I love Stephen King

[rodneyscat]

This entry made me dig up my copy of 'It', looking for some of my favorite scenes. Nobody writes adolescents like Stephen does; the whole spectrum of possibilities from sweetly sensitive to extremely cruel. He can make those sensitive souls believable as also being strong and courageous and explain about the cruelty in a way that would force me to try and understand more of it.

I'm going to put a quote behind a cut. It's a moment that made me fall in love (more) with Ben Hanscom, who has a crush on Beverly. It's a moment of extreme tenderness, with doom hovering over it; typically Stephen.

Ben is in the library and has written a haiku for Beverly. I've left out a little bit, indicated by (...)



Your hair is winter fire,
January embers.
My heart burns there, too.

He wasn't crazy about it, but it was the best he could do. He was afraid that if he frigged around with it too long, worried it too much, he would end up getting the jitters and doing something much worse. Or not doing it at all. He didn't want that to happen. The moment she had taken to speak to him had been a striking moment for Ben. He wanted to mark it in his memory. Probably Beverly had a crush on some bigger boy - a sixth- or maybe even seventh-grader, and she would think that maybe that boy had sent the haiku. That would make her happy, and so the day she got it would be marked in her memory. And although she would never know it had been Ben Hanscom who marked it for her, that was all right; he would know.

(...)

There was a mailbox at the foot of the walk. Ben fished the postcard from the back of the book and mailed it. He felt his heartbeat speed up a little as it slipped out of his fingers. What if she knows it's me, somehow?
Don't be a stupe, he responded, a little alarmed at how exciting that idea seemed to him.
He walked off up Kansas Street, hardly aware of where he was going and not caring at all. A fantasy had begun to form in his mind. In it, Beverly Marsh walked up to him, her gray-green eyes wide, her auburn hair tied back in a pony-tail. I want to ask you a question, Ben, this make-believe girl said in his mind, and you've got to swear to tell the truth. She held up the postcard. Did you write this?
This was a terrible fantasy. This was a wonderful fantasy. He wanted it to stop. He didn't want it to ever stop. His face was starting to burn again.
Ben walked and dreamed and shifted his library books from one arm to the other and began to whistle. You'll probably think I'm horrible, Beverly said, but I think I want to kiss you. Her lips parted slightly.
Ben's own lips were suddenly too dry to whistle.
'I think I want you to,' he whispered, and smiled a dopey, dizzy, and absolutely beautiful grin.
If he had looked down at the sidewalk just then, he would have seen that three other shadows had grown around his own; if he had been listening he would have heard the sound of Victor's cleats as he, Belch, and Henry closed in. But he neither heard nor saw. Ben was far away, feeling Beverly's lips slip softly against his mouth, raising his timid hands to touch the dim Irish fire of her hair.

Comments

[jillybinks.livejournal.com]

That is one of my all time favorite books. I pick it up about once a year and re-read it, sometimes the whole thing, sometimes just parts. And the parts that I come back to most often is the sections of them as kids.

[rodneyscat.livejournal.com]

The actual monster is quite a disappointment, so usually when I reread I skip that bit. The real monster of course is human cruelty.

[-grievousangel.livejournal.com]

...the dim Irish fire of her hair.

Beautiful.

Stephen King does write children/adolescents beautifully. It's such a shame that the accident and then the illness seem to have taken away some of that joy and fire. Have you ever read The Body? It's the short story on which Stand By Me was based, and it's wonderful. It has some moments of real poetry and pathos. Beautiful.

[rodneyscat.livejournal.com]

I've read every book he's written up until the point of his accident, so yes, I've read 'The Body'. In fact every book of him that has been made into a movie, I've read before seeing the movie-version, and Stand By Me is the only movie that didn't disappoint. From after the accident I've only read 'On Writing', which is very interesting and fetching, and tried his novels, but couldn't get into them.

Oh, and I never read his 'Dark Tower' series. Tried it, but couldn't get into it.

[rane-ab.livejournal.com]

You know, as a matter of personal taste, I've never quite been able to manage to like Stephen King, or rather, his books. Perhaps because people kept recommending him to me and I kept expecting too much (and I do love horror-books). It's funny you should mention his skill at writing kids/adolescents, as one of the things I don't like about him is that his adults always seem the same to me. Maybe I don't have what it takes to read those adults correctly, and that's why I feel like that -- but, you know, taste and all that. But I also have always thought that I loved his kids.

Especially in It. It was the second book I ever read in English (after Thinner), and it took me months to read it at the time, but I never gave up. Because, yeah. Definitely one of my favourite books ever, and certainly my favourite horror book. Even here, I much prefer the children's era than the adults'. But I love, love, love the children's perspective.

I don't know where I was going with my point, except that, yeah, fantastic book, and I love every single one of the Losers, because they're so wonderfully them.

[rodneyscat.livejournal.com]

Sounds like you should try 'The Long Walk'; quite a devastating story, but great characterizations of adolescent guys and slashy as hell to boot

[ourdramaqueen.livejournal.com]

I've read "It" the book, don't own it though. I really really need to expand on my small Stephen King collection... starting with the last two of the Dark Tower series. And read the first three books, which I got after getting the fourth, Wizard and Glass, from a coworker.

[rodneyscat.livejournal.com]

I never could get into the Dark Tower series somehow... I didn't like 'The Talisman' much either, but I did enjoy his 'Eyes of the Dragon' (which he wrote for his daughter and the son of his friend Peter Straub, with whom he wrote 'The Talisman'). I don't think he wrote more AU than that...

[ourdramaqueen.livejournal.com]

Haven't read any of those. But I definitely want to read more of his stories, of every kind!

[lilithlotr.livejournal.com]

I'm not a King fan, although I find him congenial in person. But I do own the miniseries on tape, mostly for Jonathan Brandis. Adolescence is, indeed, a period King knows, and writes, well.

[rodneyscat.livejournal.com]

Adolescence is, indeed, a period King knows, and writes, well.

And lucky for me, he's done it often.

[sternentochter.livejournal.com]

i read it once about ten years ago and i absolutely loved it. i really want to re-read it, but there are so many books i want to read and re-read and lately i've been reading so very very little. i really have to change that, and spend more time reading again and less time staring at this stupid computer screen. and i'm starting today. /mini-rant that's not really a reply to what you said above, is it?

[rodneyscat.livejournal.com]

Yes, yes!! Go on and read!!!! *encourages*

[samena.livejournal.com]

That's so beautiful! I'm definitely going to look for the book this week and read it, finally. I used to read a lot of Stephen King, and then I didn't, for a long while. I think it's time to start again.

I wish I still had the scene you typed out for me a couple of years ago, but somehow my pc ate it not long after you sent it. But I still remember most of it. I still remembered the haiku as well. It's all so very beautiful...

Thank you for this!!

[rodneyscat.livejournal.com]

I've found the email with the snippet; you want me to send it to you? I send it to you almost three years ago!! *boggles*

[samena.livejournal.com]

Ohhh, yes, please!! I'm SO glad you still have it!! I kept all your mails in a special folder in Outlook (still do), called 'José', but Outlook refused to do the 'é', and when I tried again, it erased the whole folder. So now it's called 'Jose', and I keep it that way, because I don't want to lose any more messages.

I know it's almost been 3 years! It's also the 3rd anniversary of my getting obsessed with Elijah, because that's how I 'met' you. How time flies, hmmm?? :)

[d-artful-dodger.livejournal.com]

it's good timing that you should post about this now: I just finished the second draft of my mid-term research paper a few minutes ago and it's on the complicated relationships between adults and children in Stephen King stories. Actually, a subtopic of the paper was how King portrays children/teens and the role reversals that happen because the adults tend to act like stereotypical children. So, yes, it's slightly on topic for me to comment, lol, but I just thought...yeah, timing.

[rodneyscat.livejournal.com]

It's very on topic for you to comment I'd say, and a damn interesting topic for a paper. Did you have any trouble with it?

[d-artful-dodger.livejournal.com]

actually, I enjoyed it very, very much! the only problem was that the assignment called for us to use literary critisisms to back up our thesis and there are very few critisisms on my topic. It ended up being eight pages long, but I'm quite proud of it

[betterintype.livejournal.com]

how weird you would write about stephen king. I was at this guy's house last night and we watched his movie "thinner".

[rodneyscat.livejournal.com]

I've never seen that movie (it's hard to imagine how they'd do that...) but I've read the book, which is seriously spooky. I bet they changed the ending for the movie though...