STEPHEN KING'S GLASS MENAGERIE

by James Parker
Published: New York Times, November 5, 2009

UNDER THE DOME
By Stephen King
1,074 pp. Scribner.
US$35

Now that the town halls have blazed with vituperation, and fantastical patriots are girding themselves for fascist/socialist lockdown, Americans of a certain vintage must be feeling a familiar circumambient thrill. Boomers, you know what I’m talking about: cranks empowered, strange throes and upthrusts, hyperbolic placards brandished in the streets — it’s the ’60s all over again! Once more the air turns interrogative: something’s happening here, but we don’t know what it is, do we, Mr. Jones? Stop, children, what’s that sound?

In Stephen King’s new novel, “Under the Dome,” the people of Chester's Mill, Me., get a letter from the president. Typically exalted in its rhetoric, it wrings a tear from at least one grateful citizen. But Big Jim Rennie, the town’s second selectman, is disgusted. He scowls at the printed sheet. Yep, there it is in black and white: “The bastard had signed it himself, and using all three of his names, including the terrorist one in the middle.

Why is Obama writing to Chester’s Mill? Because an enormous transparent dome, not breachable by prayer, bullet, laser beam or cruise missile, has suddenly and unaccountably descended over the town. Its provenance is uncertain (aliens? North Korea?), but its effect is incontrovertible: no one gets in, no one gets out. Some kind of energy field is attached to it; at close range it blows up iPods and (bad news for incautious oldsters) pace­makers, and sends a gust of “horripilation” through the human nervous system.
The full revirw at NYT.