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I've read It so many times I have to wait at least 5 more years to reread it. I'm currently struggling through Black House. Is anyone a fan of Black House? I only read it once, right when it came out, and didn't like it a lot then.
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Dec 14, 2013 22:44
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cheerfullydrab posted:I've read It so many times I have to wait at least 5 more years to reread it. I'm currently struggling through Black House. Is anyone a fan of Black House? I only read it once, right when it came out, and didn't like it a lot then. For me, the true failure of the book is that instead of being Travellin' Jack's adventures as an adult (which Doctor Sleep just did SO WELL for The Shining's Danny Torrence,) it was crowbarred into a Dark Tower story. Not a bad one, per se, but not really worthy as a sequel to The Talisman. I say this as a guy who has read most of Straub's books at least twice, and most of King's more than that. It should have had its own life and I feel bad for Straub that it ended up a Dark Tower book. P.S. - WRT Straub, if you ever want to read a completely off-the-rails, every horrible thing, way over-the-top insane horror novel, take the time to read Floating Dragon. If you approach it with the right mindset, it's absolutely marvelous. If you approach it incorrectly, it turns out to be The Regulators crazy which you might still like, or not. Dr. Faustus fucked around with this message at 22:52 on Dec 14, 2013 |
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Dec 14, 2013 22:48
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Helsing posted:I wonder if the reason behind the confusion is that Pennywise is compared to Ronald McDonald, who does wear a yellow suit. And for good reason.
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Dec 14, 2013 23:33
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Dec 15, 2013 02:40
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Well, that was creepy enough...
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Dec 15, 2013 03:00
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With the benefit of having seen that commercial, as King surely did, and then reading about Georgie in 1958 before it aired, the opening sewer scene is now even more eerie. Good find, High Warlord Zog.
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Dec 15, 2013 03:02
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Does anyone know if the audiobook for It is any good?
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Dec 15, 2013 03:52
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Aquarium Gravel posted:Yeah, it's true, it felt off when I was listening to the audiobook last night, Now I get it though, that's literally the Stephen King brainstorm, "How will I make it clear to my readers that everyone in town knows these guys are gay?" It's even funnier when the description of their flamboyant makeup comes within a few paragraphs of the description that states that the owner of The Phoenix bar is clueless for many months that his clientele is nearly all gay men - he never noticed the makeup or nail polish prior to this, I guess. I think you missed the point entirely. The owner of the Falcon (not Phoenix) is clueless that his clientele is nearly all gay men precisely because most of them didn't stand out: while the book says that many of them are dressed outrageously, it also notes that that was the style of the 70s, with the point being that most patrons didn't stand out. Others have already pointed to the Charlie Howard murder. But I would like to point out that the flamboyant behavior is limited to Adrian and is actually quite intentional, both on part of King and of the character as portrayed in the book. Adrian's "extravagant" behavior wasn't portrayed at all as simply effeminate: it is shown, quite clearly and explicitly, as an conscious act of defiance. The "flamboyantness" wasn't a matter of just to illustrate that Adrian was gay, it was described as "extravagantly partisan." Hell, the entire thing with the hat with a flower on top that Adrian wore was that he wore precisely because one of the teens told him not to so he decided to keep wearing it. So while King will have his problems and tropes, I'd say that Adrian's portrayal was if anything far ahead of its time: the "flamboyant" behavior wasn't there to portray him as a "sissy" or to put him down, but as a particularly defiant behavior in a town that was called incredibly homophobic. Edit: Stroth posted:Does anyone know if the audiobook for It is any good? joepinetree fucked around with this message at 04:00 on Dec 15, 2013 |
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Dec 15, 2013 03:53
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Stroth posted:Does anyone know if the audiobook for It is any good? I'm listening to the unabridged 2010 version (which I'm pretty sure is read by Stephen Weber) and it's very good. Some of the female voices sound very similar I guess, but that's a minor complaint. Overall it's very easy to listen to.
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Dec 15, 2013 04:02
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cheerfullydrab posted:I've read It so many times I have to wait at least 5 more years to reread it. I'm currently struggling through Black House. Is anyone a fan of Black House? I only read it once, right when it came out, and didn't like it a lot then. I enjoyed it alot more the second time around. I read it first when it first came out and then again about 6 months ago and it was alot smoother knowing what I was in for going in.
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Dec 15, 2013 04:17
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gently caress you guys, you made me start reading It on my Kindle  (my next book was gonna be A Clash of Kings, but now it'll have to wait)This thread will probably leave me behind pretty fast though, I'm sure this book will take me like 3 months to read.
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Dec 15, 2013 10:53
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joepinetree posted:I think you missed the point entirely. The owner of the Falcon (not Phoenix) is clueless that his clientele is nearly all gay men precisely because most of them didn't stand out: while the book says that many of them are dressed outrageously, it also notes that that was the style of the 70s, with the point being that most patrons didn't stand out. Others have already pointed to the Charlie Howard murder. But I would like to point out that the flamboyant behavior is limited to Adrian and is actually quite intentional, both on part of King and of the character as portrayed in the book. Adrian's "extravagant" behavior wasn't portrayed at all as simply effeminate: it is shown, quite clearly and explicitly, as an conscious act of defiance. The "flamboyantness" wasn't a matter of just to illustrate that Adrian was gay, it was described as "extravagantly partisan." Hell, the entire thing with the hat with a flower on top that Adrian wore was that he wore precisely because one of the teens told him not to so he decided to keep wearing it. You make some good points. I take back what I said earlier about the portrayal of gays in this book. The fact that a lot of us are reading this now has me reading it with a critical eye, and I'm getting a lot more out of it than I did last time I read it. As a writer, I like how the Bill Denbrough section about his experience in a writing class at college sort of mirrors King's journey, especially when he decided that it's okay to write for story alone and that making a buck is not necessarily a bad thing. I just generally like when pompous "literary" types are taken down a notch.
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Dec 15, 2013 12:57
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Pheeets posted:You make some good points. I take back what I said earlier about the portrayal of gays in this book. Yeah, for the benefit of those who don't have the book in front of them here is the section, which I posted a while back but will reproduce here: IT, Stephen King, Signet Books, Scarborough ONT: 1987, pp.119-120 posted:Here is a poor boy from the state of Maine who goes to the University on a scholarship. All his life he has wanted to be a writer, but when he enrolls in the writing courses he finds himself lost without a compass in a strange and frightening land. There's one guy who wants to be Updike. There's another who wants to be a New England version of Faulkner--only he wants to write novels about the grim lives of the poor in blank verse. There's a girl who admires Joyce Carol Oates but feels that because Oates was nurtured in a sexist society she is "radioactive in a literary sense." Oates is unable to be clean, this girl says. She will be cleaner. There's the short fat grad student who can't or won't speak above a mutter. This guy has written a play in which there are nine characters. Each of them says only a single word. Little by little the playgoers realize that when you put the single words together you come out with"War is the tool of the sexist death merchants." This fellow's play receives an A from the man who teaches Eh-141 (Creative Writing Honors Seminar). This instructor has published four books of poetry and his master's thesis, all with the University Press. He smokes pot and wears a peace medallion. The fat mutterer's play is produced by a guerrilla theater group during the strike to end the war which shuts down the campus in May of 1970. The instructor plays one of the characters. This comes at just the right point in the book to basically outline what King's philosophy going forward will be. And the great thing is that IT basically justifies his argument. It's a book that very clearly is addressing issues like abuse - in particular the way that domestic abuse is only possible when the community itself turns a blind eye, and also the way that individual acts of abuse become social problems (just think of the way Henry Bowers, who causes so many problems, is himself a product of his own screwed up father - memory, forgetting, the way that childhood problems reappear in later life (several of the character's end up basically marrying surrogate versions of their parents), the way that imagination is both our greatest weapon and our most deadly enemy. But the book accomplishes these things in the service of telling a very pulpy genre fiction story. Its simultaneously a book about childhood trauma and a killer clown, and each of these elements actually strengthens the other. King was really on top of his game when he wrote IT. There are so many clever little literary tricks, so many points where he turns and basically winks at the camera or leaves little bread crumbs indicating that there's a deeper thought process behind something he's included than you would first realize. But at the same time he puts this declaration close to the beginning of the book saying "remember, just let the story be a story and these elements will present themselves organically".
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Dec 15, 2013 19:58
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Pheeets posted:I just have to point out one thing in this chapter about Adrian Mellon that aggravates me. One of the gay guys is said to be wearing eye makeup, and Adrian is protrayed wearing nail polish. Most gay men are not cross-dressers or even very effeminate, but King seems to believe in some weord stereotype; he's equally strange in protraying lesbians - they're always extremely butch. But I guess that's part of what makes him King, these weird oddities and missteps with certain things. The answer to your question is 1980s. Weber is astoundingly good in the audiobook. So much emotion. I was a part Ben, a part Bill, a part Stan, and a part Richie. I had my own Bev and my own Henry. Rereading this is like having a flashback. It also reminds me how much I liked the kid portions of the movie
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Dec 15, 2013 21:18
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For whatever reason, the descriptions of Pennywise are really sticking out to me this read. I guess because it has been a long time since my last read, and so when I picture It now, I think of Tim Curry in the yellow suit. Anyway, from the chapter where Mike remembers visiting the Ironworks and sees It (as a bird): It was not just the shock of seeing a monster bird, a bird whose breast was as orange as a robin's and whose feathers were the unremarkable fluffy gray of a sparrow's feathers. He scrambled to his knees, crawled, looked back over his shoulder and saw it rising out of the cellarhold. Its scaly talons were a dusky orange. The bird's tongue was silver, its surface as crazy-cracked as the surface of a volcanic land which has first baked and then slagged off. And on this tongue, like weird tumbleweeds that had taken temporary root there, were a number of orange puffs. The silver and orange colors are present again. I know this thread doesn't use spoiler tags too often but I figured I'd do it in case one of the 20+ people reading it now are reading it for the first time.
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Dec 16, 2013 02:17
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The Berzerker posted:For whatever reason, the descriptions of Pennywise are really sticking out to me this read. I guess because it has been a long time since my last read, and so when I picture It now, I think of Tim Curry in the yellow suit. Anyway, from the chapter where Mike remembers visiting the Ironworks and sees It (as a bird): What did you think of the chronological (not narrative) foreshadowing of this encounter?
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Dec 16, 2013 02:27
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Just started on this, this afternoon. I want to say the first time I read IT was when I was maybe 13, and I read IT again when I was like a junior or senior in high school. The references to the Turtle Wax at the beginning really stood out, I don't think I'd caught that before. That whole first scene is still burned into my brain, and it still gives me the willies. Right away you know you're in for a doozy. Also, looking back on it, i think that the Adrian scenes were perhaps my first direct interaction with homosexuality in a way that wasn't some garbled, harshly misunderstood playground joke. My first read through would have been right around '95. Adrian was probably the first gay character I'd read about. I think while I was aware of is, as a 13 year old kid, that aspect fell to the wayside of "There is a clown eating people, holy poo poo this is creepy and awesome". While I understood on some level what was taking place, (the whole gay-bashing hate crime stuff), i interpreted it as more of those guys are assholes and gay people are kinda weird, and HOLY poo poo THE CLOWN IS EATING HIS ARMPIT! (I don't know what it is about that image, but it really disturbed me as a kid, and still really visceral for some reason). Now that I'm older and a bit more educated on the subject, it's even darker. While to some extent, it helps demonstrate the darker side of Derry, you really don't get to see the taint yet, because this sort of stuff was happening. I also didn't know that it was related to a real incident. Starting to remember bits and pieces here and there, things to look forward to, the scene with the sink, making the bullets, Stanley in the tub.. I never get this excited about books I've read before
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Dec 16, 2013 04:19
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WattsvilleBlues posted:What did you think of the chronological (not narrative) foreshadowing of this encounter? There's a lot of that in this book. A kid thinking about something followed by It manifesting as something related. It's done well but it is done pretty often, at least from what I remember. I guess I'll think about this more as I go through the book. Roydrowsy posted:HOLY poo poo THE CLOWN IS EATING HIS ARMPIT! (I don't know what it is about that image, but it really disturbed me as a kid, and still really visceral for some reason). Same here, I first read the book when I was about 12 and that scene was never forgotten. The image my brain came up with is burned in there forever.
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Dec 16, 2013 04:48
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You fuckers. I'm about to drop Jenna Miscavige's book halfway through to read friggin IT again. I hope you're all satisfied.
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Dec 16, 2013 05:11
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Rev. Bleech_ posted:You fuckers. I'm about to drop Jenna Miscavige's book halfway through to read friggin IT again. I hope you're all satisfied. Float with us
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Dec 16, 2013 11:35
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On the origins of IT: On the Wikipedia page it's said that IT has mysterious origins, but doesn't it say that IT is an alien that crashed to Earth millions of years ago? I could have sworn IT is an alien. At any rate, the Deadlights--writhing, orange lights---are terrifying.
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Dec 16, 2013 13:42
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bean_shadow posted:On the origins of IT: IT is described as falling out of the sky like a meteor a very long time ago. It is never made clear how long ago so that could be anywhere from tens of thousands to millions of years in the past. It is also heavily implied that IT came not so much from 'outer space' as from beyond the edge of creation, or maybe from what is refereed to in The Dark Tower books as 'todash space', a formless void full of demons. All we're really given to work out IT's specific origins is a brief image of it crashing from the sky, its not as clear cut as saying that IT's an "alien" who arrived in a spaceship or something. All we really know is that it isn't of this earth, and probably not even of this 'plane' of reality.
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Dec 16, 2013 14:02
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I want to say the book said that the spaceship was the closest thing their minds could come to comprehending how IT actually arrived similar to how the spider wasn't the true form but just a representation they could deal with.
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Dec 16, 2013 15:35
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Someone mentioned a chapter written from the perspective of It. I don't remember this from my read through possibly because of alcohol/tiredness. Which chapter is this in?
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Dec 16, 2013 17:07
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It's near the end, during the second assault into the sewers.
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Dec 16, 2013 17:22
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Its from the warp yo.
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Dec 16, 2013 18:31
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Well there is also the whole macroverse/microverse thing that seems to be going on. George and one of the other Losers have a vision of flying through the macroverse and that is where they see the Turtle. So it seems like our world is like a single atom to entities like It and The Turtle. To us atoms are unimaginably small, but if you were inside one the distance between electrons would feel like the distance between planets in our solar system. That's how I felt about the relationship between Its world and ours, but none of it is very clear obviously, its all open to interpretation. The word "macroverse" is specifically used several times though, once in the chapter from It's perspective. But in general todash space is one of the more terrifying ideas King's ever come up with(not that its a 100% original idea of King's but whatever). I was never totally straight though on what the difference is between his todash space and the Prim. The Prim was what came before Gan, but even then was there todash space with monsters in it? Were the monsters in todash space worse then the various assholes and demons in the Prim? Who knows but this poo poo is really fun to think about. Edit: Yea when It talks about what it does and why, it seems like It sees our world as its playground, a source of entertainment. It can access our world and take what it wants, but the idea that something could occur here that harms It in any real way is totally foreign to It. That does sound a lot like what's going on in Hockstedder's mind. Basebf555 fucked around with this message at 20:41 on Dec 16, 2013 |
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Dec 16, 2013 20:22
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Man, now that I have some money, I went to town to pick up the book (waiting on shipping is for losers) but it seems like the book has mysteriously vanished from the shelves of local book stores. Guess I'm a loser now.
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Dec 16, 2013 20:35
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3Romeo posted:It's near the end, during the second assault into the sewers. This is also where the biggest parallel between IT and Patrick Hocksetter comes into play. Both believe that they're the only real things in the world.
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Dec 16, 2013 20:36
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Venusian Weasel posted:Man, now that I have some money, I went to town to pick up the book (waiting on shipping is for losers) but it seems like the book has mysteriously vanished from the shelves of local book stores. Read it in 30 seconds on a Kindle device! http://www.amazon.com/Stephen-King-ebook/dp/B002SR2PKG/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1387222580&sr=8-1&keywords=IT
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Dec 16, 2013 20:37
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I bet there's never been more people reading It in the world than right now, at least since the 80s. Can anyone be more specific about the chapter from Its perspective? I want to give it another read but I've too much else on to go through the entire book at the moment.
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Dec 16, 2013 21:42
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Well hell, I started the year with King, filled the middle with King might as well end it with King. Count me in on the 'IT' re-read gang.
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Dec 16, 2013 22:01
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Basebf555 posted:It sees our world as its playground, a source of entertainment. It can access our world and take what it wants, but the idea that something could occur here that harms It in any real way is totally foreign to It. That does sound a lot like what's going on in Hockstedder's mind. Ok, this is WAY out of left field, but does IT suddenly sound kind of like the aliens in Under The Dome? Powerlessness before something malevolent and stronger than oneself is a common King trope (and a pretty common horror trope, really), but now I'm wondering if there's a connection.
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Dec 16, 2013 22:22
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Oh, why not; I've only read IT four or five times and the last one was years ago.WattsvilleBlues posted:Can anyone be more specific about the chapter from Its perspective? I want to give it another read but I've too much else on to go through the entire book at the moment. Chapter 21; starts on page 965 of the Signet paperback.
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Dec 16, 2013 22:59
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April posted:Ok, this is WAY out of left field, but does IT suddenly sound kind of like the aliens in Under The Dome? Powerlessness before something malevolent and stronger than oneself is a common King trope (and a pretty common horror trope, really), but now I'm wondering if there's a connection. Doesn't the weird dome making device in UtD have the same symbol on it as the door to It's chamber? Doubt it's meant to be a serious link, though. Just old Steve-baby loving around. Anyway, I re-read the Dark Tower in one go recently. Holy poo poo the quality nosedives after Wizard and Glass, and holy poo poo the continuity errors are loving everyplace. People change names, compass directions go all to gently caress, those .45s that Roland stole from the cops go missing, yadda yadda. BUT The main thing is after watching a bunch of Adventure Time I can't see or hear the Crimson King as anything other than a palette swap of The Ice King.
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Dec 16, 2013 23:02
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I'd join you guys but I just finished the drat book a few weeks ago. Man it was great
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Dec 16, 2013 23:03
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RoeCocoa posted:Oh, why not; I've only read IT four or five times and the last one was years ago. Much obliged!
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Dec 16, 2013 23:06
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Pheeets posted:I just have to point out one thing in this chapter about Adrian Mellon that aggravates me. One of the gay guys is said to be wearing eye makeup, and Adrian is protrayed wearing nail polish. Most gay men are not cross-dressers or even very effeminate, but King seems to believe in some weord stereotype; he's equally strange in protraying lesbians - they're always extremely butch. But I guess that's part of what makes him King, these weird oddities and missteps with certain things. I just restarted the book since everyone else did (this will be like my fifth time reading), and they were basically trolling the more conservative Derry. It was noted in the same section that the gay people that frequented the bar they went to did not assign to any particular stereotypes to the point that the owner, and random people that would stop in from out of town, wouldn't even know they were in a gay bar. The guy that was killed was picked out specifically because he was purposely attempting to annoy the town, and even then, he was actually killed by IT. It's interesting that IT's cycles often happen related to a bit of bigoted violence. Edit: Goddammit, missed a page due to phone/web mixups. Well, the second part of what I said is relevant to discussion, I guess.
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Dec 16, 2013 23:10
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Darko posted:I just restarted the book since everyone else did (this will be like my fifth time reading), and they were basically trolling the more conservative Derry. It was noted in the same section that the gay people that frequented the bar they went to did not assign to any particular stereotypes to the point that the owner, and random people that would stop in from out of town, wouldn't even know they were in a gay bar. The guy that was killed was picked out specifically because he was purposely attempting to annoy the town, and even then, he was actually killed by IT. Is it hinted at that It causes these acts of violence by some telepathic or other means? Or is it just that the wrongness of Derry manifests so strongly every once in a while that It is woken by it?
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Dec 16, 2013 23:16
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Well, the wrongness of Derry is almost certainly due to Pennywise being there in the first place. He was there before the town, long before. Isn't there some passage about how the Natives avoided that area, and the white settlers were just "loving superstitious savages, what do they know?" And a couple hundred years later, all these people have grown up in the shadow of Pennywise's influence, so no one talks about the incredibly high per-capita rates of child death and random violence?
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Dec 16, 2013 23:51
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