Why is there so much Stephen King stuff out there right now?
It has to do with why his stories resonate so much with us.
There’s a LOT of Stephen King in the zeitgeist lately. I think there’s a reason for that.
First things first, though. I have avoided the novels King wrote as they seem way too long for my arrested attention span; my guess is a guy who’s as successful as King can kill as many trees as he wants and no editor’s going to tell him that 1,200 pages may be a tad too long for a story about a bunch of kids who grow up to fight a giant spider.
But I am addicted to his short stories and novellas for the usual reasons everyone loves Stephen King. He finds a way to create a supernatural/horror metaphor for the fears, pain, sorrow and real terrors of everyday life, with vividly drawn characters with whom we can identify, and tight, compelling and suprising narratives.
So it is that I have been following several recent King narratives: AT&T’s Mr. Mercedes TV series; the Netflix film Gerald’s Game; the 2003 Hard Case Crime novel Joyland (it’s only new to me); and this year’s movie reinvention of IT. (There are spoilers ahead!)
Mr. Mercedes
First Mr. Mercedes. It’s nominally a detective procedural centering on burnout homicide detective Bill Hodges, who left his Ohio police job after years unsuccessfully trying to solve the case of the so-called Mercedes killer, a guy who stole a Mercedes-Benz and ran down a bunch of people at a job center. Hodges begins getting taunting messages from the killer, which rouses him from his alcoholic haze long enough to resume the chase.
The show (and, I presume, the book, which I have not read) pursues a dual narrative that follows Hodges as he emerges from his man cave and Brady Hartsfield, the killer, who in reality is a psycho loser who toils at a dead-end job at an electronics store while pursuing an undefined grudge against humanity with the use of his hacker skills.
The show — as most King narratives — is less about the story, one of crime and punishment, and more about the subtext, which, in this case, is what makes a man a man.
The workaholic Hodges (played by the amazing Brendan Gleeson) is a failed cop, husband and father who finds out late in life that he has a slim shot at redemption.
Hartsfield (played by a twitchy, dead-eyed Harry Treadaway) is a hot mess of psycho torment: A victim of incest, the surviving brother of a dead toddler, the persecuted underling of corporate douchebags, who is taking his revenge out on whomever happens to cross his path.
The way they each push the other’s buttons is a commentary on how men try — and generally fail — to live up to the responsibilities and expectations of society, leaving emotional and physical wreckage in their wake. The performances and characterizations carry the story, which is otherwise lurid and on the nose, as is much of King’s oeuvre in my experience. (The show benefits from a killer soundtrack of oldies and blues songs.)
Gerald’s Game
The same might be said of Netflix’s Gerald’s Game, which is a chamber horror piece with a simple premise.
A middle-aged couple drives up to a remote lakeside cabin to attempt to salvage their troubled marriage. The husband wants to put some spark into their moribund sex life by handcuffing the wife to the bed, then promptly keels over dead from a heart attack, leaving the wife trapped.
As she grows delirious from thirst and hunger, she hallucinates conversations among a version of herself, her dead husband and even her younger self while working out how to escape. Flashbacks to a horrific incestuous childhood incident inform her emotional issues. And there may or may not be an eerie burglar in the mix.
Again, it’s the illumination of the characters that make the film worth watching: The woman (played by an amazing Carla Gugino), her creepazoid husband (Bruce Greenwood) and her equally creepazoid father (a cast-against-type Henry Thomas). The psychology is dime-store shallow, but the emotional beats — and Gugino’s performance — give real weight to her eventual breakthrough, which counterbalances the, again, lurid and cheap narrative tricks.
IT
Having seen these two King stories, I was not surprised to see a reprise of familiar themes and tropes in It, about a gang of bullied teen outcasts in 1988 who uncover the horrific mystery behind the disappearance of children in their small town of Derry, Maine. The story beats are all there: Parental abuse, psycho bullies, the hint of incest (what’s with all the incest?), the pain of being an outcast loser.
But the kids are all distinctly drawn (at least the four main kids are) and brought to life by extremely talented young actors (including Stranger Things’ Finn Wolfhard and a standout Sophia Lillis), and their recognizable childhood traumas make the movie worth the time. The story beats, again, are predictable, though the villainous presence in this case — Pennywise the Clown — is perhaps King’s most compelling creation.
Joyland
Which brings me, finally, to Joyland. It’s a mystery novel set in a cut-rate Southern seaside amusement park in 1973 and centers on a lovelorn college student, his crew of fellow carnival workers, the daughter of a rich evangelist and her ailing son — and the ghost of a murdered girl who dwells in the carnival’s haunted house ride.
The setup is penny dreadful, but the story is really a coming-of-age narrative, with the protagonist as a midway Holden Caulfield.
King shows his strength in the specificity of his hero’s emotional journey; he clearly remembers what it was like to be 21 with a broken heart. There’s a bit of Summer of ‘42 in this book as well, but the strong sense of nostalgia (and cornball carny setting) don’t overwhelm the truth of the emotional arc, which doesn’t go where you think it will go. (Well, it does, but as in many King stories, it’s not necessarily a happy ending.)
I related strongly to this story as I am almost the age of the protagonist and had some of the same experiences he did at that time (including being dumped over a summer, as well as performing “in the fur” one warm season at Disneyland), so the story took me a bit by surprise.
I guess my takeaway from all of this is that King is one of the great humanist storytellers or our time who understands (or can imagine) what it’s like to be a child, a teen, a young adult and an old adult, and how the cruelties and joys of life can leave a mark on your psyche.
And he knows how to spin those emotional truths into a strong if at times obvious story that nevertheless carries you along, and leaves you wanting more.
I think his stories continue to resonate with us because they find the heart of our shared humanity, and the pull of that is particularly potent during a time of upheaval and division. As turbulent as things can get, his stories tell us, there’s always love to anchor us and hope to keep us going.
What do you think? Do you love Stephen King? Why?
