From "How Does the New It Movie Deal With Stephen King’s Orgy Scene?" (New York Magazine).
The top-rated comment at the Reddit "WTF?" link quotes King's explanation of what the fuck was:
"I wasn't really thinking of the sexual aspect of it. The book dealt with childhood and adulthood --1958 and Grown Ups. The grown ups don't remember their childhood. None of us remember what we did as children--we think we do, but we don't remember it as it really happened. Intuitively, the Losers knew they had to be together again. The sexual act connected childhood and adulthood. It's another version of the glass tunnel that connects the children's library and the adult library. Times have changed since I wrote that scene and there is now more sensitivity to those issues."The new movie — spoiler alert — replaces the gang bang with:
BEVERLY
Guys, stop it. Focus.
Everyone turns to Bev. Their muse. Their light.
SHE TAKES EDDIE’S FACE IN HER HANDS
SHE TAKES STAN’S FACE IN HER HANDS
SHE TAKES RICHIE’S FACE IN HER HANDS
SHE TAKES MIKE’S FACE IN HER HANDS
SHE TAKES BEN’S FACE IN HER HANDS
SHE TAKES WILL’S FACE IN HER HANDS
पोस्ट्स
१२१ टिप्पण्या:
The sewer tunnels are birth canals (or rebirth canals). Snow White and the six dwarves having sex.
King is a shitty writer
That bev is a gritty woman.
"The grown ups don't remember their childhood. None of us remember what we did as children--we think we do, but we don't remember it as it really happened."
Norm Macdonald's fabulous fabulist book Based on a True Story: A Memoir explores these same exact themes. Though not through a childhood sex orgy.
The adulthood view is sex is overrated. Maybe that's what the kids find out.
"I recognize a recurrence of my childhood love of tunnels."
- Genet
I'd like your literary standards to show a little more discernment.
The boys survive because they're With Her.
I met the Bishop on the road
And much said he and I.
`Those breasts are flat and fallen now
Those veins must soon be dry;
Live in a heavenly mansion,
Not in some foul sty.'
`Fair and foul are near of kin,
And fair needs foul,' I cried.
'My friends are gone, but that's a truth
Nor grave nor bed denied,
Learned in bodily lowliness
And in the heart's pride.
`A woman can be proud and stiff
When on love intent;
But Love has pitched his mansion in
The place of excrement;
For nothing can be sole or whole
That has not been rent.'
- Yeats
The sex is a 'consensual' gang bang,
Why the scare quotes around consensual? Unless any of the boys were reluctant or forced, the sex was not only consensual...it was her idea.
Now as to the probability that a girl would behave that way....
awwwwwwww
I recently read a synposis of IT online. The plot was baroque, overburdened with detail and incident. I thought..."This is enough story for two books. When I got to the end of the syopsis, it said, "End of Part One." Part Two deals with the kids grown up. Heavens to Murgatroid!
I've never read a Stephen King novel--though I did read his book on writing--and most film adaptations of his work that I've seen (only a small number of many) have been mediocre to terrible. Only MISERY and original CARRIE by Brian DePalma stand out in my mind as excellent. I guess STAND BY ME was very good.
I have no desire to see IT.
If I lost my virginity in a gang bang, I am sure I'd remember it.
It's kinda ironic, I guess, that in the era of widespread birth control, abortion, women' rights, gay rights, tinder, and hook-up culture, sexual relations have become so...wierd.
I would humbly suggest that adults re-teach young men how to ask girls out on dates, dress appropriately, wash the car, take her to nice burger shop and/or movie, make good conversation, laugh, flirt, hold hands and then see what happens. The problem is that, at the early stages they would interrupt this normal step-by-step process, by texting, snap-chatting and posting on their phones.
And don't take her to see "It"!
The Weirdo ratio among novelists is incredibly high.
Then they inflict their political opinions on us.
I stopped reading King when it became clear that his editors had lost control of his over-writing. IIRC that was around Christine.
Same problem plaguing that Harry Potter krep, IMHO.
-XC
PS - Check out Tolkien as an early victim of weak editors and C. S. Lewis as a strong beneficiary of the same.
PPS - YMMV, I have a STEM degree.
He also wrote The Shining. A good number of successful movies have been made from his books. I've never read a Stephen King novel either, but he's been a force in our culture.
"None of us remember what we did as children--we think we do, but we don't remember it as it really happened. "
I remember very well. Part of what I "did" was a vast fantasy life. It was escapism from a very erratic and sometimes violent parent. Both the fantasy and the actual lives were so vivid that I wondered which was my actual life. I knew that part of it was dreams and fantasies but I was sometimes unsure which part. I got that (and a lot of other things) slowly sorted out as I entered teen years. I was lucky to go to a school which really valued its students. I had wonderful friends. Some wonderful teachers. All of that helped a lot.
Nobody remembers everything and all of us misremember some things. But if you were paying attention, you remember childhood. Perhaps many do not pay close attention, in that sense making King correct. I had to pay attention if I knew what was good for me. And I remember.
I read "IT" when it came out, and I dont recall that scene at all. Odd, come to think of it.
I would humbly suggest that adults re-teach young men how to ask girls out on dates, dress appropriately, wash the car, take her to nice burger shop and/or movie, make good conversation, laugh, flirt, hold hands and then see what happens. The problem is that, at the early stages they would interrupt this normal step-by-step process, by texting, snap-chatting and posting on their phones.
Why just young men? The deck is stacked against them the whole way. Part-time and entry-level jobs are hard to find, since everything now wants years of experience for even the entry-level stuff.
Young women dress horribly, which often makes them less attractive. Their manners suck, and they often have no ability to carry their part of the conversation.
Cars are expensive, especially since the used car market was devastated by Cash for Clunkers.
A movie will cost you $50, easily, for two people. Add in a nice burger shop and you're up to $70 or more. That's not an insignificant chunk of change for a young man earning $10 an hour who has to make rent.
Enh, "controversial." You really think that scene stands out in a book in whose first pages a little kid gets his arm ripped off? Yes, I reread It recently, albeit before I knew anyone was going to undertake the impossible task of filming it.
And I do mean impossible. There's vastly too much stuff in there. Nine-tenths of it will naturally need to be left out, and who chooses what? And how to deal with the constant veering between 27 years ago and today, which gets ever more frequent towards the end?
I actually like the book, which means I won't be seeing the movie. I have a T-shirt with text across the front: "The book was better." In this case, guaranteed.
And no more sex scenes are allowed in coming of age stories. There, it is fixed.PURITANICAL times are here again. Every thing is a Secret again.
Not a fan of King. Boring. Clunky prose. Dopey stories.
rhhardin @ 10:28 AM: Please read the memo on not posting entire poems by famous poets in blog comments sections. You can make a good point with a few relevant lines, and no more.
"Why the scare quotes around consensual? Unless any of the boys were reluctant or forced, the sex was not only consensual...it was her idea."
They were below the age of consent. (I think.)
Btw, I have many memories of my childhood, and they are clear, cogent, and accurate.
"He also wrote The Shining. A good number of successful movies have been made from his books. I've never read a Stephen King novel either, but he's been a force in our culture."
The book was very different from the Kubrick movie, which I think King didn't like. Later a movie was made tracking the story in the book -- with topiary instead of a maze and the main character not bringing his own separate craziness to the hotel -- and it sucked.
"Why the scare quotes around consensual? Unless any of the boys were reluctant or forced, the sex was not only consensual...it was her idea."
I can't believe you're forgetting that women can rape men.
The next time sometime posts a Yeats poem in this or any other comments section, I'm going show up at that person's front door and beat him/her over the head with my first edition volume of Yeats' collected poetry.
The next time someone posts "The Second Coming" in this or any other comments section, as a comment on the woeful and perilous state of the world, I'm going to nuke the poster from orbit.
There. I got that off my chest. Feel better now.
Kate Millett would have approved.
Can we paraphrase "The Second Coming" and survive?
Feeling apprehensive about the firepower you have available.
Kate Millett would have approved.
As for Andrea Dworkin: well . . .
Roughcoat--
"And what rough beast, its hour come round at last/ Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?"
What's the problem? Cuts too close to the bone
buwaya @ 10:57:
Yes. Paraphrasing, judiciously, is permissible. I will stay my hand.
As I read the article, you've quoted the unsexed version from the discarded screenplay.
What adolescent boy would want to lose his virginity in front of his friends? Or strangers?
Like a commenter above, I had read the book 30 years ago and didn't immediately remember that aspect of the story. Was it included in the television mini-series made about 5 years later? I don't remember that either, even though I watched it.
King is a great writer who produces, at times, awful novels. I don't think It is one of the awful ones, though. For those who haven't read the novel, it is important to note that, as adults, the characters don't remember the experiences they had- at least those who left Derry don't remember them- if memory serves, one character stayed and he remember it, but I could be misremembering that part.
Like Michelle, above, I can't imagine how you make a single stand-alone movie out this novel. When I first read about the new adaptation last year, I was sure they had to be making at least 3 movies out of it, but it seems I was wrong.
mccullough said...
King is a shitty writer
Yep. Can't be said often enough.
King is a shitty writer.
What's the problem? Cuts too close to the bone.
Do I have to say it? Okay: the problem is overuse. It has become a cliche -- a pretentious rhetorical gimmick. The poem is profound; but it loses its profundity when it is posted in discussion threads as a substitute for original thought. It's like hearing a great song on the radio. The first few times you hear it, you love it, and rightly so. But after hearing it 500 times, you want to smash your radio when it comes on; and rightly so.
If Yeats were alive today, he probably would sue the people posting it for copyright infringement. He was notorious for protecting, and profiting from, his writing. I like him for that (I like him for his poetry too). His descendants still protect his works like King Holdfast patrolling around his tree, sword brandished. His family is vigilant in this regard and will undertake legal proceedings against anyone who uses his works without the family's permission, and without paying them for such use.
During my days at Penthouse I was the editor who first published King's "The Ledge" and "Children of the Corn." This was before Carrie. In those days the advent of King novels became something to look forward to. But then he began to slip when his book editors did not reign in his natural tendency to blather on and on and on.... This was evident in The Stand and others that have spewed out.
Now the only thing this tired writer spews out is Trump derangement syndrome... the latest is his vow to "block" Trump from seeing the open sewer of this It movie.
A repulsive end to a very promising and very successful writer.
You can't top it for sordid. A gangbang in a sewer. Isn't this a bizarro world Harlequin romance?
Surely he wrote that before he went to rehab.
During my days at Penthouse
Hmmm. You have my attention.
Ann Althouse said...
"I can't believe you're forgetting that women can rape men."
That is what is known as a "legal fiction".
During my days at Penthouse
Before, or after, pubic hair was disallowed? If the former . . . you have my attention.
While I don't watch a lot of movies. I read instead.
Roughcoat, we don't travel in the same circles. I haven't seen Yeats 500 times, so if it's all right with you I'll enjoy being exposed to something I haven't read before. Feel free to scroll past it, like I have done with a number of posters on this site.
In silence if you can adult it.
As for King, he varies wildly. I hate his politics, and he's notorious for not being able to finish his books properly. But he does have a helluva imagination, and he's got a great unique authorial voice. He also doesn't flinch from recognizing how limited is our time on earth, and how beautiful a moment can be. I'm thinking in particular of "Joyland," which I read lately.
I haven't read "It," so I have nothing to say about it.
In the past few years, I've come to the conclusion that each of us are sensitive in some areas, and the opposite in others. I have a stepson who developed a taste for food. He can talk for hours about seasonings and his opinions about what is good for an omelet, or what best shows in a stew. I can't. My daughter has acute hearing which I think she got from me. To my wife, music is background noise to drown the bees in her head (tinnetus). My mother-in-law has such an acute sense of smell that she detected a gas leak in the house that the utility found only with their sensors.
Same with memories, particularly from childhood. I have a pretty good memory for the past, able to recall incidents barely remembered by my friends. Some of my children have little to no memory of theirs.
Roughcoat-- I got it. Cliche it has become.
I am increasingly disturbed by my own fondness for cliches--but I am at an age where many things increasingly disturb me.
I have no business attempting to edit an editor (not to mention I only bought Penthouse for the babes),but I have to ask:
"reign in", or "rein in"?
Vanderleun,
"The Ledge" was the first Stephen King piece I ever read, sometime around 1978 after I had first found my father's small stash of Playboys and Penthouses. I didn't really remember it was King until I saw the anthology movie Cat's Eye sometime in the mid 80s.
Even though I had seen the movie at the time it was released, I never realized that it was based on a Stephen King story until I read the collection Night Shift when I was graduate school.
That last paragraph refers to Children of the Corn.
King is one twisted hombre. Every one of his books I've read had some sick sexually perverse scenes in it. I think Firestarter was the first King novel I read and I remember he had a tranny shoving her arm down a runninggarbage disposal.
"But after hearing it 500 times, you want to smash your radio when it comes on; and rightly so."
I've got your back, buddy. I'll keep the bludgeon supply well-stocked.
Feel free to scroll past it, like I have done with a number of posters on this site.
No can do. It leaps of the screen.
But you may, likewise, feel free to scroll past my remarks. In silence, preferably, but not necessarily.
Thanks to the voters of Wisconsin, Michigan, and Pennsylvania the rough beast is merely raging at her clock though slouching in her wrath.
Trans-social.
It's lost on many people how critically the desire to control the expression of others ought to be examined within one's self.
"slow thighs" is the phrase that struck me the first time I read it. Moving its slow thighs.
Chris N:
I agree. Fortunately, I don't wish to "control" the expression of others. Or did you think I actually want to show up at someone's front door and beat them with a book of poems by my beloved Yeats, or annihilate them with thermonuclear devices?
It's true, I do own such devices, but I would never, ever use them.
Unless severely provoked.
King is not a great sentence writer, but he's a great horror writer, in the sense that his scenes are very concrete depictions of the emotions they're supposed to evoke. It reminds me of a perceptive sentence by Robert Warshow on comic books:
Dr. Wertham’s world, like the world of the comic books, is one where the logic of personal interest is inexorable, and Seduction of the Innocent is a kind of crime comic book for parents, as its lurid title alone would lead one to expect. There is the same simple conception of motives, the same sense of overhanging doom, the same melodramatic emphasis on pathology, the same direct and immediate relation between cause and effect.
(From https://www.commentarymagazine.com/articles/the-study-of-man-paul-the-horror-comics-and-dr-wertham/)
It does not surprise me in the least that when King decided he wanted a scene depicting the end of childhood innocence he wrote a provocative scene in which children literally lose their innocence. That what he does!
In Misery, he writes about fans keeping authors imprisoned by their old work by creating a fan who literally imprisons an author and forces him to keep writing about a character he's sick of.
In The Green Mile, he writes about whether people would accept Christ in the modern world by literally creating a Christ figure and putting him on death row.
What King does best is to take some topic of morbid fascination and create a concrete scenario in which people literally act out that metaphor.
Part of the reason King's work has turned into so many good movies is because the metaphors are so concrete. Almost any competent depiction of the events in the book will serve as a framework for the subtext, so that all the actors have to do is respond to what's going on around them in any given scene.
Fixed it for you...
SHE TAKES EDDIE’S O-Face IN HER HANDS
SHE TAKES STAN’S O-Face IN HER HANDS
SHE TAKES RICHIE’S O-Face IN HER HANDS
SHE TAKES MIKE’S O-Face IN HER HANDS
SHE TAKES BEN’S O-Face IN HER HANDS
SHE TAKES WILL’S O-Face IN HER HANDS
Isn't it amazing how less free we are than we were during the cold war? Got to watch what you say or lose your job. Just try lighting up a cigarette in public. The current global elites hate freedom. Especially the American elites, which is a shame. They owe everything they have to the American ideals that they despise.
Well, it is a horror story.
"Why the scare quotes around consensual? Unless any of the boys were reluctant or forced, the sex was not only consensual...it was her idea."
I can't believe you're forgetting that women can rape men.
I didn't, which is why I wrote "Unless any of the boys were reluctant or forced".
This is my replacement for Yeats "the Second Coming" these days.
The car is on fire, and there's no driver at the wheel
And the sewers are all muddied with a thousand lonely suicides
and a dark wind blows
The government is corrupt
And we're on so many drugs with the radio on and the curtains drawn
We're trapped in the belly of this horrible machine
And the machine is bleeding to death
The sun has fallen down
And the billboards are all leering
And the flags are all dead at the top of their poles
It went like this
The buildings tumbled in on themselves
Mothers clutching babies
Picked through the rubble and pulled out their hair
The skyline was beautiful on fire
All twisted metal stretching upwards
Everything washed in a thin orange haze
I said, "Kiss me, you're beautiful, these are truly the last days"
You grabbed my hand and we fell into it
Like a daydream or a fever
We woke up one morning and fell a little further down
For sure it's the valley of death
I open up my wallet and it's full of blood
"King is a shitty writer."
This cannot be repeated often enough.
King's early books were great, while all the early movies made from them were godawful... example, Salem's Lot, best vampire story I ever read, but the movie was hilariously bad. As time wore on, this reversed - his books got worse and worse, while movie adaptations improved (I liked the TV miniseries version of the Shining far more than Kubricks), though there was never a great movie. The turning point for his books becoming rote and trite was around Tommyknockers... everything before was a good read, everything after was terrible... or at least, enough were terrible that I stopped reading any more despite having really enjoyed at least ten early novels. IMO, The Stand was his best work, and the miniseries of it was the best film adaptation of any of his works.
"King is a shitty writer."
This cannot be repeated often enough.
Writing is more than sentences.
"I can't believe you're forgetting that women can rape men.
I didn't, which is why I wrote "Unless any of the boys were reluctant or forced"."
Also since Beverly was the same age as the boys (fourteen), there was no "woman" in the scenario.
I'm thinking about the King books I'd actually like to see as movies. There are those I have -- The Shining, Salem's Lot (both very good, though in the former they had to pass on the topiary animals because CGI wasn't what it has become) and Carrie.. I think Christine would make a quite decent movie, and so would Needful Things. And probably Pet Sematary. But It, as I said, is out, and so is The Stand; there is nothing visual you can do for these thousand-page epics that the prose doesn't.
Oh, and forget Cujo. Who wants two hours of a rabid St. Bernard? And The Dead Zone, which in my dim recollection was just assassination-fu.
I haven't read any King written since the early 90s, so don't really know what he's been up to since, though he keeps churning out books. None of them lately have had any traction, though of course all have been best-sellers. But can anyone tell me what, say, Bag of Bones was even about? I confess to wanting to read Doctor Sleep, which is supposedly a sequel to The Shining, but my reading list is quite backed up enough for now.
Anyway, for a horror novelist, King is tame. Someone brought a load of Dean Koontz novels into my last workplace, and I read a couple. There are things you cannot un-read.
Michelle Dulak Thomson said...
Anyway, for a horror novelist, King is tame. Someone brought a load of Dean Koontz novels into my last workplace, and I read a couple. There are things you cannot un-read.
I went on a Koontz binge years ago and accidentally checked out a King book, which was near "Koontz" in the dinky library. It was interesting to think "man, this sucks!" while mistaking the author. Koontz has gotten long-winded too, though.
I've tried a few King books, including "It" but never finished any except one about a haunted statue from a ship wreck in Florida, or something like that. I used to always finish books I started until meeting Garrison Keillor's "Lake Wobegon Days".
King's movies are better made than Koontz's movies except the one about the cop who kept girls captive in his basement and wolves running around for some reason. "Intensity".
Qwinn,
I'd forgotten Tommyknockers. That's another that I can see being filmed. Only I think it already has been, and the filmmaker insisted on having real, live Tommyknockers, as opposed to the book's scenario in which they're all long dead. There are real opportunities there -- the ghostly, floating Coke machine is one.
Incidentally, what is it with King and animal torture? In Tommyknockers it's the protagonist who turns her dog into a living battery. In Apt Pupil (the one King work that genuinely scared me), the kid's first victim is a cat he shoves into an oven. In It, one kid poisons another's dog, and a separate kid puts loads of dogs and cats in a disused refrigerator to see how long they last. In Needful Things, it's a little terrier who dies of the corkscrew end of a penknife. I imagine King read how human killers always start out on animals first, but his coming back to this over and over again is genuinely creepy. I mean, creepier even than usual.
Decades ago, I read an early Koontz book that had lots of cockroaches. Because he used the trite cheat of an identical twin, I never bothered with another.
Dean Koontz has a new(ish) golden retriever. In one of his books it rained interminably, bizarre fungus started growing everywhere and only the people who were nice to dogs were saved from the apocalypse.
I've read only one novel by King, "Lisey's Story." It was awful. It was clear that King wasn't letting any editor actually edit the book, which was wordy and repetitive to the point of exhausting the reader, and wasn't even very interesting, despite its efforts at fantasy and horror. The only thing of possible interest about the book was its central story about a sweet and kind-hearted young waitress who marries an egotistical, self-involved boor of a writer and gets nothing in return except his vast estate when he dies (she has to promise not to have any children by him). That could have been a great story, except that King wasn't very interested in Lisey, but rather in the egotistical, boorish, and completely self-absorbed writer and his dull-witted fantasy world that he literally returns to over and over again. King says in his very preface to the book that he refused to let his editor touch it, much less edit out some of the more implausible scenes. And I found King's usual political ravings about two things he can't stand--Christianity and home-schooling--quite irritating. I did think "Carrie" and "The Shining" were terrific movies--because of their interesting directors. I have no plans to see "It." The preview made the movie look terrible.
Rein in. As in rein in your horse.
...Salem's Lot, best vampire story I ever read, but the movie was hilariously bad.
I read Salem's Lot, while in the 9th grade, I think. I too was impressed but not in the same way having read Dracula perhaps a year earlier. For me, there was absolutely no part of King's novel to compare with the scene of Jonathan Harker and the three female vampires. Admittedly Dracula is not as accessible for modern readers (as an example of the epistolatory form its execution is not admired by most critics) but in my opinion, the hardcore horror bits are yet unequaled. Disappointed by Salem's Lot I returned to King's works only twice thereafter — I watched and was mostly disappointed by Kubrick's The Shining (The Shinning gets to the point, i.e. no TV and no beer make Homer go crazy, more succinctly) and I read "The Night Flier" and then returned Prime Evil to the public library mostly unread.
Another vampire story that I deem superior to any of King's trash is Carmilla by Sheridan Le Fanu. Like all Victorian literature it's slow off the mark but rewards patience generously.
"They were below the age of consent. (I think.)"
-- They are. The other problem is that a lot of the things the kids do is because some other power puts the idea in their head (like Stan reading the bird book or the like). So how much choice any of them have, and how much they are cosmic playthings is an issue.
"King is a shitty writer."
-- He's at his best when he has an artificial constraint on the length of the story. His short stories are often way better than his novels.
"I think Christine would make a quite decent movie, and so would Needful Things."
-- There's too many subplots in Needful Things. Maybe a good Netflix original miniseries; there also IS a Needful Things movie.
"Incidentally, what is it with King and animal torture?"
-- It is so you can have escalation in violence without having to start with a dead human body.
Also, I flatly do not believe King when he says: "I wasn't really thinking of the sexual aspect of it" when writing about a bunch of kids having sex.
"Stan reading the bird book" is possibly the creepiest part of the novel. That scene in the Standpipe just freaks me out. Its only real rival is Beverly's encounter with Mrs. Kersh. But, like I said, 9/10 of this has to be thrown out anyway.
I mean, I suppose I could believe it, if child Bev wasn't constantly being sexualized by the narration. If we weren't constantly told about child Bev's great legs, her developing breasts, and how great it is that her shirt pops open at different points, or that she's wearing super short-shorts.
Like, if this scene came out of left field without the narrator having seemed obsessed with child Bev as a sexual being, I'd believe that King wasn't really thinking about the sexual aspect of it.
I liked the book Thinner and the novella The Langoliers. I'm not willing to put reading more pages than those into a horror story.
The bird book scene is really great; the short horror vignettes in It are great.
ButI picked that example as, Stan doesn't decide "I'll stand against my fear by using this as a talisman," some super power puts the idea in his head, and maybe even forces him to do it (like how it helps Bev aim the slingshot, or helps Eddie remember where to go.) Part of the reason I don't believe the interpretation of the sex scene as "Bev is taking her power back!" is that every other time one of the kids magics up a solution, it is just that. Turtle Magic.
As far as I can tell, just like them stumbling on how to use Ritchie's goofy voices and Bill's ability to overcome his stutter are magic inspirations, the idea for Bev to have sex with all of her friends is no more her idea than those were their ideas.
It was awful. It was clear that King wasn't letting any editor actually edit the book,
Slightly off topic, either W.E.B. Griffin was too cheap to ever hire an editor, or he got robbed. Since I love his books so much, the shitty editing is really annoying. One of the things I plan to do if I ever win the lottery is to hire someone to edit his books and republish them.
The "They need to become adults, and that's what the sex is for," interpretation also fails. Because part of what they learn as adults is that none of them have had kids, and that they've all held on to parts of their childhood, and that the key to beating It is to NOT become adults, but to get in touch with their child-selves (that's the whole point of their dividing up to re-explore Derry.)
And that's text-text in the novel, not an attempted justification of subtext. So neither of the two common defenses for the scene (It was Bev's idea and reclaiming her sexual identity!) or (It was about them becoming adults to face It!) work for me.
Plenty of authors need editors. One reason many novelists become worse as they get older is they become "too big to edit".
Hemingway is a great example, so is Joyce. And you can throw in Heinlein.
Needful Things does indeed have tons of subplots; in fact, the whole thing is subplots. But the point is that you can leave a few of them out. You can't do that with It.
For those who haven't read it, Needful Things goes like this: Mysterious stranger sets up shop in small town. Everyone there sees something they just have to have, and the prices are ludicrously low ... except you also have to play "a small prank" to get your merchandise. So A messes up B's sheets and then throws rocks through her windows, while C's dog is killed, not by B but by D, whose tires are slit by E ... you get the idea. Added to this is the idea that all of the merchandise is actually fake. In the end, mysterious stranger starts handing out guns for cash.
It's great, though, for its tour of "what can go wrong in a small Maine town." Not like It. Just run-of-the-mill stuff. You know: A kid lusts after a baseball card. One guy is a middle-school principal with a stash of kiddie porn. Another has embezzled county funds to feed his gambling habit. There's a messed-up relationship. A woman has arthritic hands. A man has horrific memories of his wife's and son's deaths in a car crash. &c.
Actually, in 1958, Beverly was mostly a mans name.
This is a book about anal sex. The vagina is just a writers tool.
In other news, the name Beverly comes from "beaver" (befer) "clearing" (leah).
Oh...My...God...
I can't believe you're forgetting that women can rape men.
So it is said but I don't see how.
Humpty Dumpty. That's how mockturtle.
mockturtle said...So it is said but I don't see how.
In a legal sense, not a physical sense.
Although most of the reports of women on boys seem to be not very violent, and mostly a control thing.
I don't know if it's just a control thing. I suspect a lot of these teachers are just longing for a full erection.
Something men their own age have no capability of. Most men today are so obese that all their blood goes to maintaining their spoon hand.
In a legal sense, it is impossible for a woman to rape a man, or a woman to rape a woman, or a man to rape a man.
Certainly a woman can sexually assault a man. But by definition, rape is penile penetration of the female sex organ however slight. A woman not having a penis, she cannot rape. A man not be able to have his sex organ penetrated cannot be the victim of rape.
The thing is this -- these days, words have no meaning or, rather, they mean whatever the person using the word wants it to mean. These days, "rape" and "sexual assault" are said to be the same, even in many statutes. Then again, these days "man" and "woman" are interchangeable in the same person.
His short stories are often way better than his novels.
The only author I've read whose novels are as entertaining and as readable is Trollope. But then I haven't read many novels & stories since Faulkner's, to whom your statement absolutely applies.
US DOJ 2012: The Uniform Crime Report will use this definition of rape:
“The penetration, no matter how slight, of the vagina or anus with any body part or object, or oral penetration by a sex organ of another person, without the consent of the victim.”
For the first time ever, the new definition includes any gender of victim and perpetrator, not just women being raped by men. It also recognizes that rape with an object can be as traumatic as penile/vaginal rape. This definition also includes instances in which the victim is unable to give consent because of temporary or permanent mental or physical incapacity. Furthermore, because many rapes are facilitated by drugs or alcohol, the new definition recognizes that a victim can be incapacitated and thus unable to consent because of ingestion of drugs or alcohol. Similarly, a victim may be legally incapable of consent because of age.
One of the things I plan to do if I ever win the lottery is to hire someone to edit [W.E.B. Griffin's] books and republish them.
What's so bad about characters whose names change from novel to novel?
The redefinition of words does not add clarity or bring greater justice, only confusion. Nonconsensual oral and anal sexual conduct were already criminal under the crime of sodomy, as was digital or object penetration under sexual assault.
Questor
As someone who cut her teeth on Dracula and Carmilla (there's a great rock opera setting of the story by Ben Johnston), I recommend The Historian, which takes nested epistolary to new heights and which sets up the reader for an amazing series of revelations at the climax that go off like a string of firecrackers.
It's the best vampire novel I've ever read, and I've read a lot, mostly drek.
https://www.amazon.com/dp/B000FCK6EI/ref=dp-kindle-redirect?_encoding=UTF8&btkr=1
Ok, I'm going to keep beating up on the everyone has sex with Bev scene because it is stupid.
When the adult Losers are in the Chinese restaurant trying to remember things, no one says, "Hey, remember when we all lost our virginity to that girl right there?"
No, the thing that helps them remember is the circle with the blood oath Stan makes them make, complete with the scars returning on their palms.
The scene is probably the worst thing about the book -- not just because of the squicky content, but even the book doesn't think it is that important.
One may like to suppose, in a leisurely manner, that sexual mores have loosened over time. But in fact, compared to the late 60's through the start of the 80's, we've seen a new prudery overtake the country. First we were all supposed to be afraid of herpes, then everybody was supposed to think we were all equally at risk of getting AIDS (because to think otherwise was anti-gay (before that term was replaced by "homophobic" -- which is another story)). Then we were all trained to look out for sexual harassment in the workplace, and then Title IX was perverted into a sexual behavior code.
And that is how an otherwise thoughtful person (cruelly neutral, even)can describe a seen in which young people clearly have sex with their peers because they want to by putting quotes around the word consent. Obviously they consented in the real meaning of the word, just not in the prudishly twisted one.
Lucien: Have you read the book? The book makes it clear Bev and the boys don't really know exactly what it is that they are doing, and that Bev got the idea from her abusive father. They may be 'consenting,' but it is clear that they're kids without any clear idea what's going on. And this is before you get into the open question of whether they actually were consenting, considering a super powerful entity has been influencing their actions the entire book to fight It.
I must have been 12 or 13 myself when I read the thing. As the scene must have been less than a few pages at most out of more than a thousand, I guess I must not have remembered it. Either way, I really enjoyed the book, and see it's still got 4.5 stars on Amazon. I assume you upright cons are making too much out of the scene. We are of a species that evolved to bear children by our early teens, and to die not more than a few dozen or so years thereafter. We also evolved to be much more promiscuous than the agricultural revolution tricked you into thinking we were supposed to be.
Anything that gets a middle schooler to read a thousand pages is good. I can't even bother to get through more than a quarter of War and Peace nowadays.
Toothless, 4.5 starts on Amazon means nothing. Some of the lamest books I've wasted money on had 4-5 stars. I smell a promotional rat.
Stars, not 'starts'. :-\
I agree with the comments about the necessity of editors, especially as an author gets more popular.
As for Amazon, when it comes to books, I've concluded that a four star rating should simply been seen as a one star. And though they've gotten better, in the past Amazon was known to erase bad reviews--saw it happen twice with books I'd reviewed negatively.
Michelle Dulak Thomson: I'm thinking about the King books I'd actually like to see as movies...I think Christine would make a quite decent movie, and so would Needful Things. And probably Pet Sematary.
Matthew Sablan's already pointed out Needful Things, so I'll just add that Christine and Pet Sematary have both been made into movies as well. The former in 1983 and the latter in 1989.
Toothless, 4.5 starts on Amazon means nothing. Some of the lamest books I've wasted money on had 4-5 stars. I smell a promotional rat.
Spoken like a true politburo chief! Fuck the market, the market IS what you deem conforms to your own superior taste!
You say it sucks? Well I say it's an awesome book! (For a teen who hasn't yet been lost on the genre that King specializes in, at least). And my opinion is so much more important than yours or anyone else's, of course.
"None of us remember what we did as children--we think we do, but we don't remember it as it really happened."
Speak for yourself.
I don't know why some people think they know what others can or cannot remember. My mother's father died when she was four, and she remembers him, but her siblings have always told her she couldn't possibly remember him.
I remember things from when I was an infant.
So, speak for yourself, Mr. King. Some people aren't so feeble in the brain.
I remember things from when I was an infant.
So, speak for yourself, Mr. King. Some people aren't so feeble in the brain.
Ah yes. The famed, successful author of dozens of written works is deemed "feeble in the brain" by someone who's top mental functions were apparently honed in infancy. And yet, has never produced a single work of the mind approaching anything near what said author has accomplished.
Of course. It all makes sense now.
A lot of what we remember as children, is actually through repeated stories everytime you cycle through old photographs.
I remember my oldest brother getting a wind-up balsa airplane, and I wanted one too, but dad said I was too young. I think I was five.
Turns out, when I was looking at old photo's, there was my brother in exactly the vision I had in my mind. He was holding a toy airplane and my dad was leaning on the fence smoking a cigar watching.
From Stephen King's Novel "Urf"...
The rain clattered against the window, a sound like a gypsy's long fingernails tapping against a porcelain teacup. The sound was almost enough to make Harlan pretend he wasn't hearing what he heard from the hallway.
Urf. Urf.
Don't be such a child, Harlan. There is nothing in the hallway. It is just steam in the pipes, that's all: steam in the pipes.
The sound seemed to be getting closer, and as it got closer it seemed less and less human. More like a beast, a fevered dog, perhaps. Maybe that dog even looked like Lucky, Harlan's childhood dog that died at the wheels of an ice cream truck.
Urf. Urf.
It's not Lucky, Harlan. Lucky died, while children were waiting to eat ice cream treats. It cannot be Lucky in the hallway, slowly moving closer to the door.
Urf. Urf.
Urf. Urf. Urf...
I am Laslo.
From Stephen King's Novel "Urf"...
The memory of Lucky triggered other thoughts, thoughts that Harlan had believed were buried in his past, like a stash of horror comic books in the attic. He had met the man in the ice cream truck before.
Urf. Urf.
It is best not to remember this, Harlan. It is best not to remember the back of the ice cream truck and what happened there.
The sound in the hallway was coming closer yet. It sounded like Lucky, except it didn't sound like the Lucky he remembered.
Urf. Urf.
It's not Lucky, Harlan. It is not Lucky, and it is not the man from the ice cream truck. It is not the man whose hot nicotine breath you felt on the back of your neck. It is not the man whose pants sat down upon his ankles, and the ice cream truck music played relentlessly, and abomination of childhood joy.
Urf. Urf.
Urf. Urf. Urf...
I am Laslo.
From Stephen King's Novel "Urf"...
The man from the ice cream truck: Harlan had not thought of him years.
Don't lie to yourself, Harlan.. You think of him every night, as you thrash about, twisted in sweat-drenched sheets..You remember his breath. You remember his touch. And you remember something more.
Urf. Urf.
Oh God, he did remember. The man in the ice cream truck took Lucky's life, But he also took from Harlan something more...
Urf. Urf.
Urf. Urf. Urf...
I am Laslo.
Yes, Needful Things, Christine, Pet Semetary have all been done on the big screen. You can skip the first and the last- both are terrible movies. Christine, on the other hand isn't quite so bad because it does have a certain campiness about it that comes from its director, John Carpenter- also, for its time, the effects are spectacular.
For me, the Stand was King's best novel and I've always regretted the only movie made was a shitty made-for-TV thing. I read It at least twice and have no recollection of that sex scene, so I guess it wasn't 80s shocking.
"I wasn't really thinking of the sexual aspect of it."
It wasn't sex sex.
Gang bang in a sewer between a woman and boys?
Sounds like another day in the life in "today's public school update".
Yes...I bet King went back and forth between hands on face and gang bang. It was a toss up.
Let's just be real, King puts lots of stroke material in his stories. Accept it or reject it. Guess he thought he would never be called on it. And why should he? But the SJWs broke him, not that he was far off their path. But he said something or other that was true, and could not be accepted. It's pity because you would think that a guy like Stephen King is one man who is free to do what he wants.
Meanwhile, perhaps his most significant work, the Gunslinger saga, has just begun to be released, beginning with a film which is so bad I wanted to cry.
I read all of Mr. King's stuff up to Pet Sematary and Christine. After Pet Sematary, I kept purchasing his books for a few years afterwards, thinking that I would be getting around to reading them some time, but finally realised that I felt literally no real urge to do so. So I stopped buying them, and have never felt inclined to go back. I think this was because of Pet Sematary. I did not find it so much scary as profoundly ICKY. There was something downright UNWHOLESOME about it. Besides, when you think about it, it's just a sort of hypertrophied "Monkey's Paw". I guess that I'm not really qualified to remark on his current writing skills, but, up to when I got off the bus, I thought he was much better at short stories. The novels just kept getting more and more bloated.
Yancy, above: " I can't imagine how you make a single stand-alone movie out this novel"
If what I'm hearing is correct, the recently released film only covers half of the novel, the events involving the kids. The half involving their adult selves would be for a sequel.
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