. I still remember the bath that lasted two and a half hours while I finished The Dark Half; buying the third installment of The Green Mile in an airport and finishing it before the plane took off; and lying down on my bed to read “Rita Hayworth and the Shawshank Redemption”, only to discover I couldn’t put the damn thing down.

King is also responsible for the most books I’ve started and not finished – a dubious distinction, to say the least. Chief among those are some of his more recent novels in which, by the time I was halfway through, I just didn’t care enough to keep going.

So the question on everyone’s minds is: Will Under the Dome hold our attention like the early classics, or does it wither and die like Desperation and Insomnia?

The answer: somewhere in between.

Certainly, Stephen King has the ability to get your attention when he wants to. The first chapter – “The Airplane and the Woodchuck” – was part of King’s original effort to write this story back in 1978, and though the original 70-page manuscript was lost, he reportedly had no problem recreating that first chapter almost word for word.  When you read it (which you can do, right now, at the Under the Dome website) you’ll understand why. It takes less than two pages for him to portend danger, and less than three pages for the entire world to come crumbling down. That’s three pages that make you say, “Gee, maybe this is worth another one thousand and seventy-one . . .”

The Airplane and the Woodchuck, for me, was one of those moments I’ll remember for a long, long time.  And as the complications ensue – first with the onion-like peeling back of this main obstacle, the dome, and then with the introduction of the villain (who jumps right out of the gate with actions that could, themselves, have launched their own full-length novel) are enough to keep our interest piqued for a long, long time. The first 25 pages are so strong, you’d forgive a lot of meandering finally giving up the epic novel.

As it turns out, that’s not entirely a bad thing.  It’s a good 250 pages between turning points, and not all of the space between is filled with action sequences. That’s not to say that it’s all boring – far from it. King’s writing is characteristically graphic and suspenseful, and Constant Reader is regularly rewarded for his effort. But on the flip side, I did spend a lot of time wondering why this particular chapter was lasting as long as it was, felt as though the author veered all-too-often to the path of self-indulgence.

My wife tells me I’m biased and impatient; a fan of the Harry Potter series, she likes stories that take their time and go into every detail. Me, I’m a screenwriter, and one who likes the shorter screenplays, at that. I’ve never read something longer than Needful Things – and if you do the math, that means I’ve avoided what are often considered to be two of King’s greatest works: The Stand and It. On the one hand, that may make me an unreliable reviewer, since I can’t make an informed comparison to his other two books of comparable length. On the other, these reviews aren’t really written for the diehard fans, who will go out and buy the book anyway – they’re written for the people who are on the fence, trying to figure out whether money – and equally important in this case, their time – in this particular arena.

My sense is that people will say that Under the Dome doesn’t quite measure up to his mid-career epics. I could go into more details about my thoughts on the ending, or whether the plot measures up, or why King’s villains always get erections when they perform violent acts, but I want to avoid spoilers, and there will be plenty of opportunity for those discussions down the line.

In the Author’s Note, on page 1,074, King acknowledges Nan Graham for editing the book down “from the original dinosaur to a beast of slightly more manageable size.” Though we thank Nan immensely for her hard work in making the book read as quickly as it does, if she had gone further we likely would have thanked her even more. I wouldn’t be surprised if an abridged version is somewhere in this book’s future, because although it’s good as is . . .

It shoulda been shorter.