Since the King announced his impending retirement, "Everything's Eventual" has gained a newfound significance -- it's probably the last collection of his short stories that ever will be published.
But this doesn't change the fact that the work isn't one of Stephen King's best collections. His greatest strength always has been short fiction, but he did his best stuff in the early and mid-1970s, when he still was holding onto his "P.H.D." (poor, hungry and desperate).
A great deal of cool King stories are still floating around out there uncollected: "Cat from Hell," "Weeds," "The Crate" and "The Reploids," to name a few. These oldies-but-goodies would have made for some nice bonuses in "Eventual," but it still has plenty of fresh surprises, both gruesome and heartfelt.
"Everything's Eventual" opens on a pretty weak note with "Autopsy Room Four" -- a blatant rip-off of an old "Alfred Hitchcock Presents" episode (King admits this in the story's intro), with a crude twist on the ending. It's slightly suspenseful, but just not remarkable in any way and it's been done 100 times before.
Unless you've lived in a cave for the past decade and a half, you know that King isn't just a horror writer, so it's no surprise there are some pretty straightforward literary stories here. Two of them, "The Man in the Black Suit" and "All that You Love Will Be Carried Away," were originally published in The New Yorker. Pretty classy for the guy who directed "Maximum Overdrive."
"Black Suit" is surprisingly bland, despite its mingling of the supernatural with the literary. It was tremendously well received by critics and even won the O. Henry Award, but it's transparent from beginning to end and remains merely competent at its best. "All That You Love," on the other hand, is pretty profound and involving, spinning a tale of a depressed, suicidal salesman and his collection of scrawled notes that he copied from bathroom stalls at highway rest areas.
A fun aspect of this collection is how widely diverse the genres are. This is by no means as comprehensive and all-encompassing as King's last collection, the massive "Nightmares and Dreamscapes," but it's still pretty well-mixed.
"The Death of Jack Hamilton" is a tale of life with John Dillinger in his last days, before the "fuzz" gunned him down. It's a solid read with plenty of snappy dialogue.
"In the Deathroom," "Luckey Quarter" and "That Feeling, You Can Only Say What It Is in French" have their moments, but both are relentlessly predictable and clich
d. There's only so many times a character can wake up and find out it was all a dream before the reader grows tired of it.
"The Little Sisters of Eluria" is a treat for fans of King's "Dark Tower" series since it is a prequel to the first novel's events. It's a solid fantasy with a compelling, serial-style structure.
The book's intriguing cover design comes to life in "Lunch at the Gotham Cafe," a twisted tale that defies expectations and throws the reader convincingly into a restaurant with an insane maitre d'.
"The Road Virus Heads North," "1408" and "Riding the Bullet" are in the tradition of what people most naturally associate with King -- supernatural shenanigans. They've got a painting that comes to life and kills, a haunted hotel room and a hitchhiker picked up by a living corpse. All three stories deliver the goods with solid twists, intense narratives and a healthy sense of dark humor.
The book's title has an odd ring to it and doesn't become clear until the title story, where "Everything's Eventual" is the main character's way of saying "everything's cool." It's just a less fancy way of saying copasetic. The story itself is built on a cool idea -- a man throws change down a storm drain and grinds dollar bills in his garbage disposal on a daily basis. It builds pretty well and has a satisfying resolution.
King claims he's going to keep writing after he finishes his "Dark Tower" series but will refrain from publishing any of it, whether it's novels or short stories. So the fact that this probably is the last opportunity for readers to enjoy a collection of his shorts makes this book a must, regardless of a few weak links. It's eventual, indeed.
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