it stephen king essay

Clowns are creepy no matter what. We can all agree on that, right?

But Pennywise, the dancing clown who tracks down and torments the children of small-town Maine in “It,” is deeply unsettling. At least, he is in the latest incarnation of Stephen King ’s iconic novel. Infamously, Tim Curry ’s take on the character in the 1990 TV miniseries version was so over-the-top, it was laughable—not that you’re looking for understatement in your homicidal clowns.

But what Bill Skarsgard does with the role works well precisely because he doesn’t appear to be laboring so hard to frighten us. He doesn’t vamp it up. He’s coy—he toys with these kids—making his sudden bursts of insane clown hostility that much more shocking.

Even more effective than the horror elements of Argentine director Andy Muschietti ’s adaptation is the unexpected humor he reveals in the story—and, ultimately, the humanity. Finding that combination of tones is such a tricky balance to pull off: the brief lightening of a tense moment with a quick quip, or an earnest monologue in the face of extreme danger. But “It” makes that work nearly every time, thanks to its perfectly calibrated performances from a well-chosen cast.

The kid-bonding parts of the movie are actually stronger than the creepy-clown parts, even though images of that freakish, frilly fiend will be the ones that keep you awake at night. Led by “ Midnight Special ” star Jaeden Lieberher —whose everyman (everykid?) appeal grows with each film—and including a star-making performance from Sophia Lillis as the crew’s lone female member, it’s mostly unknown actors who comprise the film’s so-called “Losers Club.” But their characters are distinctly drawn, each with a fleshed-out backstory that explains why their fears make them so vulnerable to Pennywise’s attacks.

Unlike King’s novel and the 1990 original “It,” the screenplay from Chase Palmer , Cary Fukunaga (the acclaimed writer-director of “ Sin Nombre ” and “ Beasts of No Nation ”) and Gary Dauberman doesn’t jump back and forth in time. It moves the time frame to 1988-89 and sticks with our core group of seven kids while they’re still adolescent misfits, which grounds their story and makes it more immersive. (It also surely will draw comparisons to the Netflix series “Stranger Things,” another supernatural mystery set in small-town America in the 1980s. The nostalgia factor is strong for those of us who grew up then, too.)

Muschietti’s version begins as the book does, though, with innocent, six-year-old Georgie Denbrough ( Jackson Robert Scott ) chasing his toy boat as it sails down a gutter and into a storm drain on a rainy afternoon in fictional Derry, Maine. He’s especially fond of the boat because it was a gift from his beloved older brother, Lieberher’s Bill, a smart, skinny kid who struggles with a stutter. That’s why his choice to chat with Pennywise—who just happens to pop up in the sewer with the boat and a smile—leads to his tragic demise. (Muschietti’s cutaways to a cat who witnesses everything from a nearby porch are chilling; he showed that same delicate mastery of mood with his underappreciated 2013 horror film “ Mama ,” starring Jessica Chastain .)

But Bill insists Georgie has just gone missing, as such an unusually large number of Derry children have over the years. He enlists his posse of similarly bullied, outcast pals to help him get to the bottom of this lingering mystery: wisecracking trash-talker Richie ( Finn Wolfhard , who also happens to be in “Stranger Things”); wimpy mama’s boy Eddie ( Jack Dylan Grazer ); nervous rabbi’s son Stanley ( Wyatt Oleff ); heavyset new kid Ben ( Jeremy Ray Taylor ); and the tough-but-kind Beverly (Lillis). Eventually, the home-schooled farmhand Mike ( Chosen Jacobs ), who’s suffered racial attacks as the only black kid in town, makes them a team of seven.

Despite the many terrifying moments they endure in their quest—scenes that will leave you trembling and giggling at once—“It” is even more powerful in the warm, easy camaraderie between its young stars. Certainly you could view it as a straight-up horror flick, but the underlying allegory of these characters facing their deepest fears as they enter adulthood gives the movie more emotional heft—a bit of bittersweet within the suffering.

These kids have all languished on the fringes—hence the “Losers Club” tag they wear as a badge of honor—whether it’s because of an overbearing mother, an abusive father or a devastating family loss. But they’re also all on the cusp of something. Pennywise knows what frightens them in this precarious state of flux and tries to use that devious, supernatural ability to lead kids to their doom. Confronting those fears rather than running away is what just might save them.

Tonally, “It” feels like a throwback to great King adaptations of yore—particularly “Stand By Me,” with its ragtag band of kids on a morbid adventure, affecting bravado and affectionately hassling each other to mask their true jitters. Wolfhard in particular has great comic timing as the profane Richie. Technically, Muschietti shows some glimmers of early Spielberg, too—the low camera angles, the images of kids on bikes pedaling furiously in a pack, the overall mix of wonder and danger.

“It” could have used a bit of tightening as it builds toward its climax, though. While the imagery is undeniably harrowing and even poignant in the action-packed third act, some of it feels dragged out and redundant. And because the final confrontation takes place within a dark, underground lair, it’s sometimes difficult to tell exactly what’s going on, despite the impressive visual effects on display as Pennywise unleashes his full powers on his young attackers. (That’s one of many ways in which the new “It” is a vast improvement over its low-tech predecessor.)

Not to burst your balloon, though, but the closing credits suggest this may not be the last we’ve seen of Pennywise after all.

Christy Lemire

Christy Lemire is a longtime film critic who has written for RogerEbert.com since 2013. Before that, she was the film critic for The Associated Press for nearly 15 years and co-hosted the public television series “Ebert Presents At the Movies” opposite Ignatiy Vishnevetsky, with Roger Ebert serving as managing editor. Read her answers to our Movie Love Questionnaire here .

• Chosen Jacobs as Mike Hanlon
• Javier Botet as The Leper
• Owen Teague as Patrick Hockstetter
• Jaeden Lieberher as Bill Denbrough
• Jackson Robert Scott as Georgie
• Steven Williams as Leroy Hanlon
• Bill Skarsgård as Pennywise
• Jack Dylan Grazer as Eddie Kaspbrak
• Logan Thompson as Victor Criss
• Jake Sim as Belch Huggins
• Sophia Lillis as Beverly Marsh
• Jeremy Ray Taylor as Ben Hanscom
• Finn Wolfhard as Richie Tozier
• Wyatt Oleff as Stan Uris
• Nicholas Hamilton as Henry Bowers
• Andy Muschietti
• Benjamin Wallfisch
• Cary Fukunaga
• Chase Palmer
• Gary Dauberman

Cinematographer

• Chung-hoon Chung
• Jason Ballantine

Writer (based on the novel by)

• Stephen King

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The Secret Meaning of Stephen King’s ‘IT’

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Think Stephen King ’s  IT is all about a spooky clown named Pennywise? Think again. Sure, the terrifying clown with the questionable hair is part of it, but King’s masterpiece of horror has something much more sinister lurking beneath its pancake makeup surface. Something that’s a little bit more ... murky.

In this new video essay, the team at ScreenCrush breaks down the original 1990  IT  miniseries to explore the depths of its real horror. Stephen King has talked about the impact the classic Universal film  Creature From the Black Lagoon  had on his budding mind as a child. Our video traces its influence into his work, and notes just how important water imagery has been throughout the long history of monster movies, before and after  Creature From the Black Lagoon , and up to and including  IT , both the television miniseries and the brand new film version opening in theaters this month from director Andy Muschietti.

This video was written and narrated by Kevin Maher, who hosts the  Kevin Geeks Out  screening series in New York. Check out more of Kevin’s work by following him on  Twitter . We’ve got lots more videos and video essays coming in the future. In the meantime, don’t forget to subscribe to the  ScreenCrush YouTube channel  to catch all our future episodes. And you can watch more of ScreenCrush’s videos below, including Kevin’s previous video about the most traumatic moments in the history of PG movies created before the advent of the PG-13 rating.

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It: a superb Stephen King adaptation fueled less by scary clowns than by real-life evil

The new film adaptation of Stephen King’s horror classic exposes the dark rotting heart of 2017.

by Aja Romano

In August 2014, during the nationwide protests following the death of Mike Brown, a photo went viral. In it, a woman named France Francois held aloft a protest sign reading, “I can’t believe I still have to protest this shit.” Francois told press she’d been galvanized by memories of protesting the death of a 14-year-old who died while in detention. While she was at the march, one woman told her she’d been protesting this shit for the last seven decades.

The same profound world-weariness looms over the perpetually overcast town of Derry, Maine, in Andy Muschietti’s new film adaptation of Stephen King’s It.

There’s a common mantra that circulates within social movements that we just have to wait for evil to “die out,” a pervasive belief that every generation inevitably advances society forward over the dead bodies of those who were holding it back. But if the past year has taught us anything, it’s that time is a flat circle and that evil continually resurfaces, armed with ever more powerful weapons. As the keeper of our horror-stricken national conscience, Stephen King knows better than anyone that evil is generational, that it must be routed again and again. King knows, too, that “evil” isn’t about larger-than-life acts, but about the everyday callousness, abuse of power, and indifference to abuse of power that humans practice as they go about their lives.

This truth is what makes Derry arguably the most quintessential fictional town in America. And It pulls off the feat of making Derry’s symbolic decay and encroaching evil a metaphor for the times in which we live, while still delivering the classic coming-of-age fable King fans know and love.

It is as much about the specter of real-life terror as it is the supernatural

In It , the titular evil entity returns every 27 years, and the group who must face it (this time around) is a band of children on the brink of adolescence. They include Jaeden Lieberher as Bill, the de facto leader who grieves his little brother’s mysterious abduction; Sophia Lillis as Beverly, the group’s only girl; and shy Ben ( Jeremy Ray Taylor ). Rounding out the group are smart-mouthed Ritchie ( Stranger Things ’ Finn Wolfhard ), incessant talker Eddie ( Jack Dylan Grazer ), the reluctant Stan ( Wyatt Oleff ), and Mike ( Chosen Jacobs ), who as a homeschooled black kid is the biggest outsider of them all.

Together, they form a charming, funny, and pure-hearted misfit ensemble: the Losers Club. This is a moniker taken from King’s book that’s not so much announced onscreen as it is implied with every awkward social exchange, every insult, every punch thrown by an oversized bully — and Derry abounds with bullies.

Stephen King is known for filling his books with bullied outcasts , from Carrie to Stand By Me — and like each of those stories, the kids in It inhabit an R-rated space that’s typically reserved for adults in the movies, a space full of F-words and violence. But while the bullies are terrifying, in King’s worlds, adults are always worse, exercising terrifying strangleholds over the lives of children. It’s this sinister reality that’s lurking in It ’s corners; come for the fathomless cosmic evil, stay for the reminder that in real life, evil is nearly always mundane.

The events of It kick off when Bill’s little brother Georgie has a shudder-inducing run-in with Pennywise the Clown ( Bill Skarsgård ), the shapeshifting form of fear itself that terrorizes and ultimately devours Derry’s children. The Losers Club are the only people in Derry who seem to be awake and attuned to the sheer horror of the town’s rising number of missing children and a death rate that’s six times higher than the national average. Driven by Bill’s quest to know Georgie’s fate, the Losers, drawn together partly out of friendship and partly out of desperation, begin a heroes’ journey to vanquish It once and for all — a journey that ultimately spans nearly three decades in King’s novel.

Pennywise is the most famous part of It. And he’s suitably creepy in Muschietti’s film, menacing and enigmatic enough to satisfy even the most die-hard It fans and Tim Curry loyalists . But while Curry’s iconic performance overshadowed everything that was mediocre about the 1990 miniseries, Skarsgård’s Pennywise and the many traditional horror scares he engenders aren’t remotely the most interesting parts of this layered, knowing film. That’s because Muschietti understands that Pennywise, in all his Lovecraftian incomprehensibility, is only a symptom of the larger evil in King’s mythos — the darkness that lurks in the hearts of power-hungry men and causes society’s foundations to rot.

It markets itself as nostalgia, but it’s an allegory for 2017

Judging by its record-breaking trailer, It is the most highly anticipated film of the fall of 2017. It could be easy to chalk up this clamor to nostalgia: Muschietti’s choice to relocate the sprawling book’s first timeline from the late 1950s to 1989 caters to that impulse (the second timeline will constitute an entirely separate film “chapter” to come), and the timing of It ’s arrival, between seasons of its spiritual successor Stranger Things , doesn’t hurt any. It is also rife with nostalgic cultural signifiers, from arcade games and era-specific movie posters to a shiny Trans Am and a running joke about New Kids on the Block that encapsulates the film’s loving teasing of its socially awkward protagonists.

But Muschietti’s largely faithful adaptation of King’s story relies not on nostalgia for its emotional underpinnings, but rather a keen sense of the present moment in all its deep tensions and ugliness. Alongside It ’s most famous storyline — Pennywise abducting a string of children from an indifferent population — Muschietti steadily builds out the real-life terrors happening in Derry and the lengths our protagonists must go to in order to effectively combat them.

The main teen bully, Henry Bowers ( Nicholas Hamilton ), is a violent racist who means to do harm and continually levels up in weaponry. Beverly’s father molests her. Eddie’s mother exhibits signs of Munchausen’s by proxy . Mike, in a possible homage to black filmmaker Charles Burnett’s brilliant film Killer of Sheep , is forced to stun sheep using a bolt gun while his uncle informs him that he has to learn to wield the weapon or else it will be wielded against him. Later, a wordless, lingering shot of Mike carrying the bolt gun to fight It reveals how fully he’s absorbed the lesson.

There’s an acute release in watching the Losers face down the onscreen terrors of It in ways we can’t face down real-life terrors. When the Losers finally get fed up and fight back against Bowers and his minions, it’s almost more satisfying than the fight they ultimately wage against Pennywise. Muschietti’s film might seem over-the-top in any other year, with its unsubtle depictions of hate, racism, and othering; instead, in a year that’s seen the dramatic surfacing of those elements , it serves as a grim, temporary catharsis — temporary, because the fight to defeat these social evils is never over.

It understands King’s idea of horror — and his optimism — in a way few King adaptations do

For every strange supernatural development in It , a real-life counterpart looms with equal menace. When not in his resting state as Pennywise, It constantly shape-shifts between horrifying phantasms and images of real people from the lives of our heroes. When Bowers finally seems to go Super-Saiyan in his capacity for evil, It presides over a creepy Candle Cove -like children’s TV show ordering him to “kill them all.” This type of juxtaposition creates a tapestry of magical realism woven out of dread, an atmosphere of omniscient terror that’s far more chilling than the threat of a jump scare around the corner (of which It also indulges in its fair share).

The supernatural elements are creepy, yes: Horror-movie staples like scary dolls, creepy old houses, coffins, geysers of blood, and gruesome visions of dead people are all here in droves. But most of these elements feel like dutiful afterthoughts — or superimposed homages to other King stories like Carrie and Salem’s Lot — rather than the main event. Instead, It is fueled by the ever-present sense of a spiraling loss of control.

In this regard, It joins The Shining and Carrie as the best of the Stephen King horror adaptations — films that understand that King’s novels are never about surface-level scares, but about the countless ways in which individual small-time acts of evil coalesce into terrifying systems of violence, often aided by an increasingly indifferent society.

In 2017, this is the most troubling message It could possibly send. Yet for all its dark social relevance, It is also moving, emotional, and even optimistic. The Losers’ love and loyalty for each other keep the film compelling in moments when the jump scares wane, and it’s this steady warmheartedness that makes It feel like the dream Spielberg adaptation of King that we never actually got in the ’80s.

All of this makes It the perfect end-of-summer movie: a film saturated in waning sunlight, with the innocence of childhood giving way to adolescence while childhood terrors give way to much scarier real threats. For King’s Losers, summer is officially over forever — but they’ll face the grim days ahead together, and for now, that’s enough.

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Evil and the Supernatural

Stephen King presents Derry, the setting for It , as a sleepy New England town in which terror and evil lurk beneath its placid surface. This evil takes the supernatural form of the monster “ It .” It is a presence that hides in dark, underground spaces, first discovered in the narrative by George Denbrough in his basement in 1957. This creature has several names—It, Pennywise the Dancing Clown, and Bob Gray. It can take…

Friendship and Loyalty

The Losers’ Club—a group of prepubescent social misfits which includes Bill Denbrough , Ben Hanscom , Richie Tozier , Stanley Uris , Beverly Marsh , and Eddie Kaspbrak —is brought back together decades later through a phone call from their sixth member, Mike Hanlon . Mike reminds them of a blood oath they all took in childhood, vowing to return to Derry if It ever resurrected itself and started killing again. When the inevitable occurs…

Domestic Abuse

Beverly Marsh , Henry Bowers , and Dorsey and Edward Corcoran all have one thing in common: abusive households. Four-year-old Dorsey ends up bludgeoned to death by his stepfather, Richard Macklin , while Henry murders his father, Butch , and ends up in a mental health facility for the criminally-insane. Beverly’s history of abuse compels her to seek her abusive father’s approval through her marriage to Tom Rogan , who also abuses her. The prevalence…

Fear and the Power of Fantasy

Children’s fears are often vividly evoked through fantasies, particularly those conjured by films and fairy tales. Horror movies and scary fairy tales entertain, but that entertainment can become obscured by real fears of menace and the frequent inability of children to separate reality from fiction. It knows that children believe that the terrors from fantasies can enter reality, and uses this belief to reach into children’s imaginations to terrorize them. King uses characters from 1950s…

Storytelling and Memory

Each member of the Losers’ Club has a recollection about Pennywise the Dancing Clown , or It, and this shared experience and ability to tell a story brings them all together. Sometimes, the group’s stories are linked to early memories or associations with other victims, which forge a personal connection between It and those whom It terrorizes. The storytelling during the Losers’ Club’s reunion in 1985 is necessary to help them remember all that they…

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Reading Stephen King’s It is an exhausting way to spend a summer

In the summer of 2017, an evil clown took over my life.

By Kaitlyn Tiffany

Illustrations by Lizzie Plaugic

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Technically, Stephen King’s 1986 novel It is a book. But as a physical object, it shares a number of characteristics with a cinder block. Carrying 1,200 pages of It between Brooklyn and Manhattan every day isn’t just a chore, it’s a workout. It’s easy to feel like It is meant to be this way — a stupid-large object you have to live with for weeks on end, depending on your reading speed and the musculature of your forearms. Maybe that’s because the book’s themes are fear, and how hard it is to shake it; violence, and how long it can affect you; first crushes, and how they never really go away, etc. Stuff you carry around with you. Heavy stuff. Get it? I would speculate that King refused any meaningful edits to this book because he wanted reading It to actually hurt.

It’ s key monster battles (the first in 1958, then a reprise in 1985 with the same cast of characters) take place in the summertime, so with Andrés Muschietti's film adaptation of the first half of the book hitting theaters on September 8th, it seemed appropriate to make it a summer read. The book’s length gave me the semi-poetic option of purposely draping its creeping dread of heatstroke, rejection, and murder over my own July and August. I thought, “What better way to enjoy a fall horror movie than by making it the delicious reward for being scared all summer long?” Also, I thought I should keep a diary.

(Spoilers for the 30-year-old book version of It below, obviously.)

Week of July 10th

I ordered a paperback copy of It from Amazon.com , and told my editor Tasha Robinson in Slack, “I wanna read It before the movie comes out, because I have never read any Stephen King. And I wanna be like the mom in Donnie Darko. ” She said, “Ohhhhhh man, It is not the best place to start Stephen King ,” citing a child orgy and the book’s bonkers length. Whatever, Tasha.

I said, “Perfect!!! The perfect summer task.” At this stage of summer, it’s easy to think that a challenge will feel good, rosé will never taste bad, feet are impervious to splinters, and death will never come. The book arrived in the mail a few days later, and it weighed approximately 45 pounds.

Week of July 17th

I read the first 221 pages of It in an empty Starbucks on a Saturday night in Brooklyn. My plan was to read it on a bench, but it was raining.

The Losers’ Club Mini Wiki

Bill Denbrough: Bill is the leader of It ’s central group of kids, who call themselves the “Losers’ Club.” Everyone calls him “Big Bill,” even when he’s a little kid. His brother George was murdered by It in the first pages of the book and his parents are very cold to him afterward. He has a stutter, which is important to the plot a few times. As an adult, he’s a successful horror novelist and is married to an actress named Audra. He’s in love with Beverly.

Ben Hanscom: Ben is a loner before he runs into the Losers and designs a dam, a fun afternoon project. He has a single mother, who seems pretty normal. He’s fat as a child, which defines a little bit more of his character arc than would be acceptable in today’s fiction. As an adult, he’s a rich and famous architect. He’s in love with Beverly.

Beverly Marsh: The lone girl in the Losers’ Club, Beverly is described mostly in terms of her “beautiful” red hair and “small breasts.” It is gross. She has an absentee mom and a violently abusive father, whose abuses of her are described in more detail than we really need. As an adult, she’s married to an even more violently abusive man named Tom, and she’s a successful fashion designer. She’s in love with Bill.

Richie Tozier: Richie has glasses and a weird sense of humor. You know, that guy! Maybe it’s a trope, but maybe Stephen King invented it — who knows? He does a lot of impressions and “voices” (many of them a little bit racist) as a kid and then grows up to be a popular radio DJ. They call him “Trashmouth” and “The Man of a Thousand Voices.”

Eddie Kaspbrak: Eddie’s mother is obsessed with his health and convinces him that he has asthma that needs to be treated with an aspirator. He’s dependent on the “medication” his whole life, even though he figures out the fake-asthma thing at age 11. As an adult, he runs a limousine business with his wife Myra, whose resemblance to his mother he remarks upon several times. She seems very weird.

Mike Hanlon: Mike is the last to join the Losers’ Club. His father tells him stories about the history of Derry, inspiring him to spend his life working in the library and keeping a diary that pieces together the history of It. He’s the only Loser who stays in Derry, and he’s the one who has to call everyone to come back. He’s also the only one who is black, and several of the other Losers’ parents are weird about it.

Stan Uris: Stan, also known as “Stan the Man,” has a dry sense of humor and no real interest in fighting It the first time around. Nevertheless, he’s the one who cuts everyone’s hands with a broken Coke bottle, making them swear to come back to Derry if It ever starts killing kids again. He’s Jewish, which also bothers several of the other Losers’ parents.

The mom in Donnie Darko , an intellectual misplaced in Midwestern suburbia and played with daunting coolness by Mary McDonnell, reads It in the background of just one scene, and she reads it at a double remove. She’s lounging in a lush garden in an elegant red housecoat, holding the book about three feet from her face, corners of her mouth turned all the way down. She’s also reading It more than two years after its release. (The events of Donnie Darko take place in October 1988, though the film came out in 2001, unfortunately missing the boat on ‘80s science fiction nostalgia by about 15 years.)

Mary McDonnell is my inspiration and starting point for this task, because I too would like to hold any horrors at arm’s length, and I too am reading this book long after its big moment as a best-seller. Unfortunately, It is challenging to hold at arm’s length. There is, as I mentioned, the issue of physical weight. And then there’s the cruelty of a novel explaining on the fifth page that a six-year-old boy is about to die, then backtracking to fill in his personality and relationship with his older brother for 10 pages before it actually happens. His arm gets ripped off, and he dies either from blood loss or literally from fear.

The first 221 pages of It are an introduction to its setting — a small town in Maine called Derry — and to its central cast of seven preteen outcasts, self-dubbed the Losers’ Club. The kid who gets his arm ripped off is the little brother of Bill, the Losers’ Club ringleader. They’re the crew who realize their town is plagued by a magical clown who kills scores of children. We meet them first in 1985 — for the most part, as successful adults who sport the unmistakable marks of trauma. One of them drinks excessively. They all have amnesia. The lone woman, Beverly, puts up with an abusive husband. Bill is somehow turning all his nightmares into best-selling novels.

The crew is called back to Derry by Mike, the sole Losers’ Club member who stayed there, driven to serve as librarian and town historian. He’s the most knowledgable about the clown curse, and he’s lonely in this knowledge. I am lonely in the Starbucks on Eastern Parkway. Like me, Mike keeps a diary. Much of the book, I assume from this build-up, will be flashbacks to the Losers’ time fighting the clown back in the summer of 1958. I should mention that one of the Losers, Stan, is so afraid of the clown that he kills himself rather than returning to Derry to fight it.

As an aesthetic note, Stephen King describes fear in this book mostly in terms of what it smells like — mainly rotting leaves and cellar smell. Mildew. He uses the word “stench” a lot.

What I underlined: “If fiction and politics ever really do become interchangeable, I’m going to kill myself, because I won’t know what else to do. You see, politics always change. Stories never do.”

This is a note to a college professor, written by Bill (the novelist), presumably in defense of Stephen King, the novelist.

Where I stopped: Immediately before a chapter called “Bill Denbrough Beats the Devil.” He’s about to do some dangerously fast bike-riding, and that’s too much for me.

Mood: Startled (six-year-old’s arm got ripped off!), embarrassed (alone in a Starbucks), excited, (I think the last true page-turner I read was My Little Phony in 2010.)

Week of July 24th

I read pages 221 to 317 of It while lying on Valentino Pier in Red Hook, Brooklyn. While there, I discovered that the pier would be hosting a free screening of Donnie Darko in August. Perfect! For anyone reading this, it is much too late.

Like summer, Stephen King’s It looks enormous and unending at the outset. And like summer, just as the timeline seems to be sagging into the shape of a chill, droopy hammock forever, it snaps back into place without warning, knocking my teeth together. This happens as I’m lying on my back on a rock wall by the water, trying to suspend a 45-pound book above my face without pulling a muscle or breaking my nose.

unfortunately, this book is very difficult to hold at arm’s length

Last week, I was thinking, “Do I really need detailed descriptions of the outfits of six men with barely differentiable names?” I am now thinking, “Wait, how many murders so far?” The answer: a lot. In this 90 pages of It , a child named Eddie Cocoran ( not the Eddie from the Losers’ Club, and that is needlessly confusing. Sorry, Stephen) is murdered by his stepfather, who I think we are meant to believe was possessed by It. This is followed by several more graphic descriptions of child-murders. Also in this section, Mike has his first encounter with It, which for him takes the form of a bird with a 60-foot wingspan instead of the notorious clown. Eddie meets It as a “leper” who keeps asking him if he wants a blow job. Most of the Losers’ Club conspire to build a dam in the woods, which somehow gets them in trouble with a cop. It’s revealed that Eddie’s asthma is psychosomatic, inflicted on him by his hysterical mother. We are moving along, and my teeth hurt.

Now that I am invested, I’m looking for hints as to how a monster this weird (can be a bird; obsessed with blow jobs) could be defeated by a bunch of 11-year-olds. Here’s one hint, I think: when Mike runs from the monster bird (which also has clown hair on it), he hides briefly in a bolthole in the ground and then jumps out and think-yells, “Never mind! Never mind stuff like that! I’m not a rabbit!” And that scares the monster away somehow. Hmm. We’ll come back to it. This doesn’t make sense to me.

My favorite scene in this portion of It is when all the quirky li’l boys and Beverly are sitting by the creek working up the nerve to tell each other their It stories. There’s a well-written tension between each kid wanting to be heard and each kid also really not wanting their fears to be confirmed by listening to the others. (“Whatever it is, I don’t want to hear it, I don’t want things to change, I don’t want to be scared.”) Sometimes the dread of a change in feeling is worse than the feeling itself.

Anyway, I’m not scared. I’m sitting on a pier, and I refuse to drop a book on my face.

What I underlined: “He supposes he would have died for Bill back then, if that had been required; if Bill had asked him, Eddie would simply have responded: ‘Sure, Big Bill… you got a time in mind yet?’” My 9th grade English teacher still has dominion over my wrists, and I’ll probably have to underline foreshadowing this brazen until I am dead.

Where I stopped: Immediately after Eddie convinces himself that his encounter with It was just a self-inflicted waking nightmare, concluding, “He had scared himself! What an asshole!”

Mood: Not scared. I’m a tough guy.

Week of July 31st

I read pages 317 to 333 of It on a ledge near Greenwood Cemetery, and 333 to 453 in another Starbucks.

Something you don’t need to know about me is that I live near Greenwood Cemetery, but have never been in it. I sometimes walk to the edge and sit on a little stretch of concrete across the street at nighttime when I’m “in a mood.” The “mood” this time is “90 degrees at night, hands a little sticky, brain churning with majestic teen fantasies, everything is electric.” It’s a stupid affectation, but thematically appropriate, so give me a break.

I arrive at the part of It in which Richie and Bill go into Bill’s dead brother’s bedroom and flip through an old photo album that suddenly comes alive, biting Bill’s finger and drawing blood. The ghost of Bill’s brother then yells at him for sending him out in a rainstorm alone, extremely indirectly causing his death. I am not doing this justice, but this scene is both the scariest and the saddest of the book so far. Poor Bill. (And, I suppose, poor Stephen King. Bill, as a best-selling horror writer and troubled but stalwart hero, is a not-at-all-subtle stand-in for him.)

Okay, so the graveyard was a bad idea. Too spooky! As a solve, I read the next 120 pages of It in the blandest, least-threatening place on Earth: a Starbucks. We’re rattling through the rest of the Losers’ first experiences with It now, with Richie, Ben, and Beverly telling mostly undistinguishable stories involving chase sequences and fountains of blood that are invisible to adults. Approximately 350 pages into the story, Richie says, “It’s a monster. Some kind of monster. Some kind of monster right here in Derry. And it’s killing kids.” Great, that’s settled.

More importantly, all of the crushes are revealed! Richie, Ben, and Beverly go on a strange three-person date to the Aladdin, a theater that plays double features of campy horror movies. Richie’s crush on Beverly is mild, but Ben’s crush on Beverly is supposed to be True Love. She has a True Love crush on Bill, so in addition to themes of “murder, grief, violence, fear, memory,” we will also be dealing with the theme of “heartbreak.”

stephen king is out of control

Now is probably a good time to point out that Stephen King is out of control. There is no way an editor even glanced at this book before it was published. It took 350 pages for the seven main characters (too many!) to individually meet the central monster and then collectively acknowledge its existence, and we frequently took extended breaks to talk about architecture. There are divider pages denoting every jump between the 1958 and the 1985 timelines, and each has a melodramatic epigraph from William Carlos Williams, Virgil, a classic rock song, or the 1973 Scorsese film Mean Streets . They are deeply unnecessary, and a little embarrassing. At this point, I’ve also been reading an old copy of Stephen King’s On Writing that I stole from a high school English class, and laughing out loud on almost every page. Here is a piece of advice Stephen King gave to others, in apparent seriousness: “In many cases when a reader puts a story aside because it 'got boring,' the boredom arose because the writer grew enchanted with his powers of description and lost sight of his priority, which is to keep the ball rolling.” Hmm.

“But Kaitlyn, I’m reading 5,000 words of your diary right now. How can you even start in on this guy for lacking self-awareness?” you might say. Well, I never wrote a New York Times best-selling advice book instructing you to not publish 5,000 words of your diary. So, not the same.

In any case, King’s writing is affecting and engrossing, even as it’s egregious and frustrating. I love the way he struggles to talk about too-big ideas, layering vague, contradictory platitudes about the nature of memory and fear over each other until there’s somehow something rewarding in the latticework. It actually feels remarkably like a diary, or a personal essay. It drove me back to Jia Tolentino’s recent New Yorker piece about those kinds of essays: “I never got tired of coming across a writerly style that seemed to exist for no good reason. I loved watching people try to figure out if they had something to say.” Honestly, who among us would go back into a 1,200-page first draft and make meaningful cuts?

What I underlined: “Some of the stuff in the Bible was even better than the stuff in the horror comics. People getting boiled in oil or hanging themselves like Judas Iscariot; the story about how wicked King Ahaz fell off the tower and all the dogs came and licked up his blood; the mass baby-murders that had accompanied the births of both Moses and Jesus Christ; guys who came out of their graves or flew into the air; soldiers who witched down walls; prophets who saw the future and fought monsters. All of that was in the Bible and every word of it was true.”

I like how Stephen King treats religion as pop culture, and treats all pop culture as part of a fictional extended universe. Like Richie, I was raised Methodist, and like Richie, I found the Bible to be beyond nuts from a narrative standpoint.

Where I stopped: Just before Mike’s father tells him the story of a deadly fire at “The Black Spot” in 1931. There’s been a big wind-up to this one, and I would prefer to save it for when I believe I can handle it. Leave me alone!

Mood: Everything in my eyeline is steeped in portent — a boy’s sock, some lady’s Levis, most cups of coffee, for sure all clowns. Should I not be walking over grates? At what point will my fantastic, dizzy summer pirouette into a horror show?

Week of August 7th

I read only a sliver of It — page 453 to page 516 — on my big week off from work. Sorry!

Sitting by a dirty, cold swimming pool in my parents’ backyard, I’m scrolling through tweets about how our president is threatening a nuclear apocalypse. I’m also succumbing to the impulse to distract myself from a perilous romantic situation by texting every person in my hometown who might still owe me an ounce of affection, and asking them to get drunk with me.

I feel like I am going crazy, and It does not help. Mike Hanlon’s father tells the story of The Black Spot, a DIY jazz club he set up with his military friends in a field outside Derry. It was burned down by the Ku Klux Klan with 300 people inside, and the descriptions of the deaths are hideous. King, who I am not feeling generous toward today, takes his time particularly when describing how pantyhose or silk slips melt into women’s bodies.

Mike’s father says he has always been confused by the cycle of violence in Derry, which is “a violent place to live in an ordinary year,” and sees an eruption of mass death and child murders every 27 years without it ever becoming national news. “It’s because of that soil,” he hypothesizes. “It seems that bad things, hurtful things, do right well in the soil of this town. I’ve thought so again and again over the years.” Shortly after this revelation, It kills a two-year-old boy by smashing his skull on the edge of a toilet and then drowning him. I am fucking sick of this book.

What I underlined: “Bill felt the familiar weight of dread settle around his heart again — was it something you could get used to so quickly, then?”

I feel you, Bill.

Where I stopped: It’s surprising to me that I didn’t stop after reading about a two-year-old being drowned in a toilet. However, I made it three more pages, to the point where the adult Losers look at a police photograph of a cement retaining wall near the site of a recent murder and notice that someone (It, obviously!) wrote “Come Home Come Home Come Home” on it in blood (blood!). I stopped to get a Bud Light Lime out of the fridge (killer clowns and nuclear war can’t kill my summer vibe) and regroup, but instead fell asleep in the corner of my parents’ basement, in a bathing suit. The book was tangled in my wet towel and suffered light water damage.

Mood: Crinkly, resentful.

Week of August 14th

I read page 516 to page 601 of It in my bed, in the middle of the night, after being dumped by what could generously be termed a “summer fling.”

Back in the 1985 timeline, the adult Losers are eating lunch at a Chinese restaurant in the new downtown of Derry (which has a large mall). Mike fills them in on all the recent murders in lurid detail, and they have to decide whether they’re going to “stay and fight” It again or leave quickly before It picks them off one by one.

There’s a lot of discussion of “group will” and collective sacrifice in these pages, and the friends say “I love you” to each other dozens of times. My knee-jerk reaction is to call this cheesy, but ultimately, if this book is just about the magic and mystery of lifelong friendships… I guess that’s okay with me. Friendship is way more interesting than romance, and both are more interesting than murder. There’s not a lot of time to feel warm and fuzzy about it, though, as the crew’s post-lunch fortune cookies squirt out blood and beetles and eyeballs and pus. Can you imagine for a second what it is like to read about a fortune cookie full of pus in the middle of the night, in a bedroom with no working light bulbs, while attempting to eat a piece of strawberry rhubarb pie? This book is twisted.

Can you imagine what it is like to read about a fortune cookie full of pus in the middle of the night?

After lunch, the crew makes the strange choice to split up for the day and wander around Derry. None of them can remember the 1958 battle with It at all, so the idea is that this will jog their memories and that fate will steer them into “the preconditions for magic.” They each encounter It in a different form on these solo wanderings, and they each sense that It is scared of them.

As a side note, the Pennywise incarnation of It has gotten much weirder since the Losers saw him in 1958, and he really doesn’t go for subtlety anymore. He’s dropping off balloons with notes on them that are not cryptic in the slightest, such as one that reads “I killed Barbara Starrett! — Pennywise the Clown.” (Barbara was the librarian before Mike.) He also reveals that his name is Bob Gray?

When It hunts down Beverly, It transforms into the witch from Hansel and Gretel , and tricks her into drinking a teacup full of raw sewage. When he runs into Richie, he takes over the body of a giant plastic statue of Paul Bunyan. The 1958 and 1985 timelines are now stacked in such a way that we’re going to do rapid cuts back and forth between the first showdown and the second, as they unfold at the same time. I’m way too tired to face a shapeshifting monster twice in one night, but that doesn’t mean I’m not wired thinking about it.

What I underlined: Richie talking to It: “Fun for me, too… The most fun of all when we come to take your fucking head off, baby.”

I love some stand-up-and-cheer dialogue!

Where I stopped: Quit while you’re ahead. Richie is the best character, and whenever his chapters end, that’s a good time to set the book down for a while. I stopped at the end of his verbal spar with It, which was inspiring and made me feel a lot better than I had an hour before.

Mood: Static electricity in my fingers and toes.

Week of August 21st

I read page 601 to page 774 of It in the backyard of a Brooklyn bar with a single glass of rosé and the lightly sad 2012 Waxahatchee song “Be Good” on repeat.

Picking up during the same afternoon we left off in, Bill is having the most pleasant day of anyone. A mysterious child directs him to a secondhand store where his old bicycle (named Silver) is sitting in the front window. He buys it! Mike makes him dinner, which is hamburgers with sautéed mushrooms and onions and spinach salad — a dinner I would like, and which I think maybe I’ll make as a little celebration when I finally get to the end of this heinously long book. I’m glad I get to read this part (the bicycles and hamburgers part) while sitting outside on a temperate final day of summer, drinking rosé, which, as I suspected, never tastes bad. Maybe it will all be pleasant from here on out.

Well, just wait. None of the Losers are aware that Bill’s wife Audra or Beverly’s psychotic husband Tom are following them to Derry, or that It has driven Henry Bowers, their elementary school’s biggest bully, insane and convinced him to murder them all. To figure out where Beverly is, Tom beats up her best friend Kay in a scene that goes on for eight pages. This comes after several earlier, absurdly long passages in which Beverly is beaten by her husband or her father, and in that context, it feels more than a little bit gross. While Kay (who is barely in the book otherwise) is being thrown around a room, she thinks things like “it felt to her for a moment that her nose had exploded” and “more pain, so strong it was sickening.”

She gives in and tells Tom where Beverly went because he threatens to cut her face off. During the minutes I spend reading this scene, I arrive at the part of summer where rosé takes on a repulsive, metallic odor and starts to taste like the combination of every filmy hangover tongue and dry-swallowed Ibuprofen tablet of the last two months. I feel a little like I’m going to barf.

I feel a little like I’m going to barf

In the 1958 timeline, the Losers spend several days in the public library, researching how to defeat It by reading books about various mythological monsters. Bill reads off one strategy: “If you were a Himalayan holy-man, you tracked the taelus. The taelus stuck his tongue out. You stuck yours out. You and it overlapped tongues and then you both bit in all the way so you were sort of stapled together, eye to eye.” When the tongues are stapled together, you’re supposed to tell jokes until the monster laughs, which will kill it. Even to the Losers, this sounds nuts. So they decide to sit in a hole and burn green twigs until they start hallucinating from the smoke. Mike and Richie are the only ones who can stand it, and they end up teleported thousands of years into the past, where they witness It descending to Derry in some kind of spaceship that is not quite a spaceship. Then they both barf.

What I underlined: “Koontz is the worst.”

In the book, Koontz is the last name of a police officer, but it made me laugh to imagine that Stephen King was also throwing an unsubtle little jab at paperback-thriller kingpin and possible nemesis Dean Koontz .

Where I stopped: “‘Can we beat It?’ Eddie said in a silence. ‘A thing like that?’ No one answered.”

In the real world, as I read the end of this grotesque chapter, some advertising boy I met on an app walked up to my table and said, “Kaitlyn?” and I said, “Thank God!” and closed the book. Thank God.

Mood: This book is sick. I’m sick. We’re all sick. Stop reading. Stop writing. End words.

Week of August 28th

I panic and realize that I have 379 pages of It left to read by the middle of the week. This is how summer ends — not with a bang, but with a slow spiral into dread and regret, and a sense of time contracting.

Now I am reading It at work, on the train, in the locker room at my gym, and for many hours at night in the living room with a cup of hot chocolate I am angry about purchasing while it is supposedly still summer. Why is it so cold in New York? This is a nightmare.

The denouement of It is also a nightmare, beginning with a sharp detour into the story of a child psychopath named Patrick, who suffocates his baby brother, starves animals to death in an abandoned refrigerator, and molests his classmates. The details of his life take up 20 pages or so, all so Beverly can say that she watched It spray him with massive leeches and kill him back in 1958. This is supposed to be an exercise in further jogging everyone’s memories, and it leads into another extensive anecdote about how Henry Bowers and his friends once broke Eddie’s arm. In the hospital, back in 1958, he has a showdown with his mother and reveals that he knows she made up all his illnesses. At this, she has a full-tilt breakdown, admitting in her interior monologue that every tear she cried his entire life was a deliberate, icy manipulation, and then frantically trying to justify this as an act of love.

the child orgy is fun to joke about but no fun at all to read

In quick succession in the 1985 timeline: Mike is attacked by the It-possessed Henry Bowers and nearly bleeds to death, a ghost picks up Bowers in a car and drives him to the hotel, where he attacks Eddie and puts his arm out of commission (just like in 1958), and Bill and Beverly have sex in his hotel room. This story is off the rails! Beverly has two orgasms, which is, we find out, a poetic little repeat of the past. [smash cut] After the first battle with It , the Losers are unable to get out of the thoroughly confusing sewage system underneath Derry. They need to summon their collective power by proving their love for each other, so Beverly takes off her pants and tells Eddie “You have to put your thing in me.” All six of the boys have… whatever kind of sex is possible between 11-year-olds with Beverly. For special added Love Triangle weirdness, Ben and Bill go last. Those final two encounters are described from Beverly’s point of view, euphorically, as she whispers “Show me how to fly,” bites down on her hand, and yells “Yes! Yes! Yes!” Excuse me? The child orgy scene is fun to joke about , given its absurdity and the impossibility of its inclusion in any adaptation, but it is also so, so much more nauseating than I could have imagined.

The scene ends with Beverly deciding not to look down at her legs, because she doesn’t want to know if the substance they’re covered in is semen or her own blood.

In the 1985 timeline, during the final confrontation with It in its true form — an enormous spider in a lair full of bones ( and Bill’s unconscious wife and Beverly’s dead husband) — all the Losers are shocked to discover that It is female and pregnant . The revelation occurs in all caps, implying that It’s gender is supposed to be the most jarring event in a book where several eyeballs deflate, a toddler’s head is smashed on a toilet seat, and preteen sex activates a magical GPS. It has dozens of eggs, which Ben spends the finale stomping on one by one. Bill and Richie punch It’s heart out with their bare hands while Beverly cries on the ground. Okay. It has been disgusting, and a lot of it was bad. (How many times does Stephen King say “small breasts” in this book? Can someone with a Kindle let me know?) I do not think It does anything intentional or useful with its attempts to poke at racism, homophobia, or sadism, nor do I think it’s aware of its DNA-level misogyny. I don’t think a coherent thesis about fear, memory, bravery, or trauma ever takes shape.

The concluding pages of It are a floral, ridiculous, over-the-top, delirious elegy for the core friendship. The one-two punch Richie and Bill use to kill It is described as “the force of memory and desire… the force of love and unforgotten childhood like one big wheel.” As soon as the fight is over, Mike’s diary starts magically erasing itself, and the Losers (minus Eddie, who died when the spider bit his arm off, which I forgot to mention) start forgetting each other’s names. Mike’s last entry is “I loved you guys, you know. I loved you so much.” Reading this ending on a cold night in New York, feeling inexplicable sincere tears roll down my stupid face after hours of angrily bucking against the gross, absurd trash-rag It , I was confused. The ending is not well-written. The resolution is many, many pages longer than any reasonable editor would allow, and in the epilogue, while Bill is careening down a hill on his bike Silver with his catatonic wife, hoping a bike ride will revive her (it does), he — the novelist, supposedly the one who is prudent with words — thinks “Be true, be brave, stand. All the rest is darkness.” Geez. Why the hell am I crying?

Maybe because this is the kind of sloppy, saccharine ending that works when it comes as the moment of exhale at the bottom of a roller coaster you’ve been riding for 1,200 pages and two months. The sewage system of Derry explodes when It dies. Dozens of people are killed on their toilets, reading magazines. Friendship is magic.

What I underlined: “We are leaving Derry, and if this was a story it would be the last half-dozen pages or so; get ready to put this one up on a shelf and forget it.”

Wink —  Stephen King.

Where I stopped: The end, baby.

Mood: Sleepy and stuffed up. I need to sneeze, but can’t; the sneeze would be a full-body sob if it would just come out. I am cold and summer’s over. And I am twisted, because I know I will see this movie the day it comes out.

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67 pages • 2 hours read

A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.

Chapter Summaries & Analyses

“Derry: The First Interlude”

“Derry: The Second Interlude”

“Derry: The Third Interlude”

“Derry: The Fourth Interlude”

“Derry: The Last Interlude” - Epilogue

Character Analysis

Symbols & Motifs

Important Quotes

Essay Topics

Discussion Questions

It is revealed to be female. Why do you think It chooses the form of a male clown so frequently? 

What is the significance of the Turtle? 

The sex scene between the children has become infamous for critics of the book. How did you react to it? Does this scene seem appropriate given the context of the novel?

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Historical Context

By stephen king.

"It" is one of the scariest books ever written. It massively impacted the horror genre and changed how horror stories are designed.

Historical Period

"It" was written and published in the 1980s, an era known as the golden age of humanity. Rapid advancements in fashion, technology, and literature occurred during this period.

Importance of the historical period

Though people regard the 1980s as a golden era, it had its faults. During this period, the AIDs epidemic rapidly spread across the United States; this led to hate crimes against gay people skyrocketing. Also, as Ronald Reagan served as the United States president, the times started rapidly changing, and a series of policies saw corporate giants gain more power.

Cultural Background

The 1980s was one of the golden eras for the horror genre. As fears of the Cold War remained in people's minds, many vices and hatred towards minority groups continued. The AIDs epidemic worsened the situation, as people started associating the LGBT community with perversion and sin. "It" explored the fears and problems of the 1980s and showed how it compared to the 1950s, an era marred by World War II and the Vietnam War.

Period Influence

The 1950s and 1980s were crucial to "It's" story. Uncertainty about wars and groups of people dominated these periods, and Stephen King capitalized on the fragility of these eras to write his story. King's alternation of timelines made "It" more unique as it showed the flaws in society from each era.

Continue down for the complete historical context to It

Article written by Joshua Ehiosun

C2 certified writer.

“It ” was published in 1986 under Viking Publishers. Widely regarded as the King of Horror, Stephen King took  “It ” to another level by portraying a clown as the antagonist who killed and fed on children, with a group of 11-year-olds as the protagonists . The novel made Stephen King a fortune, with the book being America’s best-selling book of 1986.

Since its release in 1986, “It” has continued to be one of the biggest inspirations in the horror literary genre. The novel inspired new writers to create distinct worlds and place seemingly weak protagonists against dreadful antagonists.

Relevance of Period

“It” was published in 1986, a time known as one of the best decades for humanity. It was then that music, fashion, and technological trends were becoming prominent. Stephen King releasing his novel during this period was crucial to its success, as people were willing to engage in new emerging stories.

Major Historical Events’ Influence

“It” was not influenced by any grand political or societal conflict. Stephen King’s fears inspired him to write the story. His first crucial inspiration came from the children’s story “ Three Billy – Goats Gruff .” King said the mild tale was the basis that enabled him to create his characters and Derry.

Socio-Political Influence

The vigor of the 1980s was crucial to “It’s” success. Many people flocked to read Stephen’s works and were shocked by the novel’s dreadful tone. Some people disliked the sexual undertones of the story, and the book caught controversy for having children engage in lewd acts.

Novel’s Historical Analysis

“It ” has tremendously impacted horror writing and the movie industry. The novel created a twisted world that put children at the center of violence, death, and perversion, and Stephen King making a clown the villain out to get the children made the story all the more dreadful and captivating.

“It” contradicted the purpose of what clowns represent, fun and exciting, and its destruction of this image has altered pop culture’s representation of clowns and other fun-oriented activities in horror writing. 

The novel has also impacted American culture by shaping the societal view of life’s horrors. “It” shows the decadence and evil beneath seemingly peaceful societies come from the horrors within people.

Author’s Background

Stephen Edwin King is an American writer born September 21, 1947, in Portland, Maine, United States. He rose to fame with his unique horror stories and was dubbed the ‘King of Horror’ by many popular outlets and fans.

Influences and Motivation

Stephen King was inspired to write “It” after reading “Three Billy-Goats Gruff.” He stated the children’s story was the primary foundation for the novel as he designed his protagonists, the Losers Club, from Three Billy Goats Gruff; the Antagonist, IT, from Troll, and Derry, from the bridge the goats were to cross.

“It” remains one of Stephen King’s best books as it took him four years to write. King pushed through with the novel even during his addiction. He stated it was a dark time in his life and called the novel his final exam on horror.

Impact of Previous Works

Before writing “It,” Stephen King was already an established horror writer who was famous for works like “Carrie,” “The Shining,” and “The Dark Tower: The Gun Slinger.” King used his expertise in epistolary writing to create his new novel that blended two distinct timelines into one.

Cultural Context

“It” is a novel that tackles many societal and cultural issues like bullying and the damage brought upon children due to dysfunctional families.

Cultural Norms and Values Depicted

“It” sheds light on a society tarnished by terrible parents, broken families, physically and mentally abused children, and homophobia. It shows how people are affected by the treatment brought on them simply because they exist. Henry Bowers, a boy who was violently abused by his father, tormented the Losers Club. Henry’s terrible treatment spread like cancer among other children as he actively tried to dish out the abuse he faced on others.

“It” also showed how homophobia destroyed Adrain’s life. He was a gay man in a world that hated his kind, and the hatred, which came from no valid ground, contributed to his death.

Novel’s Critique of Contemporary Politics

Though published in 1986, “It” remains a valid story in the present era. As the world increasingly opens to become a global village, many negatives, like rampant bullying and homophobia, have only worsened. “It” shows how constant bullying of minority groups and children will lead to no good outcome for society.

Literary Context

“It” changed horror writing by pitting an ancient evil entity against weak children. The novel’s radical story changed how the horror genre presented itself.

Genre and Its Conventions

“It” turned horror into a true-stakes genre. The novel identified many societal issues and used them to make a story that antagonized innocent children placed in a world without help. The story’s brutality knew no bounds as the Losers Club was ill-equipped against IT, an entity as old as the universe. Stephen King showing the true horror the Losers Club faced with IT and their society gave the novel more realistic weight.

Literary Movements

“It” is a lengthy novel that moves at a fast pace. The story occurs in two timelines, 1957 to 1958 and 1984 to 1985. Though each timeline was not co-dependent, Stephen King merged both stories to skew the reader’s attention. The novel also inculcated Stephen’s epistolary writing, which made it more realistic and detailed.

Comparison With Other Works

“It” is a novel that stands tall among its peers. Its inculcation of societal issues and critique of vices separates it from other books like “Frankenstein” by Mary Shelley. Decades after its release, it remains a guide for many writers and movie-makers.

Critical Reception

Upon publication, “It” received praise from many critics and fans. However, part of its story caught heat for being weird and disturbing.

Initial Reception

Though it received praise from fans and critics, some people expressed disdain for Stephen King’s “It.” Christopher Lehman-Haupt said “It” failed to give a solid reason for Stanley Uris’s death, and other critics stated the novel was a chore to read due to its length. Some expressed their hatred of the Losers Club orgy section and said the book was perverted.

Impact On Literature and Culture

“It” has inspired many books and films. Among them is the Netflix series Stranger Things . Elements of the show are similar to King’s novel, and even the creators, Matt and Ross Duffer, said Stephen’s novels were a crucial source of inspiration.

Modern Relevance

Decades after publication, “It” remains relevant in pop culture and horror writing. The story addressing societal issues made it a work whose relevance withstood the test of time.

Themes and Contemporary Issues

“It” addresses many issues relating to mental health, physical abuse, and homophobia. The novel tackles the loss of childhood innocence and shows how abuse can lead to devastating results.

Coming of Age

One prominent feature in “It “   is the portrayal of coming of age. The novel shows how each member of the Losers Club went from childhood into adulthood, and the book portrays a framed alternating timeline that focuses on how each protagonist matures twenty-seven years after they faced IT.

From the summer of 1958 to 1985, each member of the Losers Club changed their ideologies and relationships. As the years transcended from a post-WWII era to an era coming out of recession, the Losers Club went with the tide of change, and this change is notable in the difference between what they feared as children and adults.

Caged In the Past

Though there were changes in their lives, the members of the Losers Club could not completely erase the memory of the childhood events that forged them into the adults they grew up to be. Bill became a great author, and though he wrote exceptional stories, each story resonated with the horror of him having to face It.

One of the greatest fears of the Losers Club as children was the social, family, and emotional problems surrounding them and their family, and though they grew up to become adults, they were never truly free from the hold of their past childhood horrors.

Ongoing Significance

From its setting to characters, dialogues, and plot, “It” has held an unwavering significance in horror writing. The novel tackled the deeply-rooted problems of its world and made subtle comparisons to real life.

A Fictional Town Called Derry 

Stephen King described his fictional town, Derry, as twenty miles west of Bangor. However, it is an entirely fictional replica of Bangor as it had scenery such as Paul Bunyan’s statue and Thomas Hill’s standpipe.

Derry’s history contained mass disappearances and deaths. From the disappearance of 340 settlers who founded the city in 1741 to the death of 120 people shot in 1864, Derry’s history was disturbing; this marred history made it a perfect breeding ground for a monster synonymous with evil: IT.

Like Derry, many places where hatred and violence rule the day become the breeding ground of evil. Stephen King used his fictional town to show the dangers of having a bloody history.

The Unbreakable Cycle

The unbreakable cycle is a feature that persists in “It. ” Derry was a town that could never escape its past. With the horrible deaths and the mass disappearances Derry experienced from its inception till 1985, no one seemed to be bothered, and people went on like there was nothing wrong.

Derry was at the center of a cycle that persisted even with the appearance of the Losers Club. Bill, along with the rest of the group, traced a series of murders in Derry since its inception. Though they were able to link the murders to IT, they could do nothing to warn people of the monster because the people had grown used to the unbreakable cycle of terror and death.

Adaptations and Awards

In 1990, “It” was adapted into a mini-series that starred Tim Curry as IT (Pennywise the Clown). The adult versions of the Losers Club were Richard Thomas (Bill Denbrough), John Ritter (Ben Hanscom), Harry Anderson (Richie Tozier), Dennis Christopher (Eddie Kaspbrak), Tim Reid (Mike Hanlon), Annette O’Toole (Beverly Marsh), and Richard Masur as Stan Uris.

Olivia Hussey starred as Bill’s wife, Audra Phillips, and Michael Cole was the primary antagonist, Henry Bowers. Tommy Lee Wallace directed the series.

Eight years later, “It” was made into an Indian series written and directed by Ankush Mohla and Glen Baretto.

On September 8, 2017, the first “It” film came in theatres. It starred Bill Skarsgård as Pennywise and Jaeden Martell, Jeremy Ray Taylor, Sophia Lillis, Finn Wolfhard, Jack Dylan Grazer, Chosen Jacobs, and Wyatt Oleff as Bill, Ben, Bev, Richie, Eddie, Mike, and Stanley of the Losers Club.

Two years later, the second part of the film was released, and it starred Bill Skarsgård as IT and James McAvoy, Jay Ryan, Jessica Chastain, Bill Hader, James Ransone, Isaiah Mustafa, and Andy Bean as the adult versions of the Losers Club.

“It” won an award after its release, the 1987 British Fantasy August Derleth’s Award.

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Stephen King’s “It”: a Cinematic Masterpiece of Horror and Humanity

This essay about Stephen King’s “It” film adaptation by Andy Muschietti highlights its unique blend of horror and heartfelt storytelling. It focuses on the Losers’ Club, a group of children in Derry, Maine, who confront the shape-shifting entity Pennywise the Clown. The essay underscores the film’s strong character development, emotional depth, and exploration of childhood fears and friendship. It also emphasizes the town of Derry as a critical element, enhancing the film’s eerie atmosphere. Additionally, it praises the balance of horror and humor, the technical excellence in special effects and music, and the film’s success in faithfully translating King’s novel into a compelling cinematic experience.

How it works

Stephen King’s “It,” adapted into a film in 2017 by director Andy Muschietti, stands as a hallmark in modern horror cinema. This adaptation, derived from King’s 1986 novel, is a compelling blend of terror and heartfelt storytelling that transcends the typical confines of the horror genre. At its core, “It” is not just a tale of a malevolent entity but a deep exploration of childhood fears, friendship, and the loss of innocence.

The plot centers around the Losers’ Club, a group of seven children in the fictional town of Derry, Maine, who are terrorized by a shape-shifting entity known as Pennywise the Dancing Clown.

Pennywise, brilliantly portrayed by Bill Skarsgård, feeds on the children’s fears, making him a perfect embodiment of the unknown terrors that haunt our childhood. Skarsgård’s performance brings a chilling and almost otherworldly quality to the character, making Pennywise one of the most iconic villains in contemporary horror cinema.

However, what sets “It” apart from other horror films is its strong emphasis on character development and emotional depth. The Losers’ Club is composed of characters who are all struggling with their own personal demons, from bullying and parental abuse to grief and the pangs of adolescence. The film delves into each member’s backstory, providing a rich tapestry of interconnected lives and struggles. This character-driven approach ensures that the audience cares deeply about the fate of these children, making the horror elements all the more impactful.

The setting of Derry itself plays a crucial role in the film. The town is depicted as a place with a dark history, almost complicit in the evil that resides within it. The film’s cinematography captures the eerie, almost timeless quality of the town, enhancing the feeling that Derry is a character in its own right. The juxtaposition of the quaint, picturesque town with the lurking, malevolent presence of Pennywise creates a palpable tension that permeates the film.

Moreover, “It” is not just a horror story; it’s a poignant coming-of-age tale. The friendship and bond among the Losers’ Club members are the heart and soul of the film. Their collective journey to confront their fears and fight Pennywise is symbolic of the universal struggle to overcome personal demons and the transition from childhood to adulthood. The film beautifully captures the bittersweet essence of growing up, where moments of joy and camaraderie are intertwined with the pain of confronting harsh realities.

The film’s success can also be attributed to its skillful blend of horror and humor. While the scares are intense and unrelenting, there are moments of levity and genuine warmth that provide a respite from the tension. These lighter moments serve to highlight the innocence and resilience of the children, making their battle against Pennywise even more poignant. This balance ensures that the film remains engaging without becoming overwhelming, a testament to Muschietti’s direction and the screenplay’s effectiveness.

“It” also stands out for its technical prowess. The special effects and makeup used to bring Pennywise to life are outstanding, creating a visually terrifying antagonist that lingers in the viewer’s mind long after the credits roll. The film’s score, composed by Benjamin Wallfisch, enhances the atmosphere with its haunting melodies and crescendos, perfectly complementing the visual and narrative elements.

In conclusion, Stephen King’s “It” is more than just a horror film; it is a rich, multifaceted narrative that explores deep themes of fear, friendship, and the loss of innocence. Its success lies in its ability to balance terrifying moments with heartfelt storytelling, creating a cinematic experience that resonates on multiple levels. By focusing on well-developed characters and their emotional journeys, the film ensures that the audience is not just scared but also deeply moved. “It” is a testament to the enduring power of King’s storytelling and its ability to be reimagined in a way that is both faithful to the source material and innovative in its cinematic execution.

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10 Things You Might Not Know About Stephen King’s It

Stephen King’s novel It , first published in 1986, is known for its whopping page count and multigenerational horror saga. In 2017, buzz around It spiked again due to director Andy Muschietti's big-screen adaptation of the novel. The film, which went on to become the highest-grossing horror movie ever, was the novel’s second trip to the screen, following a 1990 television miniseries. And now Muschietti is continuing the story with the highly anticipated IT Chapter 2 , which arrives in theaters today.

If you only have a passing familiarity with Stephen King's original novel, you might think It is simply about a killer clown. But there’s far more to the sprawling saga of The Losers' Club and the fictional setting of Derry, Maine. Here are 10 things you might not have known about the bestselling book of 1986.

1. It was inspired by a Norwegian fairy tale.

The Three Billy Goats Gruff , a classic Norwegian fairy tale about three scrappy goats outsmarting a bridge troll, might sound like a far cry from a 1000-plus page horror novel, but Stephen King cites it as a primary inspiration. He expanded the bridge to encompass an entire city, and the troll morphed into the terrifying demonic entity known as IT.

“I decided that the bridge could be the city, if there was something under it,” King wrote on his website. “What’s under a city? Tunnels. Sewers ... I thought of how such a story might be cast; how it might be possible to create a ricochet effect, interweaving the stories of the children and the adults they become. Sometime in the summer of 1981 I realized that I had to write the troll under the bridge or leave him—IT—forever.”

2. Stephen King spent four years writing It .

King is notoriously prolific, with more than 50 novels to his name. In fact, when It first came out, it was part of a wave of four books King published in the span of just 14 months. Between 1986 and 1987, King published It , The Eyes of the Dragon , Misery , and The Tommyknockers. Given that kind of productivity, it would be easy to assume that King seamlessly produces doorstoppers in mere months. But appearances can be deceiving: It took four years to write.

3. It is Stephen King's second longest novel.

Clocking in at a whopping 1138 pages , It is second only to The Stand (which came in at 1153 pages) as King’s longest work to date. It weighs four pounds .

4. The most controversial scene in It& is too disturbing for any adaptation.

It contains an infamous sex scene . In it, the main group of 11- and 12-year-old kids—known as The Losers' Club—gets lost in the sewers after temporarily defeating IT. In order to find their way out, they all have sex with the lone female member of the group as a sort of ritual. “Mike comes to her, then Richie, and the act is repeated ... she closes her eyes as Stan comes to her and she thinks of the birds,” King writes in It .

“I wasn't really thinking of the sexual aspect of it," King later explained of his intentions in writing the controversial scene. "The sexual act connected childhood and adulthood ... Times have changed since I wrote that scene and there is now more sensitivity to those issues."

5. Stephen King wrote the book while under the influence of cocaine.

King has been sober for over three decades now, but in his youth he suffered from addiction to drugs and alcohol. His prolific writing career did not halt during this time; he simply continued writing under the influence. “I was a heavy [cocaine] user from 1978 until 1986, something like that,” King told Rolling Stone . According to King, The Tommyknockers —which he published after It — was the last novel he wrote before becoming sober.

6. It comes to terrorize Derry in 27-year increments. Adaptations of It also came in 27-year increments.

In the novel, the creature known as IT is not a clown; IT is a malevolent entity that takes on forms tailored to the person it's terrorizing. Although its most common form is a clown, IT also appears as creatures like werewolves and vampires, wreaking murderous havoc on the fictional town of Derry every 27 years. Oddly, the 2017 film adaptation hit theaters 27 years after the 1990 miniseries. Since the film’s production has stalled and changed hands several times, this is pure coincidence. (For the sequel, fans only had to wait two years.)

7. The fictional town of Derry is a stand-in for the real town of Bangor, Maine.

It is set in the fictional town of Derry, Maine. According to King, it’s a stand-in for the real town of Bangor, Maine, where he has lived since 1979. King and his wife were debating between moving to Portland or Bangor; King was in favor of Bangor because he considered Portland “a yuppie town” and that Bangor was “a hard-ass working class town ... and I thought that the story, the big story, I wanted to write, was here … all my thoughts on monsters and the children’s tale Three Billy Goats Gruff ."

8. Pennywise takes on a clown form because Stephen King thinks clowns are what scare children the most.

King has stated that his goal with It was to blend all of the scariest monsters together. "But then I thought to myself, ‘There ought to be one binding, horrible, nasty, gross, creature kind of thing that you don’t want to see, [and] it makes you scream just to see it,’" he explained . "So I thought to myself, ‘What scares children more than anything else in the world?’ And the answer was ‘clowns.'"

9. Stephen King once had a creepy clown encounter ... with Ronald McDonald.

In a 2005 interview with Conan O’Brien, King shared that his own creepy clown experience was with Ronald McDonald. King was on an airplane and Ronald McDonald came to sit next to him, in full clown attire. "You think, 'What if this plane crashes? I’m going to die next to a clown,” King said.

10. Stephen King considers It his "final exam" on horror.

Although King is widely considered to be the master of horror, he’s previously said he doesn’t have an answer when people ask what drives him. It was his answer to these inquiries. “I thought to myself, 'Why don’t you write a final exam on horror, and put in all the monsters that everyone was afraid of as a kid?'" King told TIME in 2009. “And I thought, ‘How are you going to do that?’ And I said, ‘Well, I’m going to do it like a fairy tale. I’m going to make up a town where these things happen and everybody ignores them.'"

This story has been updated for 2019.

How IT Happened

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Good vs Evil

The major theme in this novel is the fight of good against evil. Pennywise epitomizes all that is evil, not just through the terrifying appearance but also through his motivations and actions towards killing children. The Loser’s club, alternatively, are a physical representation of goodness – children are deemed to be innocents and this may have been why King chose to write about them. However, the lines begin to get blurred on who/what really is evil. Is pennywise evil, when all he is doing is fulfilling the circle of life – he needs to hunt to survive and children are his prey – does this make him evil? Alternatively, human characters, such as Beverly’s father and Henry Bowers are shown to commit heinous acts that arguably are motivated by worse intentions than Pennywise’s. So who is truly evil?

Loyalty and friendship

This is a secondary theme throughout the books and is tested at multiple times throughout. Initially, the Loser’s band together to fight against Pennywise who is equally hunting them all. Their friendship is tied together by a collective goal. However, in the second half, they are all grown up and forget the forges of friendship that bound them 27 years ago. The journey to regain that loyalty is more difficult as adults and never reaches the same level and ease as it did when they were young children.

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It Questions and Answers

The Question and Answer section for It is a great resource to ask questions, find answers, and discuss the novel.

Study Guide for It

It study guide contains a biography of Stephen King, literature essays, quiz questions, major themes, characters, and a full summary and analysis.

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Stephen King Has Strong Words For Critics Who Didn't Take Him Seriously As A 'Writer's Writer' Early In His Career

Stephen King weighs in on critics who judge his works for their popularity.

All art is naturally subjective… but what does it mean if a particular piece of art finds extreme popularity? Is said popularity a direct result of great quality, or does it suggest a level of accessibility that suggests that the work doesn’t do enough to challenge the audience? It’s a debate that has no real answer and only strong opinions – and this week, legendary author Stephen King threw his two cents in on the matter.

That, however, is only the lead story in this week’s edition of The King Beat , which also includes exciting casting news for an upcoming King adaptation as well as a brand new Recommendation Of The Week. There’s a lot to get into, so let’s dig in!

Stephen King Delivers A Blunt And Funny Response To His Early Critics

After more than 50 years as a published novelist, Stephen King has left an undeniable and indelible impact on the literary world. His books are beloved around the world, and his impact on pop culture at large is incalculable – particularly in the horror genre, but also well beyond it. He is one of the most celebrated writers of all time… but he still has a bone to pick with critics who think that his works can’t be taken “seriously” because of their popularity.

King reflected on his relationship with those critics recently during an interview with PBS News Hour discussing the full breadth of his career and his most recent book, the collection You Like It Darker . The author has known success throughout all five decades that have passed since the arrival of Carrie on bookstore shelves in 1974 (followed two years later by director Brian De Palma’s excellent adaptation), and he recalls not getting proper shrift because of a perception that anything that is properly “good” won’t be widely accepted by the masses. King said,

There was a time when I felt like nobody will ever take me seriously as a writer's writer, just as somebody who makes money. And it did make me angry, because it seemed to me that there was an underlying assumption about popular fiction, that if everybody reads it, it can't be very good. I have never felt that way. I have felt that people can read and enjoy on many different levels.

Of course, Stephen King is not the only creative to deal with this particular struggle. Movies from the Marvel Cinematic Universe have been hit with constant scrutiny as filmmakers like Martin Scorsese have tried to draw a line between “art” and “entertainment,” and there isn’t a single award season that goes by without chatter regarding how the biggest box office hits of the year might or might not fit into the Oscar race. If a work is appreciated to a lot of people, assumptions are made about how it appeals to the lowest common denominator – which patently isn’t fair.

King has long dismissed the idea that the popularity of his books somehow make them “lesser,” but it’s also worth noting that he has had some standout crises with confidence. The most notable example of this is his stretch writing books under the pseudonym Richard Bachman (including Rage , The Running Man , Roadwork , The Long Walk and Thinner ). Part of the reason he started publishing works using the fake name was because he was unsure if all of his best-sellers were based on merit and the quality of the work or because of the reputation that he had earned from his early novels. He eventually made peace with his own success, as noted in his essay “The Importance of Being Bachman.”

Looking at the quote above, one might note from Stephen King’s tense use that he doesn’t take the criticism as harshly anymore, so what happened? The interviewer noted that he “got over worrying about that at some point,” to which King replied,

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I got old. And I think that probably a lot of the critics who didn't like my stuff are now dead, so fuck them!

They say that the best revenge is living well, but I suppose simply living on in general does the trick as well.

The Institute TV Series Adds Two Actors In Key Roles To Join Cast Including Ben Barnes And Mary Louise Parker

If you haven’t already noticed, now happens to be an exceptionally exciting time to be a Stephen King fan – particularly when it comes to upcoming King adaptations. Gary Dauberman’s Salem’s Lot is arriving for those with a Max subscription in October; Mike Flanagan’s The Life Of Chuck is premiering at the 2024 Toronto International Film Festival; Osgood Perkins’ The Monkey is set for release early next year; Welcome To Derry will be debuting in late 2025 ; Francis Lawrence’s The Long Walk started production this summer; and Edgar Wright’s remake of The Running Man is gearing up to begin filming this fall.

That’s a lot of goodness on the way – but not to be forgotten in the mix is the upcoming TV series based on the 2019 novel The Institute , and helping to remind us of that fact is news of two new cast additions this week.

It was announced this past June that MGM+ is developing The Institute from producers Jack Bender ( Mr. Mercedes ) and Benjamin Cavell ( The Stand ), and while the initial report revealed the involvement of Mary Louise-Parker and Ben Barnes , Deadline reported this week that the project has now also added Simone Miller and Jason Diaz in key parts.

In The Institute , gifted 12-year-old Luke Ellis wakes up one day to discover that he has been abducted from his home and brought to a mysterious facility that tests and experiments on children with psychic abilities – be they telekinetic or telepathic. Mary-Louise Parker is set to play Mrs. Sigsby, the horrible director of the titular establishment while Ben Barnes is playing Tim Jamieson, a retired police officer who finds his life intersecting with Luke’s when he moves from his home in Florida to a small town in South Carolina.

While the MGM+ series has not yet announced who will be playing Luke Ellis, Simone Miller is attached to play Kalisha, one of the older kids at The Institute who ends up becoming Luke’s first friend. Hailing from Toronto, Canada, Miller’s first big role was playing Raign Westbrook on the CBC Kids television series Detention Adventure , but she has been more recently playing Mannix in 13 episodes of the show Run The Burbs .

Jason Diaz, meanwhile, will be on the antagonist side of the plot in The Institute , aligned with the horrible Mrs. Sigsby. The actor will be playing Tony – who is an orderly who notably has a bit of a sadism streak in him. An up-and-comer, Diaz played Andre Dragomir in eight episodes of the series Vampire Academy , but he has also had recurring roles on shows including The 100 and the reboot of Charmed .

The only “bad” news to share is that the trade report doesn’t include any information regarding the start of production on the series. That being said, with the cast now starting to come together, it wouldn’t be surprising in the slightest to learn that The Institute is planning to start rolling cameras before the end of 2024. Needless to say, you can be sure that I’ll be keeping a close eye on the project here on CinemaBlend as new developments are announced.

Recommendation Of The Week: “Apt Pupil”

Did you know that it was 42 years ago this week that the incredible Stephen King collection Different Seasons was published? It was a work that started a notable tradition in King’s bibliography (namely the release of omnibuses collecting four distinct novellas instead of a mix of short stories), and each of the entries is independently fascinating. In past King Beat columns, I’ve found myself with opportunities to recommend three of the four tales in the tome – namely “Rita Hayworth And Shawshank Redemption,” “The Body,” and “The Breathing Method.” – but now I’m ready to propose you check out what is unquestionably the most controversial inclusion in the book: “Apt Pupil.”

One of the most disturbing stories that Stephen King has written, “Apt Pupil” is set in mid-1970s Los Angeles and follows troubled teenager Todd Bowden as he starts a relationship with Arthur Denker – an immigrant neighbor whom he’s discovered is actually a Nazi war criminal named Kurt Dussander. Rather than revealing Dussander’s identity to the authorities, Todd blackmails him into telling him dark details about the atrocities that he committed. As the two grow closer, the relationship between them becomes a dangerous, role-switching cat-and-mouse game, and it ends up having a devastating impact on Todd’s mental health. Suffice it to say, it’s not a novella to read before you go to bed.

That brings us to the end of this week’s edition of The King Beat, but as always, I’ll be back here on CinemaBlend next Thursday with a brand new column for you recapping the biggest news from the world of Stephen King. And while you wait, you can check out my series Adapting Stephen King , digging into the long history of King’s works being brought to life in film and television.

Eric Eisenberg is the Assistant Managing Editor at CinemaBlend. After graduating Boston University and earning a bachelor’s degree in journalism, he took a part-time job as a staff writer for CinemaBlend, and after six months was offered the opportunity to move to Los Angeles and take on a newly created West Coast Editor position. Over a decade later, he's continuing to advance his interests and expertise. In addition to conducting filmmaker interviews and contributing to the news and feature content of the site, Eric also oversees the Movie Reviews section, writes the the weekend box office report (published Sundays), and is the site's resident Stephen King expert. He has two King-related columns.

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Stephen King’s ‘Hearts in Suspension’ Tackles Echoes of an Obdurate Past [The Losers’ Club Podcast]

Constant Listeners, yes, we originally planned to drop our Bazaar of Bad Dreams coverage this week. However, given Stephen King’s renewed interest in Hearts in Suspension , we opted to unlock our coverage of the collection from The Stephen King Archives . For those not in the know, The Stephen King Archives is our Patreon exclusive imprint in which your Losers search the vault of Stephen King material – dusting off unpublished short stories, long-forgotten interviews, coffee-stained manuscripts, and alternate versions of your favorite tales.

Published in 2016 and edited by King’s longtime mentor Jim Bishop, Hearts in Suspension features an original essay by King entitled “Five to One, One in Five”, four installments of “King’s Garbage Truck”, a reprint of King’s novella “Hearts in Atlantis”, 12 essays by fellow students and friends from King’s college days, and a gallery of period-specific photographs and documents. Note: This particular entry was recorded in December 2021 – in conjunction with our Hearts in Atlantis coverage – – and sees us discussing Hearts in Suspension in full.

Stream the episode below and return next week when the Losers unlock an episode from The Stephen King Archives. For further adventures, join the Club over long days and pleasant nights via Apple Podcasts , Spotify , RadioPublic , Acast , Google Podcasts , and RSS . You can also unlock hundreds of hours of content in The Barrens (Patreon) .

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Like most of his Constant Readers, Stephen King certainly has his own share of fears. Trying his hand in any literary form is not one of them, however, a notion he once again proves in his 2015 collection The Bazaar of Bad Dreams . Spanning 20 tales, a number of them include his knack at poetry… and even one particular parable about his favorite sport.

In the first of two episodes dedicated to this bewildering Bazaar , Losers Dan Caffrey, Michael Roffman, Dan Pfleegor, and Jenn Adams begin their ranking of the 20 tales — from the bottom to the top. Now, keep in mind, these aren’t necessarily their least favorite. They’re just ranked as such. Stay tuned next week for the concluding coverage with the top 10.

Stream the episode below and return next week when the Losers conclude their coverage of Just After Sunset . For further adventures, join the Losers’ Club over long days and pleasant nights via Apple Podcasts , Spotify , RadioPublic , Acast , Google Podcasts , and RSS . You can also unlock hundreds of hours of exclusive content in The Barrens (Patreon) .

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• Copy URL https://www.pbs.org/newshour/show/stephen-king-reflects-on-his-iconic-career-and-latest-release-you-like-it-darker

Fifty years ago, a 26-year-old rural Maine school teacher wrote the horror novel “Carrie.” That man, Stephen King, has gone on to write more than 60 books and many have been turned into such films as “The Shining” and “Shawshank Redemption.” Jeffrey Brown spoke with King about his latest book, “You Like It Darker,” and the long arc of his career. It's part of our arts and culture series, CANVAS.

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Notice: Transcripts are machine and human generated and lightly edited for accuracy. They may contain errors.

Amna Nawaz:

Fifty years ago, a 26-year-old rural Maine schoolteacher wrote a horror novel titled "Carrie."

That man, Stephen King, has gone on to write more than 60 books since. They have sold between 400 million to 500 million copies worldwide and have been turned into films like "The Shining," "Shawshank Redemption," "Stand By Me," and many more.

King invited our senior arts correspondent, Jeffrey Brown, to his main home to talk about his latest book of short stories called "You Like It Darker" and the long arc of his career. It's part of our arts and culture series, Canvas.

Jeffrey Brown:

In his new collection, Stephen King writes of the eerie, the unsettling, the otherworldly raising its head in this one.

He calls it "You Like It Darker," and he clearly does.

Stephen King, Author:

Darker means spooky. It means scary. It means let's exercise our unpleasant emotions for a while, because I think that people like the idea of opening the door and saying, I want it darker. Do you want it darker? OK, we're in agreement, and now let's go into the woods together.

Millions of readers have taken that dark walk with King, but we had our own lighter one with the now-76-year-old.

Stephen King:

I feel a little bit like, if I was a car, I'd trade, you know?

Near his woods in Maine, a state where so many of his tales have been set.

I love Maine. I love the country. I'm not much of a city kid. I know the people. And I think that they are stand-ins for people everywhere.

I'm going to write about regular people, ordinary people, in the best way that I know how.

In the best way, even in their dark moments?

I'm interested in what happens when regular people are suddenly confronted with something that's totally out of their wheelhouse, something that's entirely different.

I think that literature in quotation marks is about extraordinary people in ordinary circumstances. And what I do are ordinary people in extraordinary circumstances.

King himself grew up mostly in working-class rural Maine, his mother raising him and his brother after his parents divorced.

He began writing columns for his high school newspaper and then stories and more at the University of Maine, where he met Tabitha, another young writer, now his wife of 53 years. Early on, the young couple took on a variety of jobs to make ends meet.

I just wanted to support my family, to be able to say, I'm doing work. My wife also worked. She worked at Dunkin' Donuts. She would come home smelling like a cruller.

And she looked so cute.

"Carrie," the 1974 horror novel, and two years later, Brian De Palma-directed film changed everything, with Sissy Spacek as a shy, bullied high school girl with telekinetic powers. Unforgettable revenge ensues.

In his 2000 book "On Writing," King tells of battling his own demons, early on with alcohol and drugs, later after a van hit him on one of his local walks, leading to years of pain and physical difficulties felt to this day.

Can one write darker without having a kind of darkness himself?

Basically, I'm a perfectly nice fellow, good family man, good husband, good father, and all of this stuff that's on the dark side, it comes out in the stories.

And so it doesn't have to come out in life. I used to think to myself, I could have been a very bad person, except for the stories that I tell takes off a lot of the pressure.

Maybe that's how his stories work for all of us. Whatever it is, Stephen King is as much a cultural icon as any American writer today.

So we got all these movie posters from your…

Especially when you consider the number of films and series made from his stories, around 100.

My first editor, Bill Thompson, used to say, "Steve has a movie camera in his head."

Oh, really?

And the story…

Like you see the story in — yes.

Yes, the stories are very visual.

I grew up the first generation with movies and TV, and they made a big impression me. So I have a tendency to see things, and that's part of the pleasure, is the seeing.

More pleasure has come at times from rock 'n' roll, the Rock Bottom Remainders, a band King formed in the 90s with other writers, including Dave Barry and Amy Tan.

For all his success, King admits he wasn't always happy with the critical reception he got.

There was a time when I felt like nobody will ever take me seriously as a writer's writer, just as somebody who makes money. And it did make me angry, because it seemed to me that there was an underlying assumption about popular fiction, that if everybody reads it, it can't be very good.

I have never felt that way. I have felt that people can read and enjoy on many different levels.

But you got over worrying about that at some point, clearly.

I got old. And I think that probably a lot of the critics who didn't like my stuff are now dead, so (expletive deleted) them.

Bleep them.

Yes, bleep them.

You also wrote in your book "On Writing," you wrote about not only being the story's creator, but its first reader. You want to feel the suspense of the story yourself?

Not only do I want to feel the suspense of the story, I want to relish the good parts.

You want to enjoy the good parts.

Every now and then, you will say to yourself, I wrote a really good line there. Oh, boy, that's really cool.

But how does he do it and how generate so many ideas?

I can't explain it.

That's the beautiful thing about what I do. It's just like being belted by an idea.

He cites the example of the story "Danny Coughlin's Bad Dream" in the new collection.

I was getting out of bed one day, and I thought to myself, what if an ordinary guy had a psychic vision in a dream about where a body was buried, and actually went out there and found that body? Would anybody believe that he had that vision, or would they think that he did it? And…

All right, but wait a minute. You just woke up thinking that?

Yes. Well, no, I didn't wake up thinking that. I was putting on my pants when I had this idea, you know? And I put them on one leg at a time. And I had one leg in my pants. And I had this idea. And by the time I got the other leg in, I had almost the whole story.

See, and who wouldn't want to do something like that? I mean, that's so trippy, but it is just the way that my mind works.

Trippy, dark and clearly having a hell of a writing life.

I'm very fortunate to be able to do what I do. I love to tell stories. And, in a way, I get paid for something that, in the words of the late John D. MacDonald, I would do for free.

OK, that's good.

Coming soon in the Stephen King universe, several new film and TV adaptations of his work.

From the darker side in Western Maine, I'm Jeffrey Brown for the "PBS News Hour."

And, online, we have more from Stephen King, including what he watches and reads when he's not writing.

That's on our YouTube channel.

Listen to this Segment

Watch the Full Episode

In his more than 30-year career with the News Hour, Brown has served as co-anchor, studio moderator, and field reporter on a wide range of national and international issues, with work taking him around the country and to many parts of the globe. As arts correspondent he has profiled many of the world's leading writers, musicians, actors and other artists. Among his signature works at the News Hour: a multi-year series, “Culture at Risk,” about threatened cultural heritage in the United States and abroad; the creation of the NewsHour’s online “Art Beat”; and hosting the monthly book club, “Now Read This,” a collaboration with The New York Times.

Anne Azzi Davenport is the Senior Producer of CANVAS at PBS News Hour.

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