10/10/2017 0 Comments Black Horses For The King PlotThe Books: “It” (Stephen King)Daily Book Excerpt: Adult fiction: It by Stephen King. I consider It to be a masterpiece. Not just King’s greatest book – but a great American novel, period. Black Horses For The King Plot LineBlack Horses For The King Plot DefinitionI’ve only read it once – it was such a workout that I feel I need to be ready to face it again. It was that powerful. The characters are emblazoned in my mind – and they live on – like all great fictional characters. You cannot tell me that Anne Shirley does not live, on some alternate plane.
![]() ![]() Or Jay Gatsby. Or Captain Ahab. These people have a life beyond the pages. They are larger than the authors who created them. I’m not putting It on the level of Moby Dick, but I am saying that those main characters – Beverly, Stanley, Richie, Bill, the others … BREATHE. They do not feel like “creations”. Many big important authors have beautiful writing – but cannot create people who LIVE. To my mind, Don De. Lillo is in this category. I think you would be hard pressed to find contemporary writing that is better than that in Underworld – excerpt here – but I can’t remember one character from that book. I mean, I sort of can – but not in the same way as – the cousins in Kavalier and Clay, or the entire family in Geek Love. The specificity of personality – and the impression that these people are ALIVE – is very very difficult.And Stephen King, at his best, is better than almost anyone.)The book is sweeping in its scope. . The Meaningful Name trope as used in popular culture. A name that has a direct, barely-hidden meaning to it. The first, second/third/middle/nth, last, or. Monty Python and the Holy Grail is a 1975 British absurdist comedy film concerning the Arthurian legend, written and performed by the Monty Python comedy group. Terrifying in its particulars. I actually read the main showdown in the sewer canals with a hand over my eyes, trying to block the pictures King was putting in my head. And I still can’t block it. We all know the form that the monster takes, and frankly I do not want to discuss it any more. Not if I want to sleep tonight. It would test the strongest person to face something like that … and the fact that it is these 6 misfit kids – and then later, these 6 misfit adults – who are “called” to conquer “It” … it’s a perfect scenario, a classic one from literature: the quest, the hero who is not “ready” – not prepared – and yet who must fight. King is not re- inventing the wheel here. He inhabits those ancient genres with a freshness and delight that makes them seem new. I love him for it. He’s a hugely well- read man – at the end of his wonderful book On Writing, he lists books he thinks are essential – not just to writers, but to anyone. And the list runs the gamut. Sci- fi, classics, modern literature, noir- stuff … It’s a broad and beautiful look at the landscape of literature, its peaks and valleys, its many different forms. His understanding of what makes a good book is top- notch. In It he pulls out all the stops. Why I love this book so much is that it works on every level it needs to work. There is no skimping. The horror is horrifying. It’s one of the scariest books I’ve ever read. Although I think “The Mist” is his scariest story of all). Pennywise the clown stalks my dreams. That kind of gleeful anarchist cruelty is what makes up totalitarian societies everywhere. There is not just a smile- less insistence on cruelty. There is a JOY in crushing your enemies. Pennywise, with his terrible puns, and his crooning focus on the children of Derry, is the worst possible enemy. Because he is inhuman. He does not “feel”. There is no reasoning with such a monster. King gives “It” an eternal life. We see the land of the town, Derry – from a prehistoric standpoint – with pterodactyls flying, and ferns and bushes overrunning everything – and suddenly something plummets to the earth – from the atmosphere. It is “It”. “It” has been there that long. Waiting, biding its time, gaining in strength … and so King makes the case that the horrors of the world, the everyday horrors - murder, child abductions, racist persecution – come from “outside” us. It” is behind it all. But the book also works on the most personal human level. I wrote before in my post on “The Body” that King is a master at writing about childhood, and what it is LIKE, from that perspective. It is the ultimate in childhood- friendship novels. I mean, think of the last sentence of the book. Or – if you don’t know it by heart, like I do – then go pick up your copy and look it up. I can barely think of it without getting a lump in my throat. It’s a great great book – because of the friendships it describes, and how it (he) captures what it is like, to be 1. What happens to us when our childhood friends disappear? Those friends we chose before we knew who we were. They’re the ones who have the keys. They are the ones who really KNOW you. Your husband, wife, children … know the adult you. They know you once life has gotten to you, beaten you down a bit, shaved off the rough edges, made you a bit more small. But those who knew you when you were 1. YOU. This is the realm King is in here. And it’s explicit. The horror these 6 faced when they were 1. They have moved on. They are all now adults. Many of them have blocked out completely what they experienced back then. They are married, some are famous, some are deeply unhappy … the demons that haunted them as children (familial, and actual) have manifested itself in adult terms: addiction, spousal abuse, etc. And then one day. Mike – the only one who stayed behind in Derry – realizes that it’s “starting up again”. And so he starts to make some calls. To his old childhood friends. They must return, for the final battle. It is only THEY who can do it. God, King is good here. Because he really captures what it is like to be unconscious – to be in a state of total forgetting – and then, in one fell swoop, to have all of the armor of oblivion ripped away … leaving you standing cold and exposed, with no protective barrier between you and the past. Answering Mike’s call will rock their worlds – affect their marriages, their careers … they have no idea how long it will take. But they all (except one) answer the call. It’s a fucking great book. And I agonized a bit over what to excerpt – there’s so much that’s good here. And decided, what the hell. Let’s excerpt the beginning. Because I challenge anyone to read the following excerpt and NOT want to read on. EXCERPT FROM It by Stephen King The terror, which would not end for another twenty- eight years – if it ever did end – began, so far as I know or can tell, with a boat made from a sheet of newspaper floating down a gutter swollen with rain. The boat bobbed, listed, righted itself again, dived bravely through treacherous whirlpools, and continued on its way down Witcham Street toward the traffic light which marked the intersection of Witcham and Jackson. The three vertical lenses on all sides of the traffic light were dark this afternoon in the fall of 1. There had been steady rain for a week now, and two days ago the winds had come as well. Most sections of Derry had lost their power then, and it was not back on yet. A small boy in a yellow slicker and red galoshes ran cheerfully along beside the newspaper boat. The rain had not stopped, but it was finally slackening. It tapped on the yellow hood of the boy’s slicker, sounding to his ears like rain on a shed roof … a comfortable, almost cozy sound. The boy in the yellow slicker was George Denbrough. He was six. His brother William, known to most of the kids at Derry Elementary School (and even to the teachers, who would never have used the nickname to his face) as Stuttering Bill, was at home, hacking out the last of a nasty case of influenza. In that autumn of 1. Stuttering Bill was ten years old. Bill had made the boat beside which George now ran. He had made it sitting up in bed, his back propped against a pile of pillows, while their mother played Fur Elise on the piano in the parlor and rain swept restlessly against his bedroom window. About three- quarters of the way down the block as one headed toward the intersection and the dead traffic light, Witcham Street was blocked to motor traffic by smudgepots and four orange sawhorses. Stencilled across each of the horses was DERRY DEPT. OF PUBLIC WORKS. Beyond them, the rain had spilled out of gutters clogged with branches and rocks and big sticky piles of autumn leaves. The water had first pried fingerholds in the paving and then snatched whole greedy handfuls – all of this by the third day of the rains. By noon of the fourth day, big chunks of the street’s surface were boating through the intersection of Jackson and Witcham like miniature white- water rafts. By that time, many people in Derry had begun to make nervous jokes about arks. What really went wrong with King Arthur: Legend of the Sword? The Legend of the Sword subverts just about every convention save one: its supporting characters are mere plot devices. Djimon Hounsou and Aidan Gillen do what they can with the few lines they're given, but their characters have no motivation outside the "find Arthur, get him to wield Excalibur, make him tell us what to do" strategy of Camelot reclamation. Then there's the character listed as Guinevere on the movie's Rotten Tomatoes page (as of mid- May 2. The Mage" in the movie's credits. The Mage only ever wields her power from a safe distance, secretly, and commands the animals to do her dirty work. When the combat gets close, she's quickly overpowered and held with a knife to her throat, powerless. She can make birds blot out the sky, possess the minds of dogs and horses, yet she can't find a way to overpower a guy with a little knife. Then again, Arthur probably wouldn't be able to do much damage in close combat if he had to wear long flowing skirts everywhere he went.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |