A little over a decade ago, Stephen King found himself at a major crossroads in his career. While he had spent his career being best known for his work in the horror genre, he was ready to experiment with something new – namely publishing a crime novel called Mr. Mercedes – and he wasn’t wholly sure that his audience would either follow him to the destination or appreciate the move. It was a true artist dilemma, and it’s a moment in his life that he recently experienced being reflected back to him when he had the chance to see the new 2025 movie Springsteen: Deliver Me From Nowhere.
King is a big Springsteen fan (he has frequently talked about the singer/songwriter’s influence on the character Larry Underwood from The Stand), and he can also be counted as a fan of the Scott Cooper-directed film that has been made about the New Jersey legend. The author spoke about seeing the movie this week while a participating in a virtual UMass Lowell Alumni Book Club event, and he specifically referenced the movie while discussing the special relationship that exists between an artist and their audience. Said King,
I saw a movie the other day called Deliver Me From Nowhere about Bruce Springsteen. It’s really terrific. I thought it was terrific. Opinions differ, you know. But there was a lot of pressure on him to do what he had done before: rock and roll, full band. And this album that he was working on, Nebraska, was quiet. It was acoustic, it was home recorded. And in a way, that was kind of like what I was doing with Mr. Mercedes.
Mr. Mercedes has horror elements in it (the inciting incident in the book is a serial killer driving a luxury sedan through a line of people waiting for a job fair to open), but it was otherwise a big swing from the author, and he had a moment of doubt wondering if the work would be appreciated. He thinks of himself as an author who works to please his readers, and he wasn’t sure if it was going to get the feedback he wanted.
But he also knew that he had a story that he wanted to tell, and he also had a specific way that he wanted to tell it. King continued,
It was a different thing. It was a crime novel instead of a supernatural book. And even the way that it was set up was different. It was all in the present tense, and it was a new experience for me too. It was good. That was good.
Of course, this story has a happy ending. Just like how Bruce Springsteen didn’t alienate his audience with the release of Nebraska (and he has released other experimental albums since then), Stephen King kept readers under his sway with Mr. Mercedes, and it ended up launching a whole new era of his career. He has continued to write novels in other genres, including horror, but detective fiction has arguably become his go-to, and he has become particularly fascinated with Holly Gibney – an investigator who came out of his experience writing is first crime book.
Should you care to take Stephen King’s recommendation, Springsteen: Deliver Me From Nowhere – starring Jeremy Allen White, Jeremy Strong, Paul Walter Hauser, Stephen Graham, and Odessa Young – is now playing in theaters everywhere, having placed fourth in the box office Top 10 this past weekend.