‘It’s silence that is a marriage’s best friend…’
Not content with being one of the most lauded storytellers of all time, Stephen King is also one of the most prolific and successful short story writers of all time, too. Everything’s Eventual, King’s fourth collection of short stories after Night Shift (1978), Skeleton Crew (1985) and Nightmares & Dreamscapes (1993), features 11 short stories and three novellas, and it is one of his most consistent collections…
Originally published in 2002, Everything’s Eventual features exclusively stories that had already appeared somewhere else in some form or other. The earliest story, The Man in the Black Suit, a chillingly mundane tale about a boy meeting the devil while out fishing, first appeared in the Halloween edition of The New Yorker in 1994, while the most recent offering, The Death of Jack Hamilton, a touching slice of historical fiction about a member of the Dillinger Gang, was published in the Christmas edition of The New Yorker in 2001. The book is also notable for featuring The Little Sisters of Eluria, the only story outside of the main series to take place in the world of The Dark Tower.
Aside from The Death of Jack Hamilton and In the Deathroom, the two works of historical fiction, I found Everything’s Eventual to be a consistent and thoroughly enjoyable collection. In 1408, it contains perhaps King’s greatest ever short story, a perfect and utterly terrifying howl of anguish that stands as some of his finest work. Fans of Roland and The Dark Tower will love The Little Sisters of Eluria, and the titular novella, also Dark Tower adjacent, is also excellent (and prescient). In that story, King favourite Dinky Earnshaw is given just enough by his evil overlords (who exploit his unique gift), to survive comfortably, but not enough to break out of the cycle of mundanity they have imposed upon him. It’s a chilling critique of modern day capitalism that serves as a precursor to stuff like Severance.
Elsewhere, Riding the Bullet, originally released as King’s first foray into the e-book in 2000, takes tired tropes (a hitchhiker, a mysterious stranger, the supernatural), and injects some of King’s trademark nastiness into the mix. Similarly, The Road Virus Heads North takes the trope of the haunted painting and posits that it is the eye of the beholder that creates the horror, while Autopsy Room Four is King’s ‘buried alive’ story. This being King, however, the story turns on the ‘deceased’ suddenly sporting an erection. That Feeling, You Can Only Say What It Is in French is repetitive, but has a horrifying and powerful conclusion and Lunch at the Gotham Cafe sees King combine the heartache of divorce with the very real danger of a stranger in your vicinity ‘going postal’. Even the most inconsequential stories like L.T.s Theory of Pets and Luckey Quarter have a certain charm to them.
Everything’s Eventual showcases King’s ability to write memorable, short form stories that stick in your craw for days afterwards. I was badly shaken after reading 1408, and Riding the Bullet hasn’t been far from my thoughts either. As with many of these collections, this one would be a good starting point for any budding King enthusiasts, but it should be essential reading for anyone already converted – some of King’s very best work.