It Leads, Indeed

Reviewing Stephen King's If It Bleeds

In an interview on multiverses from 2015, Michael Moorcock states that authors who write a lot, gradually and unintentionally start writing about the same character. While Moorcock goes on to explain how that phenomenon affected his own work, especially in Eternal Champion, my mind drifts to another of my favorite authors, Stephen King, whose protagonists are usually a carbon copy of his younger self: white male author, married with children, lives in New England, preferably in Maine. In fact, King writes so much that he can afford to run four or five separate protagonists issuing from a certain range of archetypes. The same applies to his tropes and villains by the way. Since the preparatory work would take a lot of time (but would be totally worth it!) I will not present you a list of all tropes that King deals with and how he tends to cross two or more of those in his stories and novels - anyone who has read some King will know what I am talking about.

What I am definitely NOT suggesting is that his books are simple and repetitive - on the contrary, he is versatile enough to take limited material and make something new out of it in each new book. It is a substantial part of the King universe that single repeated elements are frequently interconnected to add to the complexity. As far as I'm concerned I could keep on reading the adventures of the same author from Maine forever. I love that small town feeling (ayuh, I do!) the ever underlying and growing dread in most of his stories, his authorial voice, his inherent belief in hope.

In that sense, If It Bleeds was a jackpot for me. Although 2020 was a horrible year until now, it was astonishingly great in terms of new horror book releases and the new King was a wonderfully pleasant surprise. 

The first story, "Mr. Harrigan's Phone", took me back to my childhood. Not because I was a child at the time this story is set, in the early aughts - my childhood was set about ten to fifteen years earlier than that. But, in my mind, I tend to place the trope "technology meets the mysterious/numinous" which can often be found in King's early writings like "Word Processor of the Gods", "The Mangler" or even Christine, into the end of 80s and early 90s. Even though these technological products or objects that come to life or are being manipulated by supernatural entities often prove to be thoroughly spiteful or malevolent, they can also be more sweet natured, causing only limited harm or deserved harm, if any. I call those latter stories King's feel-good stories or fairy tale stories where usually a kindhearted protagonist gets some kind of bonus wish (or several wishes) in life that are offered to them through a conventionally inanimate object. In "Mr. Harrigan's Phone" it is an iPhone that ensures the connection between two people beyond the grave.

"The Life of Chuck" is my favorite story of this collection simply because it has an unusual structure and an exceptionally deep concept. Three acts or moments in the life of Charles "Chuck" Krantz, told in reverse order; beginning with a later point in his life, going back to his childhood. Interesting is also King's conception of microcosm as macrocosm; that in the life of every individual there is hidden a whole universe that is born, grows and dies with them.

As it is now widely known, the titular "If It Bleeds" (an allusion to the journalistic motto "If it bleeds, it leads" meaning that violence and bloody incidences get special attention in press reports) is a Holly Gibney story - a minor character in the recently published Outsider, but a character important enough to King that she leads in a number of his other works such as Mr. Mercedes, Finders Keepers or End of Watch. I have to admit here that I have not read The Outsider before If It Bleeds - only incidentally have I heard that it is about someone wrongly convicted of being a child murderer and I really have a hard time dealing with descriptions of children being abused, beaten etc. But now I regret it and see that by reading "If It Bleeds" first, I have spoiled that read for myself. In hindsight I think it would have been better for me to have read Outsider first because there are just so many allusions, even Holly G.'s psychology and mood is still massively under the influence of something that happened in her Outsider days. That being said, I still enjoyed this as a crime/horror novella. And I definitely will read The Outsider next, because the concept behind the so-called Outsiders is super interesting and has me curious for more. I even hope King writes a sequel where the Outsiders take over the world, but we can only wait and see what comes next.

Last but not least comes "Rat", another story reminiscent of early King days, and it feels almost like an assortment of his favorite recurring characters and tropes I have mentioned above: a storm, an author married with children, some kind of insanity in his past, a sickness that is magnified by loneliness and finally a Faustian deal with a rat. Or was that deal just a fever dream? Jack Torrance creeps through these pages along with "The Storm of the Century"...

Fun fact - only fun in retrospect though, is that the protagonist Drew shakes hands with a heavily sick man and catches his bug. When symptoms start to show, the reader is presented a lengthy tirade of Drew moaning about shaking hands with that man and not washing his hands next. A valuable lesson in times of COVID19! Had the book been published a few months earlier, there may have been a few infected King readers less.

Needless to say I loved this story.

And I also love this whole book, I think it is a treasure trove for dedicated King readers or anyone who feels comfortable in his universes. It totally leads...