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You mention you originally tried to write Under the Dome much earlier in your career. What made you return to it now, and how is the finished novel different from the one you first intended to write?
I've got a pretty wild imagination, or so people say, and I have a lot of ideas for stories. A lot of them drop by the wayside, but the good ones stay in the neighborhood. Under the Dome is a novel I tried to write much earlier in my career, first in 1976, I think, and again in the early 1980s. The first try was close to the book; the second was to have a whole lot of people trapped in an apartment building. I was playing around with two titles for a while back then, Under the Dome and The Cannibals, and I guess the second one gives some indication of where I was thinking of taking it. Anyway, I couldn't wrap my head around it then, but it kept coming back, the good ones keep coming back. A few years ago I was flying to Australia for a motorcycle trip through the Outback-fourteen hours in a plane-and the thing just sort of took over my head, and I thought it through, decided I should try again, and by the time the plane landed I'd pretty much worked it out.
It has been said Under the Dome is a social allegory comparable in some ways to The Stand. What are some similarities between the two works?
They're both big novels, big canvases populated with many, many characters, and both deal with what I think of as Big Themes. The Stand of course is a road novel, or a novel of many roads across America, while Under the Dome is set within the confines of Chester's Mill, a small town in western Maine. I think they're both political and social novels concerned with the dynamic of power under the extreme pressure of crisis, how incompetency can rise to the top, how easy it is for evil to hold sway, how people when they feel threatened have a tendency to resist the call of sanity and surrender their will to someone they perceive as a strong leader-Flagg in The Stand, Big Jim Rennie in Chester's Mill. Big Jim, though, is entirely of our world. Not the case with Flagg.
Like some of your earlier work, Under the Dome deals with small towns and small-town politics. What aspects of small-town life and politics did you address with the book?
Small towns are what I know, and I've been writing about them pretty much my whole life. In some ways they're a microcosm for any community, but there's an intimacy-or a lack of anonymity-that makes things more interesting, for me at least. Junior Rennie can walk down Main Street in Chester's Mill and just about everyone knows him by sight, but nobody knows about these terrible headaches he's been having, or the terrible things they make him do. As familiar as people may be, they're unpredictable. Politics everywhere is personal, but in small towns the mechanisms of power are pretty easy to manipulate, probably easier for bad ends than for good.
If you found yourself in Dale Barbara's shoes, what would you have done differently?
That's an interesting question, because I look at Dale Barbara as my character, the one I identified with most as a way of getting inside the novel's world. So I don't know that I'd have done anything differently. Dale's heading out of town as the novel opens-he's been a drifter since his days in the army and Iraq, and he has reason to think his time is up in Chester's Mill-and given what happens as he's walking along Route 119, I guess I might have walked a little faster. Anyone would have, had they known what was coming. But the point is, we don't know what's coming, and in a larger sense, we're all under the dome whether we like it or not. What happens to the town and many of the people in it is awful, but for Barbie it's a test that he needs to take. And one that he passes.
What is the most important lesson Dale learns by the end of Under the Dome?
The most important lessons are pretty simple, I think, though they're hard to learn. This is going to sound a little hippie-dippy, but that's my generation, and I was a hippie, you know? All life is precious. So often we don't see that, don't feel it. We feel it with what we love, but that's not seeing it whole. All life is precious. I don't think there is a more important lesson than that.
FULL DARK NO STARS
- 1 -
The one thing nobody asked in casual conversation, Darcy thought in the days after she found what she found in the garage, was this: How’s your marriage? They asked how was your weekend and how was your trip to Florida and how’s your health and how are the kids; they even asked how’s life been treatin you, hon? But nobody asked how’s your marriage?
Good, she would have answered the question before that night. Everything’s fine.
She had been born Darcellen Madsen (Darcellen, a name only parents besotted with a freshly purchased book of baby names could love), in the year John F. Kennedy was elected President. She was raised in Freeport, Maine, back when it was a town instead of an adjunct to L.L.Bean, America’s first superstore, and half a dozen other oversized retail operations of the sort that are called “outlets” (as if they were sewer drains rather than shopping locations). She went to Freeport High School, and then to Addison Business School, where she learned secretarial skills. She was hired by Joe Ransome Chevrolet, which by 1984, when she left the company, was the largest car dealership in Portland. She was plain, but with the help of two marginally more sophisticated girlfriends, learned enough makeup skills to make herself pretty on workdays and downright eye-catching on Friday and Saturday nights, when a bunch of them liked to go out for margaritas at The Lighthouse or Mexican Mike’s (where there was live music).
In 1982, Joe Ransome hired a Portland accounting firm to help him figure out his tax situation, which had become complicated (“The kind of problem you want to have,” Darcy overheard him tell one of the senior salesmen). A pair of briefcase-toting men came out, one old and one young. Both wore glasses and conservative suits; both combed their short hair neatly away from their foreheads in a way that made Darcy think of the photographs in her mother’s MEMORIES OF ’54 senior yearbook, the one with the image of a boy cheerleader holding a megaphone to his mouth stamped on its faux-leather cover.
The younger accountant was Bob Anderson. She got talking with him on their second day at the dealership, and in the course of their conversation, asked him if he had any hobbies. Yes, he said, he was a numismatist.
He started to tell her what that was and she said, “I know. My father collects Lady Liberty dimes and buffalo-head nickels. He says they’re his numismatical hobby-horse. Do you have a hobby-horse, Mr. Anderson?”
He did: wheat pennies. His greatest hope was to some day come across a 1955 double-date, which was—
But she knew that, too. The ’55 double-date was a mistake. A valuable mistake.
From the story “A Good Marriage”, to be published in FULL DARK, NO STARS by Stephen King. Copyright c 2010 by Stephen King. Reprinted by permission of Scribner, a Division of Simon & Schuster, Inc.
Full Dark, No Stars
In epic works like his Dark Tower series, The Stand and his recent Under the Dome, legendary author Stephen King has proven that he’s a master at working on a large canvas. His grand story arcs are, quite simply, breathtaking. But there’s something special about his shorter works. More intimate, immediate and intense, they’re beautifully crafted gems, and the thrills—and chills—hit you with surgical precision.
Full Dark, No Stars is a perfect example. A dark quartet of never-before-published novellas, it features:
• 1922—When Wilfred and his wife move onto land willed to her by her father, it sets in motion a gruesome sequence of events that leads to madness…and murder.
• Big Driver—Tess, a mystery writer, takes a shortcut home, only to run into a nightmare more terrifying than her stories.
• Fair Extension—In this darkly funny tale, cancer patient Harry Streeter decides to make a deal with the devil, but as always, there’s a price to pay.
• A Good Marriage—Darcy learns more about her husband of 20 years than she would have liked to know when she stumbles across a mysterious box in their garage.
Tautly plotted and beautifully told, this is Stephen King at the top of his game.
Hardcover : 384 pages
Publisher: Scribner/Simon & Schuster ( November 09, 2010 )
Item #: 13-152046
ISBN: 9781439192566
Product Dimensions: 6.125 x 9.25 x 0.86inches
Product Weight: 19.0 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
Different 
May 07, 2012
Liked these short stories. a little different than what I am used to reading from the King but great just the same. Such an imagination.
Reviewer: dj
Fair to partly cloudy
October 17, 2011
I have always loved Kings books, The Stand is one of my favorite books. These short stories are Ok but not what I want when I Buy Some thing from Stephen King They Lack Pizazz. Nothing really holds you or, compeles you to read one more chapter, this will not keep you up till 4:00AM when you have to work thae next day, and that is what I expect from SK. Yea I no thats a lot to expect but hey its Stephen King
Reviewer: wjc111rv
Fantastic!
May 01, 2011
Reviewer: Jc
Loved these stories
April 27, 2011
I haven't ready Stephen King for awhile, so I was anxious to read this book. These stories were GREAT!! I enjoyed each one for a different reason. He is a great writer and I will always read whatever he puts out there. He never fails to surprise and shock me. Read these and enjoy!!
Reviewer: Vic
Best king book in long time!!
April 11, 2011
Couldnt put it down. A+
Reviewer: tk
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