The Dead Zone is the book that Stephen King considers his first "real
novel". The story is more related to contemporary America than its
predecessors, and it takes on a more directly political narrative.
Maybe that's why King considers it a more mature effort?
A young college teacher named John Smith is in a terrible car
accident and spends close to five years in a coma. How much has
American culture changed while he was away? The Watergate scandal has
completely ripped apart the political rule book, which is deeply
unsettling on the frail and recovering John Smith. On a more personal
level, his girlfriend has married another man and now has a young
son. On top of all this, John Smith discovers that the brain damage
he suffered in the car accident has amplified a precognitive ability,
which was more subtle since his childhood, when he suffered a milder
head trauma while ice skating. Through his newfound power, John Smith
realizes that the up and coming politician Greg Stillson -- a bully,
a populist, a fascist and a psychopath (not unlike Donald Trump) --
will become the president of the USA several years into the future
and cause a nuclear war. The good old philosophical dilemma "If you
could travel back in time would you murder Adolf Hitler to avert the
killing of millions" is explicitly articulated by John Smith as he
begins to consider the idea of murdering Stillson. Throughout large
parts of the book, the reader expects this outcome, but King still
manages to surprise us in the end.
I think the three premises of the book -- being away for a long time
and returning to a changed country, having clairvoyant abilities, and
the moral sides of using violence to stop a catastrophe -- are all
interesting and make up for an engaging narrative. Unfortunately, the
structure of the book is a bit clumsy. At the beginning of the book
we are presented with John Smith's story arc, as well as that of a
horrible killer and that of Greg Stillson. We get the impression that
King is establishing several parallel and equally important threads
that will be spun together later in the book, but soon the book deals
mostly with the long recovery of John Smith. And this middle part of
the book seems to drag on for too long. The "killer" yarn is resolved
about halfway through the book and seems to have the single
significance of confirming Smith's extraordinary sense to himself.
The Greg Stillson part of the story is also in the background for
much of the book, until we get a huge exposition dump in the form
of Smith's research notes towards the end of the book. And the climax
of the book, Smith's planning and attack on Stillson, feels like it's
just a small part of the whole.
As always, King name drops a bunch of contemporary culture, like The
Ramones, Walter Cronkite, etc. And in line with the theme of the book
he mentions several real American politicians, like Nixon, Reagan,
Carter, etc. And he weaves in a few references to his own works, like
'salem's Lot, Stovington and Castle Rock (which is mentioned for the
first time in this book). Carrie is also mentioned, as a fictional
character in a book, not as an in-universe character. The strangler/
killer/rapist story in the book is reminiscent of King's short story
Strawberry Spring.
