Normally, I would agree with Charles Mudede--"Summer is the time to read a long and challenging book"--but this summer, I've been subsisting on popular fiction. I raced through Michael Connelly's Nine Dragons (it was very good), and I'm still plowing through Justin Cronin's The Passage and Stephen King's Under the Dome. (I've mostly set aside Danielle Trussoni's Angelology, but I'll get back to it soon. It's quite enjoyable.)

I'm beginning to cool towards The Passage. I went back to it after Nine Dragons, and found myself flipping back to get my bearings. And that's when the book's flaws became immediate: the characters are largely indistinguishable, making it difficult to retrace their relationships. Cronin gave his imagination a workout in the novel's first half, but the second half is a mess. Characterization amounts to nothing more than tacking on a nickname. The more I read, the more I realize that Cronin's world hinges on the reader taking things for granted. The Passage isn't believable, but that's not the point. It's hard to care about what's going on. Cronin doesn't explain much, and the story's frequent jumps are jarring. It makes me wonder if he was bluffing the entire time.

There isn't much to say about Under the Dome. It's standard-issue King, a monster novel with a cool concept (an entire town is inexplicably trapped inside a Star Trek-like force field), lots of pop-culture references, and clunky dialogue. Unlike Cronin, however, King knows how to handle a large cast (I think he's at his best when he has lots of characters to work with), and he's having a lot of fun here--probably the most fun he's had since writing The Stand. I haven't really kept up with King, but Under the Dome (which he started and abandoned in 1976) could easily have been put out during his heyday. It may not be a great book, even by his standards, but at least it isn't marred by the narcissism of Lisey's Story (which also struck me as a bitter fuck you to the literary establishment) and the final three Dark Tower novels. Under the Dome is King as we know him: it's funny, unpretentious, and told in his own distinctive voice. It won't win any new converts, but it won't surprise anyone familiar with his work.

Comments

[R. Geezy]

All this proper grammar turns me on.

[R. Geezy]

Your girlfriend would probably disapprove of how much it turns me on.

[Onitsuka Tiger]

ings do not change;we change.sell your clothes and keep your thoughts