http://www.popmatters.com/pm/article/116440-self-proclaimed-lazy-author-stephen-king-releases-his-51st-novel/
Self-proclaimed `lazy' author Stephen King releases his 51st novel
By James Lileks
Star Tribune (Minneapolis) (MCT)
"You know, I'm a lazy son of a gun."
So says Stephen King: a man who just published a story in the New Yorker and a
review of the Raymond Carver biography in the New York Review of Books. He also
has a piece in the horror mag Fangoria and a poem in the current issue of
Playboy. Anything else? "Under the Dome," his 51st novel, all 1,072 pages,
drops this month. He just finished a five-part graphic novel for DC comics, as
well. In his spare time, perhaps between putting away the breakfast dishes and
waiting for the computer to boot up, he wrote a musical with John Mellencamp.
Lazy?
We'll get to that. Let's get the obvious stuff out of the way first. No, he's
not spooky. Anyone who expects a creepy guy with a ghoulish laugh probably
thinks Vincent Price sat around the house in a black cape, casting spells.
Stephen King is an affable, funny, gracious, effortlessly conversational
fellow. He could be a guy you worked with in a college restaurant who'd dropped
out but knew lots of stuff and had some interesting ideas.
A normal fellow except for the part about being one of the most successful
authors in human history, the American answer to Dickens.
His latest, "Under the Dome," might be described as "`The Stand' Under Glass."
It has the epic length and apocalyptic character of his eschatological pandemic
classic, but instead of a cross-country tale of harrowing collapse, the story
unfolds under a clear dome that seals off a small town in Maine (just north of
Castle Rock, for all you Constant Readers). It can't be breached. There's no
explanation. How things fall apart, how ordinary folk react to extraordinary,
inexplicable circumstances these are timeless King themes. So perhaps it's
apt that they come together in a book he's been working on for longer than half
of his fans have been alive.
"I started it in 1976, got about 75 pages into it and then I saw what the
scope of the thing was going to be, how many technological issues it raised,
and I buckled. I'm not a sci-fi writer; I don't know a lot about technology, so
I thought I'd try again, set it in an apartment building, and then I wouldn't
have to deal with what the weather would be like under a dome. But I didn't
like any of the characters, so I put it away."
When he returned to the book years later, he had help with issues most of us
don't confront in our jobs: the proper way to amputate a leg, meteorology in
closed systems and the consumption rate of LP gas, which matters a lot when
you're cut off from civilization, all you have is propane, and most of it's
been diverted by the bad guys. But King had the same question as the readers:
What caused a typical American town to be cut off from the world on an ordinary
October day?
"I knew what was generating the dome, but I had no idea who or why or what. I
think things happen, and we don't understand why; one of the great attractions
of some stories is the uncertainty."
That's his strong suit, really; the uncertainties provide more delicious
shivers than the answers. "From a Buick 8," a novel about the Maine Highway
Patrol that also happens to be about a car from another world that spews
nightmarish flora from its trunk, has no answers. We're not really sure what
happened in the `20s at the Overlook Hotel in "The Shining," are we? There's a
handful of smoke at the heart of his best stories. Is this any different?
"I went into this with a commitment to letting the reader know they find out
why it all happened. In a book this long, the reader deserves an explanation."
That's reader, singular. Not "readers." It's a one-on-one relationship. At this
point in his career, the 62-year-old King has extraordinary creative latitude,
but he doesn't write to the readers' expectations; he writes first for himself
and the work.
"With `Under the Dome' I wanted to write a story that's all story," he said. "I
wanted to amuse myself, because if it doesn't interest me, it won't interest
anyone else."
When he first starting selling big, he hit a sweet spot that seldom happens in
publishing, and is rarely maintained over decades: instant connection with a
large audience. It was as if the subconscious of the era was a downed power
line, sparking and dancing, and King just happened to pick it up and plug it in.
Or so it seemed. The success annoyed some critics, who regarded the books as
the literary equivalent of a big tub of buttered popcorn. The much-praised
movie version of "The Shining" was seen more as director Stanley Kubrick's work
than King's, and the pop-cult mulch that King heaped around his stories made it
easy to dismiss them as things you'd take to occupy the hours on a beach
vacation. "Misery," a lean, horrifying and grimly
