Prepare to Meet Your Dome!

Under the Dome
by Stephen King
New York : Scribner, 2009

Stephen King's newest novel, Under the Dome, is probably the best thing he's written this decade. In the very near future, the town of Chester's Mill is suddenly and inexplicably cut off from the rest of the world by an invisible, impenetrable dome. There is no warning, and several people (and one unfortunate woodchuck) suffer the consequences immediately. For everyone else, the horror escalates rapidly as one thing after another goes wrong; the town's propane supply is mysteriously short, the most powerful politician in town becomes increasingly despotic, and the sky begins to darken, slowly but inexorably.

In the tradition of Needful Things and Tommyknockers, Under the Dome features King's signature style of ensemble casts. Though the story closely follows a handful of characters, the whole town is placed, as it were, under the microscope. Also, like most of King's writing, the horror and tragedy stem from basic human emotions and responses more than on any supernatural malevolence. Though the Dome has created a terrible situation, it is ultimately the actions of the townsfolk which drive the hellish pace of the story; and it is hellish.

Though bulky and somewhat recycled (is there any small town in Maine safe from annihilation?), the story is paced beautifully. There are no lulls in the action, and there are several scenes, including the climactic ending, which truly filled me with dread. One of the best things about this particular story is its horrible inevitability, and while there are some surprises, it is even worse knowing what's going to happen, and watching it still happen anyway.

The best part of this story is its thorough modernity. Under the Dome does not ignore the changing nature of communications technology, and in fact relies on it in several places to advance the plot. The media and military know about what's happening; in fact, the whole world knows, and must watch as the reader watches with sick fascination as calamities descend on Chester's Mill. They helplessly watch as the town shows signs of climate-change in miniature, rape becomes an epidemic, and the drug-culture literally blows up in their faces. If the dome is a trap, it is also a funhouse mirror, reflecting the times in stark relief.

The Scalinata in Literature

I had the weirdest coincidence this last weekend, in that I was reading two separate books that take place in two totally different time periods and both of them mentioned the exact same architectural feature in Rome.

The Spanish Stairs (Scalinata della Trinità dei Monti) were built in the 1720's to connect the Piazza di Spagna to the church of Trinità dei Monti. The picture on the left shows the fountain in the Piazza, the church above and on the right is the Keats-Shelley house. That's right, John Keats and Percy Shelley. John Keats lived his last days on earth looking out the window over the Spanish Stairs.

And that's where the story gets interesting.

I started reading Tim Powers's novel "The Stress of Her Regard" a while ago, and still haven't quite finished it. The book is set in the heyday of the English romantic poets, and Keats, Byron and Shelley are main players in the story. The novel follows their lives, and explores what truly was the muse that inspired these greatest of poets to craft their works. Powers's explanation is that the muse was actually a vampiric creature known to the Greeks as a Lamia (note: link contains nude artwork). As the creature slowly drains the life from the poets she alternately inspires them to greater heights of artistry. But over time the poets begin to show the strain on their lives, and eventually they crave to be released from this burden. The scene with Keats plays out with the fantasy creature begging to be let in to keep her lover alive as he dies while gazing over the Scalinata. I totally have not given away even a fraction of this epic fantasy drama by revealing this information. Just know that the rest of it is just as weird and exciting. It took me about 17 years to get around to reading this book, but it was worth the wait.

Halfway through reading "The Stress of Her Regard" I got one of those *sigh* moments and just couldn't be bothered to continue reading it. SO I put down "stress" and picked up something completely different. For no particular reason I was drawn to Alfred Bester's "The Stars My Destination." I had no idea what it was about, it had just been sitting on my bookshelf at home for too long.

It's the twenty-sixth century and Gulliver Foyle is a space marine of sorts who gets stranded out in deep space with no way home. One day while waiting for who knows how long he spies the passing starship "Vorga" and signals for a ride. Vorga ignores his plea and Gully begins to plot his revenge against the ship. While Foyle is tracking down the crew of the ship to find out who gave the order he finds himself in Italy, looking ot meet up with one of the former crew members, where else, but on the Scalinata!

I can't tell you how weird it was for me to just accidentally read two totally different books, by two totally different authors, set about 700 years apart, where they shared the exact same location at a midway point through the story. Just absolutely bizarre.

Both of the books are extremely interesting, but both for different reasons. "The Stress of Her Regard" is great for people who have a penchant for the romantic poets and a taste for the gothic. There are moments that are positively gruesome, and the language is witty and florid. "The Stars My Destination" is more of a sci-fi vendetta adventure story. The story jumps from place to place quickly, and the ending is completely surreal. It's an absolute page turner.

Check it out!

Horror Review - The Vampire of Ropraz

In The Vampire of Ropraz, Jacques Chessex explores the power of myth and superstition in the cold, bitter countryside of Vaud, Switzerland in the early 20th Century. The book is translated eloquently from its original French by W. Donald Wilson, but loses none of its stark poeticism.

The title of this book could have multiple meanings. In one sense, it refers to the hero (and villain) of the story, Charles-Augustin Favez. Favez is accused of a series of grizzly crimes involving the desecration and mutilation of the bodies of three recently-buried young women in the area. In another sense, the Vampire is Ropraz, for the real focus of the story is not on the twisted stable-boy Favez, but the twisted society from which he emerges, calling out for his blood regardless of innocence or guilt. Finally, it could represent the 'woman in white' who visits Favez during his confinement to satisfy her own terrible needs.

Favez' guilt or innocence is incidental to the story; just because he is a scapegoat, after all, doesn't mean that he didn't do it. Instead, the important point to draw from the novel is the way society reacts to what they believe is the truth, or wish to be the truth. The most satisfying aspect of this book was, paradoxically, its opacity. There is no clear answer, no explanation, no vindication. The whole point is, rather, the obscurity and desolation of an obscure and desolate people in a cold wasteland of petty superstitions and subtle derangement.

Horror Review - IT

The best monster stories are never really about the monster. In The Thing, the creature is a wall between the characters, forcing them into paranoia and isolation as they realize they can no longer trust one another. Frankenstein has been interpreted as a tale of postpartum depression. IT continues this tradition, and takes the concept a step further. As with most of Stephen King's early novels, the true horror in the story is not in the lovecraftian, ancient nightmare creature that sleeps beneath the earth, waking every thirty years to eat children and feast on fear; no, in this story the truly horrifying acts are committed by the common folk who live in the fictional town of Derry, Maine.

Through the novel, all of the characters repeatedly come back to a single refrain - "something is wrong in Derry." In the face of racism, homophobia, poverty, repression, anti-Semitism, physical abuse and a host of psychological disorders ranging from sociopathy to PTSD, the monster is almost tangential. Though the characters attribute this wrongness to the monster beneath the town center, the horrifying events which take place there throughout the history of the town need no supernatural cause; in fact, it could be argued that when the creature (dressed as Pennywise the Dancing Clown) is present for the various massacres and atrocities in town, it is there not as an instigator, but to feed on the residue of what was already there to be had. The monster's needs require minimal cultivation at best.

It is no surprise then that the seven children who finally fight the monster are so readily able to do so, and to do so again as adults. By the time they reach their climactic confrontation with It, they almost seem as comfortable in its presence as in that of other human beings, and it is telling that through the book they chose to spend their time in the Barrens, the abandoned, miniature wasteland where the city's sewers break to the surface, which is also the entrance to It's lair. The monster might eat them, but compared to their own lives it was the lesser of two evils.

Another trope of Stephen King's stories is his trademark brand of happy ending, and the undercurrent of positivity which is often lost on casual readers. Like the characters in Needful Things, The Stand, Insomnia and 'Salem's Lot, the heroes of IT find secret strengths within themselves and in their relationships with each other. Terror, in King's world, is fought with laughter, and despair with hope. As they come to believe in the evil mysteries around them, so too do they discover a countermagic within themselves, and every hero has a talisman. This is perhaps more readily apparent in IT, because the monster is so blatanty allegorical, and the children are more readily able to transcend common sense. Faith is essential to the Stephen King mythos, and the rest is window dressing.

Horrific Nostalgia

Paperback horror novels, especially those of Stephen King and Anne Rice, were a vital part of my introduction to independent literacy. Tommyknockers was the first Stephen King book I read, after finding a weather-beaten copy of it on a grandmother's shelf, nestled between her cookbooks and Danielle Steel romances. I read it in three days, hiding it behind my textbooks in class at school while pretending to study. Then I read it again. I was in seventh grade, and it changed my life. I followed that up with The Shining, then The Stand. Simultaneously, I found The Vampire Lestat on a different grandmother's shelf, and became hooked on Vampire Chronicles series.

Over the next few years, I found every book by Stephen King and Anne Rice that my local library owned, then moved on to Clive Barker (who is my favorite author to this day). I read voraciously: in fact, I learned words like "voracious" and "insatiable" from the very books I was consuming. As a child, then a young man, I had no interest in literary fiction, but if it was science fiction, fantasy or horror, I was hooked. Later, I read more traditional literature and mainstream popular fiction by way of the classic gothic works of Mary Shelley and Bram Stoker. These days, my reading tastes are much more varied, but my roots will always be in 20th Century horror.

Imagine my happy surprise, then, when I discovered that we've been receiving a lot of new paperback editions of some of my old childhood favorites:

By Stephen King; Misery, It, The Stand and Skeleton Crew
By Anne Rice; Interview with the Vampire, The Vampire Lestat, and Queen of the Damned

I invite you to share my horror-heydey nostalgia, and to that end I've created a special shelf in our New Arrivals section for paperback books of all genres, horror or otherwise. Other titles on the shelf so far include Of Mice and Men by John Steinbeck, To Kill a Mockingbird, by Harper Lee and The Source, by James Michener (incidentally, my great-grandmother's favorite novel). New additions to that collection will make their way to that shelf.

So what are your favorite paperbacks?

Horror Review - Renfield: Slave of Dracula!

In the spirit of Halloween, this week we highlight a fantastic new twist on one of the seminal works of 19th century gothic horror - Dracula.

With Renfield, Barbara Hambly further explores the tormented story of Dracula's mad minion. Hambly shows the story through the maniac's eyes: his sick obsession with flies and spiders; his connection to the evil Count; the dreams that plague him in the night, and the terrible events that left him raving in the streets of London. Too, we see the man's deepest, most secret motivation - the loving wife and daughter whose whereabouts he must keep from his Master at all costs, even as he falls deeper under the monster's dark power, seeking to make it his own.

As with the original tale, the narrative is a mosaic of disparate pieces - an amalgam of third person prose, journal entries, letters and newspaper clippings. The story of Renfield takes place simultaneously with the events of Dracula, and even includes relevant excerpts from Stoker's novel. Yet Ms. Hambly still manages to create a story that is both original and suspensful: though we know the story of Dracula as deeply as any in the popular mythos, this tale is as terrifying as if it had never been told before. Each character is beholden to his own torment, and Barbara Hambly deftly draws us into their personal horror with a sense of helpless inevitability.

If you are looking for something to bring you into the spirit of the season, this is the book for you.

Revisiting the Vampire Novel