Duma Key

I recently read Stephen King's Duma Key. As with most things I post here, I'm posting mainly as a note to myself so if you haven't read the book consider this your **Spoiler Alert**.

The first thing I have to say about this book is that it read like a novel-length short story that should have been edited about ten to twenty more times, each revision removing more than the next. This would have been a great story at about the length of "1408." As it stands, the thing is a monstrosity composed of a few lush literary oases separated by several vast and inhospitable literary deserts.

Let me clarify before I go on: this is my second time actually making an attempt to read this book. The first time I tried to read it, I put it down at around page 100 and didn't go back to it for about a year.

It didn't get much better the second time around.

So what have I learned from the experience? Many things, but mainly I learned that it's easy -- even for the acknowledged 'master' of a genre -- to fail to revise with a brutal honesty. I don't know if King just lacked the desire to do what needed to be done (as Mark Twain said -- first underline all the parts you like best ... then delete them) or if he actually thought every single paragraph in the work actually had to be there (it didn't).

Having read this book made me not want to read another Stephen King book again in my life, though I probably will. At any rate, here are some questions I'm left with regarding the story itself:

1. If Edgar Freemantle is so rich, why the hell doesn't he have a cell phone?
2. What's up with the housekeeper that King seems to totally forget about throughout most of the book? The one he only mentions when it's convenient -- about two or three times in the entire book?
3. If the evil monster had the capacity to kill people with heart attacks, etc., all the way across the country, why the hell did it need to send an over-the-hill, boozed-up art critic to kill Freemantle's daughter? And why the hell couldn't the young, healthy, athletic daughter take the old crow when the latter attacked the former in her apartment?
4. What the hell was up with all the physicality between the father and daughter? That seemed somewhat over the line at times, like when Freemantle is describing her breasts and that whole scene in the pool ... and that kiss on the lips. I mean ... wtf?

Bottom line:

Note to self: When writing a novel, make sure it's a novel and not just a fat short story composed of 85% character development -- of One character.

Oh yeah, and just one more thing: Dr. Xander, the big dude who got Freemantle started on his way? Yep, that's your King requisite Magical Negro.