|
Insomnia. Seven hundred pages about a retired old man with sleep problems followed by 100 pages of boring metaphysics and a tie in with the Dark Tower that King proceeded to completly disown when he actually finished up the series (serves me right too, the supposed Dark Tower conneciton is the only reason I wasted my time). King is a great writer if you have the right balance of forces. Keep him confined within a fifteen to hundred and fifty page limit and he can do some really interesting stuff. Shorter than that and he gets pointlessly weird, longer and his characters start spending fifty pages at the supermarket.
|
#
¿
May 4, 2009 19:29
|
|
|
|
| # ¿ May 3, 2024 04:24 |
|
|
So after years of not reading anything by Stephen King I picked up IT earlier this year and blasted through it in a couple of extended sittings. I'm honestly blown away. I've read a handful of King's novels - the Dark Tower Series, Eyes of the Dragon, Salem's Lot, The Stand, Insomnia - but I never thought they were anything extraordinary. I figured King's real talent was in his short stories. For me IT really just exists in a class of its own when it comes to King's writing. Everything is so taught and fast paced, there's a constant creepy atmosphere, there are some great characterizations and a well rounded cast. Obviously one could pick big holes in the novel - I mean, we are talking about an 1100 page story about a killer space clown - but IT was definitely one of the most enjoyable books I've read in years. Hell, even though it was Stephen King book I found myself well satisfied at the end of the novel. Now that I've finished the book I am sorta curious to know if King ever wrote any commentary on it. I really enjoyed both Danse Macabre and On Writing many years ago and while King discussed the writing process behind some of his other novels I don't recall him saying much about the inspiration or process behind the creation of IT. My copy of the book is from the early 1990s and doesn't contain any sort of introduction, which is too bad since I've come to really enjoy anything Stephen King addresses to "Constant Reader". So my question for the thread is this: does anyone know of any book or interview where King discusses IT? Apparently he wrote an introduction for the 25th year anniversary but that thing costs a lot more money than I'm willing to spend just so I can read the author's recollections of writing the novel.
|
|
#
¿
Jun 22, 2013 19:55
|
|
|
crankdatbatman posted:I really want to read IT but have seen the TV movie so many drat times I don't feel like it's really worth it. I watched the miniseries after reading the book and while a lot of memorable scenes do get reproduced in the miniseries the overall feel of the two is pretty different. The book takes a lot more time to establish both the main characters and the town of Derry itself. The book includes an additional confrontation with Pennywise, a lot more character building, more chapters focusing on peripheral characters who were victims of Pennywise, and some really interesting chapters about the history of Derry. Another great thing about IT compared to some of King's other early works is how accomplished the structure of the novel is. It gets just slightly creaky toward the end when he rushes some of the payoffs that he set up earlier one of the antagonists who has been built up a bunch in the book unexpectedly dies off screen and this event is given about two lines of description but on the whole it felt like a much better constructed book than some of King's other long novels. There's a particularly brilliant and unsettling sequences where King digresses into a description of the psychology of a young psychopath named Patrick Hockstetter. Hockstetter is already a murderer, having smothered his younger brother in the crib, but what makes this chapter interesting is the way that King describes Patrick's firm conviction that he's the only being that really 'exists'. Nothing in the universe is real to him except his own existence. He kills his younger brother, in part, because he fears that he might be 'real' as well and finds this threatening. Patrick is only a minor character but the reason this is interesting is because later we get a chapter describing IT's psychology, and it turns out to be virtualyl the same as Patrick's. IT is also a solipsistic predator who doesn't think anything in the universe is truly real except for itself. When IT begins to perceive that there may be another living being in the universe IT becomes afraid for the first time. King never rubs your face into the comparison, but its pretty cool the way he sets up this parallel between the mind of a ten year old sociopath and the mind of an ancient demonic spirit that was born in the darkness between the stars. So yeah, read IT! April posted:I have this book: I will definitely check out the interview book, thanks for the recommendation. I don't know why but even though I'm not a diehard King fan I always really enjoy reading his nonfiction. He's one of the few author's whose introductions I will always read. Maybe because "On Writing" was actually the first book by him that I read. quote:ETA: The TV version of "It" is so loving awful compared to the book. So, so, so bad... I can't even come up with a word for it. Yeah its bizare how the movie joylessly reproduces so many scenes from the book without even attempting to capture the actual feel of the book. Every scene that doesn't have Tim Curry in it feels like its completely function and just designed to move the narrative to the next monster scene. Also I couldn't believe how bad the actual cintematography and camera work were: so dull and flat and uninspired. However, apparently they are gonna remake IT as a two parter with an R rating! And the director behind it is a young guy named Cary Fukunaga who directed, Sin Nombre, a movie that makes me think he might be well suited for this project. I rarely get excited for movie adaptations of books but this one could be really good. oldpainless posted:I think King said "It" came from crossing over a bridge and he was reminded of the Three Billy Goats Gruff with a monster eating children and he just took it from there. Or April is right and I'm just misremembering something. There's an explicit reference to the Billygoats Gruff in the book so this would make sense.
|
|
#
¿
Jun 24, 2013 16:20
|
|
|
Thank you so much for digging up and transcribing that interview. Its really interesting to see how the basic germ of the story mutated and developed over time. On a related note I was reading through the stories in Nightshift and its striking how some of them seem to hint at themes that he'd focus on in IT. The story 'Sometime's They Come Back' and 'The Boogy Man' both seem to have similar motif's or themes for instance.
|
|
#
¿
Jun 24, 2013 18:20
|
|
|
Of all the things to be upset about in IT I am kinda mystified that people would focus on the masturbation scene or the sex scene. Yeah those things are a bit uncomfortable to read through but its just sex for Christ's sake. Plenty of kids do in fact start experimenting at that age. It would seem to me that the descriptions of children haveing their arms and heads ripped off is a bigger deal than a bit of consensual preteen sex or a description of a handjob. If you're comfortable with a kid reading the first twelve pages of IT then I don't see why any of the sex stuff should be a deal breaker.
|
|
#
¿
Jun 26, 2013 17:47
|
|
|
April posted:I can't speak for all parents, but for me, it has to do with what kids may try to emulate. 99.99% of kids aren't going to try to seriously yank someone's arm off, or take an axe to their neighbors, or imitate the hyper-violent stuff in any way. A lot of parents do try to teach their kids healthy boundaries for their own bodies, but I think it's easier to talk a kid into experimenting sexually than to talk them into physically harming someone else. Kids' curiosity is normal, and open discussion is a must, but here's my worry: take a kid who doesn't get enough real guidance, give them entertainment with the message "hey, 11-year-olds have full-blown intercourse, and it's a good thing". In my OPINION, it could make them more likely to either experiment in ways with their peers they are not ready for, or make it easier for an adult predator to take advantage of them. I completely understand why a parent wouldn't give their kid IT when they are only 11 years old given all the violence but I guess I don't really have the sense that the sex scene in IT would actually change a kid's attitude toward sex all that much. Especially given the rather fantastical context that its presented in. I also sorta disagree with your general point about violence. I think society tends to display violence as a legitimate way of getting what you want in many circumstances. Especially if your a man, in which case there are many situations where not acting out violently would be considered unmanly (bully going after you? Better hit him, if you go to an authority figure you're just a pussy. Someone get off with your girlfriend? You should deck them.) Even IT basically buys into the idea that we're all lonely individuals who can't expect any support except from our immediate circle of friends or companions. The only solution to the overwhelming problems of life is violent individualism. And the same idea shows up in pretty much all pop culture: Star Wars or Star Trek, any comic book, any western, any detective novel, etc. Its always the individual and their companions being forced to rely on their individual grit and their mastery of violence to solve social problems like crime. I guess this is kinda getting off topic though, so I won't belabour the point any more. Drunk Tomato posted:Yo dude, it's not normal behavior for six 11 and 12 year old boys to gangbang an abused little girl in a sewer Neither is journeying into the sewers to battle a demonic shape shifting spider-clown.
|
|
#
¿
Jun 27, 2013 23:53
|
|
|
I think in an interview that King claimed that Pennywise was too scary even for him and that there would be no sequel to IT. On the other hand, we discover at the end of the book that Pennywise was pregnant with offspring so its possible we could see an original story featuring a monster similar to Pennywise. IN fact I believe that this may have already happened in the Dark Tower, since it is implied that Dandillo is the same kind of monster as Pennywise, but weaker and more inclined to feed on laughter than fear. I would be very curious to hear from anyone who knows what the deal with the Losers Club plaque that is feature in Dreamcatcher. I haven't read that one so I'm sorta confused. The concluding events of IT leave you wi the impression that no record or memory of the fight with Pennywise still exist. Even the surviving Losers forget immediately and all documents relating to the incident start degrading at a very rapid pace. so who would have put up a plaque, and what would it even say?
|
|
#
¿
Jul 17, 2013 19:01
|
|
|
I think that 1408 was probably King's scariest story. I can't actually remember why I think this because I haven't read it in many years but for some reason I found that story to be particularly effective at creating a tense atmosphere. His most disturbing piece of writing is definitely the aforementioned Patrick Danville chapter from IT. Honour mention for Survivor Type however. I love that story so much because normally you can horrify and gross out people by merely explaining the premise. DirtyRobot posted:Well, spoilers for later books in the series: There are also explicit, and in my opinion extremely unfortunate, references to Harry Potter and Dr. Doom later in the series. So Midworld clearly has very deep connections to our reality, including sharing the same pop culture iconography.
|
|
#
¿
Jul 31, 2013 20:21
|
|
|
I don't mind the very ending of the Dark Tower. What put a sour taste in my mouth was the way other elements of the story were wrapped up. The Crimson King battle was outright disappointing and sounded like the description of an N64 boss battle rather than the epic conclusion to a long anticipated battle. Randall Flag's character was pointlessly sacrificed to build up another villain, Mordred, who wasn't very memorable and who also died under rather mundane circumstances. To me a metastory about the importance of stories should contain the classic elements of a good story. Creating intentionally disappointing or anticlimactic ends to the arcs of major character's might be a defensible literary decision, but the Dark Tower was never going to be great literature and I resented King's belated attempts to build the series into something more than it was. More generally, I felt like the last few books were way too narrow in focus. I would have liked to see more traveling accross post apocaltypic midworld and less time spent dithering in a single town / New York City (why did we spent almost an entire book in NYC? That was really lame). Also: self insertion. The less said about that the better.
|
|
#
¿
Aug 2, 2013 19:56
|
|
|
DirtyRobot posted:Well, we were talking mostly about the very, very end, so I personally agree with your first paragraph, and I don't think those failures are attributable to "literary decisions" so much as King tried to do a thing (make an exciting, climactic battle scene) but didn't really succeed in doing that thing. You're probably right that the scenes with the Crimson King failed for relatively conventional reasons. However don't you get the sense that King's car accident and his brush with mortality cast a long shadow over the last three books and the way various plot elements are resolved? With Flag's death in particular it felt like King was driving home some kind of point about how inglorious and brutally unfair dying really is. Of course I wouldn't have minded this half so much if Mordred had, in turn, been a more interesting character. quote:Regarding the final battle, the Crimson King is "trapped" at the DT because blah blah it's a story about stories, and the CK is the villain, and the villain is always the last thing right before you attain the McGuffin, so the CK has to be right at the foot of the Tower/McGuffin, whether the CK likes it or not. He's "trapped." So it makes sense that that's where the CK is. But that doesn't excuse the battle itself. I guess my issue here, and the reason that I label these things 'literary' decisions, is that the underlying logic here all flows from the symbolism of the story. I felt like I started reading the Dark Tower books because I thought it was superficially cool to have an amoral cowboy wandering through a post apocalyptic wasteland popping mescaline and banging demons. I didn't particularly want the story to transition into a metaphorical exploration of how genre fiction works or how the constitutive elements of a story are assembled. If the Crimson King 'has' to be in the tower then I want there to be established reasons within the logic of the story for this to be the case. This really just brings to mind one of my favourite passages from IT: 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. Now admittedly King was skewering the tendency to hamfistedly shove a socially conscious moral into your writing, and that isn't precisely what he's done with the Dark Tower. However I feel like the underlying phenomena here is similar: the Dark Tower toward the end starts to feel less to me like a story enfolding on its own terms and more like some kind of literary exercise. quote:The only thing that gets me about the author insert is that King says he doesn't like the term "metafiction" because it's pretentiously academic. Okay, well, even disregarding whether or not an author self-insert might itself be just a wee bit pretentious (I think it can be excusable), what other word describes what you're doing, when you've produced fiction in which the author appears inside his own fiction and proceeds to explicitly talk about the nature of the fiction? How is metafiction not a perfectly apt word for that? You can claim that every story is a story about stories, so calling any of them "metafiction" has no meaning, but not every story has the author in the actual story. I mean come on. I think that King is sorta drawn in two conflicting directions by the overall arc of his career. On the one hand its still important to him to think of himself as somebody from a workingclass Maine background, a no-nonsense kind of guy who doesn't bullshit and who celebrates writing as a basically working class occupation that doesn't get too high-fallutin. At the same time King is exceptionally well read, has been a teacher for many years and has written multiple books on literary theory. He's both a significant contributor to and commentator on pop culture. He's also someone who, as he's gotten older, has probably enjoyed gaining a bit more prestige and respectability with a 'serious' audience. That seems to put him in places where on the one hand he wants to do stuff like metafiction where he inserts himself as an author and then starts commenting on the construction of his own story, but at the same time he doesn't want to seem like he's turning into the sort of author he used to mock. For my part, I guess that personally I was really just looking for some escapist genre fiction in the tradition of Robert E. Howard or Dashiell Hammet or H. P. Lovecraft or Michael Moorecock or Elmore Leonard or Richard Matheson. I've always regarded King at his best as being comparable to these guys, and that's really the kind of story I'm looking for when I start reading something like 'The Gunslinger' and its sequels. While I did enjoy a lot of parts of the later books, I feel like on the whole the series transitioned away from just trying to be a great story and increasingly started to feel like some kind of commentary upon the nature of storytelling or whatever.
|
|
#
¿
Aug 5, 2013 19:11
|
|
|
I think King actually did muse about rewriting the rest of the series the same way that he rewrote the Gunslinger. He has even openly mused about removing the self insertion plotline. Seems weird because from what I remember that would entail substantially reworking the book. There'd be hundreds of pages that would presumably be completely differently, though I suppose the impact on the overall sequence of events would actually be relatively minor.
|
|
#
¿
Aug 5, 2013 19:25
|
|
|
It was many years before I realized that the story and the movie were even tangentially related. It has to be among the most ridiculous "adaptations" in Hollywood history.
|
|
#
¿
Sep 23, 2013 03:01
|
|
|
It really cracks me up that the revised Gunslinger basically has its own "Han shot first" controversy with Roland mercilessly gunning down that girl from Tull in the original edition getting switched to her begging him to kill her in the revised one. Given that one of the themes of the books is an attempt to problematize Roland's obsession with reaching his goals its a little strange that King went out of his way here to cast Roland in a more positive light in that particular situation. It seems like the original sequence of events fits much more closely with his character. Sorta seems like King is getting a little soft in his old age.
|
|
#
¿
Oct 20, 2013 19:34
|
|
|
It read it years ago but I really hated Insomnia. Other than perhaps The Girl Who Loved Tom Gordon, which is at least short, it's probably my least favourite King book. Its long, ponderous and for the most part incredibly dull. If I came back to it now after having read more of King's books I think its possible I would appreciate it more. After reading IT I'd at least probably be more interested in Derry as a setting and more likely to pick up on references to stuff like the 'Storm of 85' or the fact that one of the main character's finds Patrick Danvile's shoe. The fact that there's hundreds of pages about an old man who can't sleep was pretty taxing in my opinion though. And to be honest I really hated the supernatural elements as well. It felt so hokey and almost pseudo-Christian and really ruined the darker almost Lovecraftian tones present in some of his better works. I mean sure King has always had a sentimental spot, and I appreciate that, but the idea that every death that happens in the world is actually caused by good or bad spirits following us around who follow either 'Purpose' or 'Randomness' just seems inane and dumb. It feels like nothing happens in that book, and then when something finally does happen I wished it hadn't.
|
|
#
¿
Oct 26, 2013 19:10
|
|
|
Transistor Rhythm posted:http://vimeo.com/m/52236142 That actually doesn't look bad, but its kinda funny watching that trailer because it covered literally everything that is described as happening in the story. If they extended that trailer into a four minute video they would have a very accurate adaptation. I wonder what they are planing to ad to pad the thing out. I really really hope it isn't anything along the lines of 'Final Destination'.
|
|
#
¿
Oct 28, 2013 17:57
|
|
|
Basebf555 posted:In the short story the guy just disappears right? Yea it would be kind of stupid to show him getting hit by a bus Final Destination style. I don't even think the ending is that specific. After hearing the story of how anyone who see's the Reaper disappears shortly thereafter, the protagonist looks in the mirror and notices a little black blur in one corner. When he comments on it, the other guy goes 'oh poo poo, you just saw the Reaper.' The protagonist then leaves the room, and the other guy sits there thinking about how after seeing the Reaper someone will simply disappear without a trace. So I don't think you you don't even get to see the guy disappear, its just heavily implied that it is about to happen. The reason I could imagine a 'final destination' or 'The Ring' style plot is because if you told the story accurately it would be over in about five minutes. The trailer really does cover everything the story covers. I could imagine them making a movie where they extend the action over a couple days. "Oh no! You saw the Reaper! Now he's cooooming to get yoooooou!"
|
|
#
¿
Oct 31, 2013 21:20
|
|
|
Part of me is convinced that King's accident is the reason that he chose to handle the Randall Flaag and Mordred plotlines in the fashion that he did (i.e. anticlimactically. Sorry folks! Sometimes the clearing at the end of the path is a car smashing into you while you stroll down a backroad in Maine, deal with it). But then I think of how he handled the Tick Tock man from a few books earlier and I think maybe I'm just trying to find an explanation for why King is constantly inventing bad-rear end villains and then losing all interest in them by the time the next book rolls around. It happens in IT too and probably some other books I'm forgetting about. He establishes a villain, keeps reminding you they exist, and then awkwardly kills them off screen or something when he suddenly realizes he doesn't have anything for them to be doing when the book's climax happens.
|
|
#
¿
Nov 9, 2013 16:20
|
|
|
I was thinking of Tom Rogan. I felt like given how his impending arrival was built up it was sorta anticlimactic for him to die 'off screen' of a heart attack. Don't get me wrong, I loved IT and think its King's best book, so this is a fairly mild complaint.
|
|
#
¿
Nov 10, 2013 18:34
|
|
|
So given the way Joe and even Stephen himself have at various points released books with different last names just to prove that they can sell their writing without a famous name, what's to stop me from doing the opposite? Like, what if I change my legal name to Stephen King and write a book about an inter-dimensional killer Mime called That. Does anything stop me from becoming the equivalent of The Asylum for horror books?
|
|
#
¿
Nov 21, 2013 18:28
|
|
|
Eyes of the Dragon and The Girl Who Loved Tom Gordon are both pretty terrible, if either of them had been the first King book I read then I doubt I would have kept going. Ditto if I'd read them both in a row. Honestly if you're trying to figure out why King is such a big deal you might be better off grabbing one of his books of short stories. That's where he really excels, even though some of his longer novels are quite good as well.
|
|
#
¿
Nov 27, 2013 21:57
|
|
|
Right about now would be the perfect time for a sequel to IT in light of the fact that its been 28 years since the events of the book. However King has stated he doesn't think he'll ever write a sequel and perhaps that is for the best. There's also a new movie version of IT in either production or pre-production and based on the director's previous work it could actually be really good.
|
|
#
¿
Dec 3, 2013 23:37
|
|
|
There was a clown in the stormdrain. The light in there was far from good, but it was good enough so that George Denbrough was sure of what he was seeing. It was a clown, like in the circus or on TV. In fact he looked like a cross between Bozo and Clarabell, who talked by honking his (or was it her?--George was never really sure of the gender) horn on Howdy Doody Saturday mornings--Buaffalo Bob was just about the only one who could understand Clarabell, and that always cracked George up. The face of the clown in the stormdrain was white, there were funny tufts of red hair on either side of his bald head, and there was a big clown-smile painted over his mouth. If George had been inhabiting a later year, he would have surely thought of Ronald McDonald before Bozo or Clarabell. The clown held a bunch of baloons, all colors, like gorgeous ripe fruit in one hand. In the other he held George's newspaper boat. "Want your boat, Georgie?" The clown smiled. George smiled back. He couldn't help it; it was the kind of smile you just had to answer. "I sure do," he said. The clown laughed. " 'I sure do.' That's good! That's very good! And how about a balloon?" "Well... sure!" He reached forward... and then drew his hand reluctantly back. "I'm not supposed to take stuff from strangers. My dad said so." "Very wise of your dad," the clown in the stormdrain said, smiling. How, George wondered, could I have thought his eyes were yellow? They were a bright, dancing blue, the color of his mom's eyes, and Bill's. "Very wise indeed. Therefore I will introduce myself. I, Georgie, am Mr. Bob Gray, also known as Pennywise the Dancing Clown. Pennywise, meet George Denbrough. George, meet Pennywise. And now we know each other. I'm not a stranger to you, and you're not a stranger to me. Kee-rect?" 
|
|
#
¿
Dec 10, 2013 06:36
|
|
|
|
|
#
¿
Dec 11, 2013 09:16
|
|
|
I've been looking into custom printing some helium balloons that say "I love Derry" for next Halloween, or maybe to just tie to a random piece of playground equipment.
|
|
#
¿
Dec 12, 2013 08:20
|
|
|
I envy those of you who are reading IT for the first time.
|
|
#
¿
Dec 13, 2013 21:11
|
|
|
bean_shadow posted:I started reading IT early as well and am at Bev's part of the "Six Calls" portion. And I wonder if the little things that try to stop the six from going, like Eddie's wife and Bev's husband, could be influenced by IT. But nothing really seems to try and stop Ritchie and Ben from going, so I don't think that theory holds water. Could IT control people from across the country? I really love some of the subtler stylistic flourishes that King employs in IT. For instance, did you notice when you were reading that the narrative starts our describing Tom Rogan's perspective and then switches to Beverly's at the exact moment that she finally asserts herself and regains her agency? Details like that, or the way that, later in the book, the description of Patrick Hoeckstetter's psychology closely mirrors the psychology of IT, in that both are narcissistic sociopaths who think they are the only real things in the universes and who each feel extremely threatened by the idea that another 'real' person might actually exist really add to the depth of the book and help elevate it above being just another horror novel. As for your question... just keep reading.
|
|
#
¿
Dec 13, 2013 22:37
|
|
|
This has already been noted by its worth point out that Charlie Howard, the real life version of Adrian Mellon, did have a history of wearing make-up and eye liner:quote:Charlie was an individual at a time when most homosexuals were still closeted, Charlie was "out" and even flamboyant. If he felt like "sissying up" e.g. wearing make up, jewelry and a woman's accessories, he was known for doing so. He was known for singing the song "I Am What I Am" from the musical La Cage aux Folles.[3] That isn't to say King's portrayals of gay and lesbian individuals has always been the most sensitive, but in this particular case he was seemingly hewing pretty close to the actual facts. Also as far as the idea that an abused woman might become a lesbian, there was such a thing as "political lesbianism" back at the height of 2nd wave feminism. I don't think it was ever a very common or influential force within the feminist movement but King is not inventing anything from whole cloth, there were at least a few women out there back in the 1970s who advocated sleeping exclusively with other women as a way to declare independence from men. The Berzerker posted:This is from a few pages back (wow this thread is moving quickly with all of us re-reading It at the same time!) but I just read the part near the beginning where Ben has a flashback to a creepy thing that happened to him in the winter, and there's some further description of the clown's outfit that is pretty inconsistent with the artwork I usually see: That's a good point actually. I figured that picture I posted (which I believe is on the 25th anniversary edition of the book) was one of the more accurate pictures I've seen but I had forgotten about the description of the suit. I wonder if the reason behind the confusion is that Pennywise is compared to Ronald McDonald, who does wear a yellow suit.
|
|
#
¿
Dec 14, 2013 21:33
|
|
|
|
|
#
¿
Dec 15, 2013 02:40
|
|
|
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".
|
|
#
¿
Dec 15, 2013 19:58
|
|
|
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.
|
|
#
¿
Dec 16, 2013 14:02
|
|
|
syscall girl posted:No, Delain was the name of the kingdom in The Eyes of the Dragon. The king's name was Roland and the evil vizier/wizard was Flagg. There was a bit about how Flagg was basically immortal and had been stirring poo poo for a really long time, and he kept coming back in different incarnations. I reread 'Sometimes They Come Back' from Nightshift a little while after finishing IT and its very striking how that story feels in many ways like it contains many of the ideas from IT in embryo. You've got a guy being haunted by the sudden return of his past, evil greasers, a supernatural force that killed the guys brother, the guy's wife being in peril, etc. The Boogey Man, also from 'Night Shift', also contains some little hints of what must have been running through King's mind in the early 1980s right as he was building up to the writing / publication of IT. A sewer monster that eats kids, abusive parents, etc.
|
|
#
¿
Dec 21, 2013 19:24
|
|
|
IT also seems somewhat unusual in that the main characters very actively try to confront and exorcise the evil force. Usually it seems like in a King book the characters will simply be trapped in a setting or situation and then they'll have to deal with the evil as best they can, often without all that much success. In IT the characters all reach a point early in the narrative where they consciously choose to confront Pennywise in the hopes of destroying him. That's a bit unusual. Sure there are other King books where at some point the surviving characters decide to fight back around the end of the novel but I can't think of many other King books I've read outside the Dark Tower series where right from the beginning the focus of the book is on the characters consciously trying to defeat an evil force rather than merely be victimized by it.
|
|
#
¿
Dec 27, 2013 06:47
|
|
|
^burtle posted:The main dude from Christine is pretty much trying to stop it from the start I'd argue. Interestingly enough isn't there actually a cameo from Christine in IT?
|
|
#
¿
Dec 27, 2013 14:16
|
|
|
I don't really think you need to 'psychoanalyze' King to recognize that IT is a book that deals with childhood trauma and the way that our childhood experiences exert a huge influence over our adult lives long after we've forgotten the specific experiences themselves. I agree that King's primary purpose in writing IT was just to tell a good yarn, and he makes that very explicit by having an early passage in the book where Bill makes says "Why does a story have to be socio-anything?Politics... culture... history... aren't those natural ingredients in any story, if it's told well? ... can't you guys just let a story be a story?" All the same I think its very clear that in the case of IT the dialectical relationship between childhood and adulthood, and the particular role that imagination plays, are obviously crucial ingredients to the story. We don't need to agonize over the question of what the exact "meaning" of this or that passage might be but on the whole this is clearly a book that deals with those themes and which has a great deal to say about them.
|
|
#
¿
Dec 27, 2013 20:31
|
|
|
Roydrowsy posted:So, just finished IT. They can't go back to the way they were before, of course, but the ones who survive do seem to heal and grow as people. Each of them was shown as being haunted by particular aspects of their past and there's some implication that now that they've conquered the trauma of their childhood they'll be able to move on in their adult lives. They also, presumably, might now be able to have children, something they were all incapable of doing before. Its definitely bitter-sweet, but I think it speaks to the way that for many people growing up and leaving childhood behind is both a triumph and a tragedy. Actually, that raises another question. For those of you who have read 11/22/63, I've heard that Richie and Beverly both show up. Assuming this isn't a major spoiler, does it mention whether either of them have kids?
|
|
#
¿
Dec 30, 2013 00:57
|
|
|
What were the defining features of Castle Rock? I've seen the movie version of Needful Things but otherwise I don't think I've come across any material set in Castle Rock. Derry is a very distinctive setting and one of the coolest parts of reading 'IT' is that it's very much a novel where the location becomes a major character in its own right (almost literally in this case given that Pennywise essentially IS Derry). Are there any comparable characterizations of Castle Rock? Does King ever go into detail on why Castle Rock is distinctive or is it just supposed to be a generic stand in for small town Maine?
|
|
#
¿
Jan 8, 2014 20:50
|
|
|
King really stands out as a writer in terms of his willingness to present people as being either genuinely quite good or exceptionally evil. I feel like most character driven author's you read, even more literary ones, will tend to present people one way or the other. King by contrast really does produce stories with characters who fall very far on one end of the spectrum or the other without it feeling like he's just describing a cardboard caricature. He isn't like Brett Easton Ellis where every character is an utter scumbag to the point that it becomes distracting and you start to wonder how much insight the author actually has into other people.
|
|
#
¿
Jan 28, 2014 20:45
|
|
|
I still don't understand why anyone uses twitter or why you'd express an actual opinion over it. I "get" other social media but twitter just seems stupid beyond words.
|
|
#
¿
Feb 4, 2014 20:16
|
|
|
I haven't actually read Misery but I've read about it in one of King's nonfiction books (On Writing, I think?) and apparently the ending took him by surprise. He said, in effect, that the resourcefulness of the main character was greater than he himself anticipated. Not having read the book I can't really comment on that but I always thought it was kind of neat that the conclusion of the story defied the author's expectations. I guess it just speaks to King's general attitude that you don't write a story so much as you discover one through the process of writing.
|
|
#
¿
Feb 11, 2014 17:45
|
|
|
|
| # ¿ May 3, 2024 04:24 |
|
|
One of the things I really enjoyed about IT compared to a lot of King's other books is that it really feels like a book with an actual plot. A lot of King's books basically just take a crazy situation, drop some interesting characters into it, and then you watch while that situation plays itself out to its logical conclusion, at which point King just sort of brings things to an end. With IT there's more of a sense of a momentum carrying through the whole story, and the main characters have specific objectives that they set out to accomplish and then face obstacles along the way. Not to say that there's necessarily anything wrong with the way King normally writes books. Having character / setting driven stories where the supernatural elements don't necessarily drive the story so much as they intensify an already unpleasant situation can be really interesting, but I think it can also contribute to the general sense that King often doesn't know how to give his books a satisfying ending.
|
|
#
¿
Mar 4, 2014 19:09
|
|