Kevin's Watch

I can't believe there's no thread for this one! Good, I can avoid spoilers.


I'm not quite 100 pages in. Enjoying it quite a bit. The story isn't as epic as The Stand (obviously) at this point, but the characters are much better. Or perhaps how the characters are handled is better. That foreboding sense of doom, even in normal situations, just saturates the narrative. I'm at the point where they're all getting the call from Mike, bringing them back to Derry. The family* who had everything going right--job, house, etc.--but still felt that something was wrong in the background, felt really familiar to me. It was a kind of fear that I think everyone has, worrying about mundane things like keeping the kids safe and getting older. More than any other King story, this had my heart racing as I lay in bed at night reading. The sense of nameless ("It!") panic was so thick.

I think this will be my last DT tie-in before taking the DT plunge, unless there's one that you guys say is too good to skip. I still haven't read Rose Madder, Skeleton Crew, Everything's Eventual, or Regulators. I do not plan to ever finish Talisman, which means BH too.


* [I'm awful at remembering character names:

Spoiler

it's the guy who got the phone call and then promptly slit his wrists in the tub.

]

I believe the name you're trying to remember is Stan.

I read It in the two days before my freshman year of college started. Loved it. Might have to read it again.

not in love with the ending. but King's narrative on this is amazing. I have read it a few times.

and Pennywise...

Pretty tenuous tie-in to be honest, but a great book, although I share Null's ambivalence about the ending.

--A

i recall a few king stories falling short in the ending. love his short stories for the opposite reason.

to quote floyd, "a short, sharp, shock, dig it?"

I saw the miniseries of It years ago. I don't remember anything about it except going into the sewers and finding a big spider at the end. So I guess that's the ending that everyone is disappointed about? If it's more, don't tell me. I'm enjoying the ride even though I understand that every time he talks about a monster feeding, it's this spider. I have no idea what the clown has to do with it. Maybe that's a hallucination the spider causes? If so, it could have made him look a bit less scary, and he'd have more success.

I haven't read the book, but I love the miniseries. I hate clowns now as a result.

It's not really a spider per se. Mini-series? I've only seen the movie.

--A

kinda spider, in a way.

I hated Clowns way before Pennywise.

The ending is......Problematic. You'll understand that description once (or as) you read it. Nothing to do with spiders or clowns.

Yeah, at nearly 300 pages in, I've seen It as a clown, a dead boy and the Creature from the Black Lagoon. So It's either a shapeshifter or an illusionist.

I'm about 3/4 the way through, and I've got to say this is the best King novel I've read so far. The structure, the characters, the plot, all of it. I love the three different temporal views you get of this. Hell, I suppose it's 4, if you count the smoke pit vision. But what's amazing is how it all feels like it's the same story moving forward, each piece informing the others. This is a fantastic book.

One minor gripe: how the heck do the characters know when something is real and something is part of It's 'glamor'? They talk about objects making a popping sound as air returns to a vacated spot when one of the Pennywise manifestations disappears suddenly, and this is supposed to be proof that the object (e.g. Stan's head in the library refrigerator!) was real? Why couldn't the popping sound also be an illusion? Pretty flimsy evidence, if you ask me.


[While writing the above, a grammatical curiosity just occurred to me. Since 'It' is the character's name, wouldn't we use an apostrophe to form the possessive, even though it's usually reserved for the contraction of 'it is'? Or do we just capitalize it and follow the usual convention? Not really important, but for some reason either seems reasonable to me.]

I would capitalise and follow the usual convention.

--A

I thought the very ending of the story was a beautiful metaphor. It was my first Stephen King read, and I'm glad it was. It is a very well crafted story, and probably the most emotional for me.

The miniseries served it's purpose at telling the story but wasn't especially good. The casting was great, for the most part, and certainly for the adults. And especially Tim Curry. But as an adaptation, it stayed too close to the material and only deliveried on a mediocre level.

So by ending, what are we talking about? Entering Spoiler territory:

Spoiler

Do we mean the last Hi Ho Silver moment or fighting It? I'm thinking of the former. I thought it was a very bittersweet ending because they were forgetting everything again, and was a metaphor for aging in how you forget so much of when you were a kid eventually.

I was talking about

Spoiler

fighting It. A giant spider?

--A

I was talking about:

Spoiler

underage kids having a gang bang.

I get the metaphor, and it didn't seem like a big deal when I initially read it. It does now.

Damn, I wasn't expecting one of the steamiest sex scenes ever written in a book about 11 year old kids in a sewer fighting a giant spider. Now that's hot!



WTF was King thinking?

I've got about 40 pages to go, but I'm not sure I even care anymore. It's a shame how King can ruin a good book with stupid endings. Defeating It by biting its tongue and believing in the Tooth Fairy? What the hell is that shit? Can he just not think of a good ending at all???

Zarathustra wrote:Damn, I wasn't expecting one of the steamiest sex scenes ever written in a book about 11 year old kids in a sewer fighting a giant spider. Now that's hot!



WTF was King thinking?

I do not think he does. I remember skipping those 16 pages because.... why? Why have a scene where Beverly is gang-banged? Because the boys are frightened because they fought a giant eye? Why didn't It take them out? Why is It a spider?

Might as well finish it, I guess

Well, it wasn't that steamy really. I think people find the implications unpleasant though. And yeah...very incongruous, especially at the time...if they'd been a few years older maybe.

--A