Stick With The Indies

Review: Russell Mardell’s Stone Bleeding

With his first novel, Stone Bleeding, Russell Mardell continues the trend started by his short story collection, Silent Bombs Falling on Green Grass, by creating something that defies genre. It begins as a classic detective novel and quickly takes a turn down a dark road into a near apocalyptic work caused not by zombies or nuclear war, but by reality television.

The story takes place in three interconnecting “verses,” each told by a different character who was directly involved with the country’s collapse. First we meet Zach, an actor turned private detective working one last case as the world crumbles around him, and through him we experience the remnants of times not so far past transposed into a new reality— including children playing mere feet from a corpse. Next comes Albie, game show starlet on her way out of town when she finds a boy who changes everything. And finally, Archie who, once the voice of the people, is being hunted by more than just the ghosts of his mistakes. Theirs is a future that could happen, though not to us, we wouldn’t let it, or would we?

This story appealed to me as a student of both literature and mass media. It examines a part of our everyday lives that we don’t really want to question: the changing role of mass media. Mardell makes some astute observations about the ways in which media impact our lives. In recent years, we have transitioned from consensus narrative, where there was one shared reality and one shared set of values, to one of individual realities and the freedom to choose our own values. We’re seeing a convergence of all of the traditional forms of mass media-newspapers, magazines, music, photography, film, books-all digitized and available online. While celebrities still dictate our taste and our interests, they are not so carefully screened through the studio system; more often, today’s celebrities are individuals who post blogs or upload videos to YouTube  their popularity is decided by their audience and not by executives schooled in the ways of entertainment as a business. At the same time, more people are getting their news from comedy shows like Jon Stewart; we are increasingly more likely to text our votes for the reality competition show of the moment than we are to make our way to the polls on Election Day. How far are we from a time when we’ll be texting in those votes as well? The fact that these changes have happening so quickly, and with little opposition, places us in a position where the wrong choices are made at the wrong times could spell disaster.

Read More