Stephen King’s latest…the new It?

Photograph: Dick Dickinson

His name still conjures up a vast universe of spookiness, even if his popularity has been slightly eclipsed by a bunch of teen wizards. This week, Stephen King’s latest, Under the Dome, hits shelves. At a weighty 1,074 pages, the sci-fi novel—about a small Maine town unraveling after being cut off by a mysterious, missile-proof dome—has all of the elements that make King’s work so comfortable and gripping (not to mention scary). He’s not merely a craftsperson but a writer of conviction and elegance. Tearing our way through Under the Dome, we were reminded of a handful of other King highlights.

Under the Dome is not quite as long as…It (1986).
A hundred pages thicker, this doorstop was the best-selling title of its year, also ruining clowns for an entire generation. Pennywise, the tale’s rubber-nosed, dancing villain, stalks the sewers and drags little boys to their doom. Subtly, King’s themes of social alienation and the desperate coolness of high school cut even closer to the bone.

Expressly political, it’s reminiscent of…Firestarter (1980).
The closest thing Under the Dome has to a hero is a fry cook and Iraq War vet who rails against the book’s Bushie car-salesman-cum-demagogue. King has long aligned himself with lefty rage: Firestarter features a genetically altered family targeted by an evil CIA-like organization called “the Shop.”

As a vision of the fragility of civilization, it’s almost as good as…The Stand (1978).
King’s masterpiece takes a global-killing superflu, “Captain Trips,” and lays waste to 99 percent of the human population. (Tellingly, the virus is government-made.) But although his dazzling set pieces-—like a nail-biting walk through darkened Lincoln Tunnel—certainly bring the terror, the novel is mainly about power and the new ethical conflicts that arise in its absence.

Filled with funny scenes, it’s as playful—and tight—as…Skeleton Crew (1985).
Until you dive into the author’s second collection of shorts, you can’t appreciate his gift for rigorous construction. Here are some of the stories that made the freelancing King a genre legend, including his trapped-in-the-supermarket “The Mist,” the desert-island diary “Survivor Type” and the cautionary what-if travelogue, “The Jaunt.”

Anchored in local color and language, it’s as vivid as…Dolores Claiborne (1992).
King is always strong on his Maine characters—feisty, libertarian, a touch sheltered. Dolores Claiborne qualifies as a high point for him in this regard: a book with no chapters or pauses, just a lengthy reminiscence by one woman of her life, her career and, in a bold stroke, her culpability in a murder.

Under the Dome comes out Tue 10; Scribner, $35. King reads Tue 10 at The Times Center.

Buy Under the Dome from Amazon.com | Buy it from BN.com

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