Horrible writing from 'The Tommyknockers,' Part 2

This book needs to be over.  It is SO BAD.  There are less than a hundred pages left and I keep trying to sit down and finish it, but then it gets too bad.  I don't want to give away just how bad, but I will let these two examples speak for themselves:

One of life's great truths is this: when one is about to be struck by a speeding six-hundred-pound Coke machine, one need worry about nothing else.  There was a thudding, crunching sound.  The front of Leandro's skull shattered like a Ming vase hurled onto the floor.  A split second later his spine snapped.  For a moment the machine carried him along, plastered to it like a very large bug plastered to the windshield of a fast-moving car.  His splayed legs dragged on the road, the white line unreeling between them.  The heels of his loafers eroded to smoking rubber nodules.  One fell off.

 If your question is, 'Did a character just get attacked by a giant, moving Coke machine?', then the answer is, 'Yes, this novel is, in fact, that bad.'  Also, the similes.  The terrible, terrible similes.  They fall like a Ming vase hurled onto the floor.

One more, which comes from a scene where Bobbi is describing the nature of the aliens who are possessing the town:

We're builders, not understanders.

If you're curious, SK uses the not-a-word 'understanders' more than once.  I mean, I am all for blaming his addled state for this catastrophe, but I also have to ask, where were his editors?

Horrible writing from 'Tommyknockers,' Part 1

I have a feeling this will be a multi-post topic.

I have started The Tommyknockers.  It is as bad as I remember.  Actually, I don't remember much about it, so it must be super bad.  And it is.  For instance, one of the characters is constantly referenced by her last name.  Think it over.  It's weird.  It feels wrong.  It feels lazy.  Ugh.

Anyway, I figured that at least if I can revel in the terrible writing, it might make it slightly more fun.  So here is the best passage I have found so far:

When he got drunk, his heart got hot.  The nukes.  The goddam nukes.  It was symbolic, yeah, okay, you didn't really have to be Freud to figure out that what he was really protesting was the reactor in his own heart.  When it came to matters of restraint, James Gardener had a bad containment system.  There was some technician inside who should have long since been fired.  He sat and played with all the wrong switches.  That guy wouldn't be really happy until Jim Gardener went China Syndrome.

I just........yeah.  Possibly the lengthiest and worst metaphor in SK's oeuvre, although I have a feeling that there are still more gems to come.