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

[-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.