Monday, September 4, 2017

The IT Spot: Rereading part 40

 Minor news note: Pennsylvania cops are anticipating more creepy clown sightings with IT coming out on Friday. Be aware, I guess.

 So.

I really don't want to talk about this, so it's gonna be brief.


While the kids are getting out of the sewers, they get lost, and the ka-tet begins to break down. So as both a literal and symbolic way to link them, and move them from childhood to adulthood, Bev has sex with each boy. It's all framed from Bev's perspective as she holds the adult/dead Eddie. I suppose it's as tasteful as it can possibly be, with eroticism taken out of it. It's still not a comfortable read, even if child Bev is fine with it.

The only, ONLY thing I can say, again, is that King was really deep into his drug and alcohol abuse at this point. That's the only reason this probably seem viable. How and why the editor let it go I'll never know. I really don't want to research into this a lot further.

I will say that as a child the same age reading this book for the first time, I osculated between a few reactions: confusion (I'd only had a little sex ed), some revulsion (not that they were kids, but that they were having sex at all: the same way I'd felt during the adult scenes), and some curiosity. It's been almost 20 years since my first readthrough, and that's what stuck with me. Yaaaaay.

On to easier things: above ground the destruction continues as the town dies with IT, the standpipe falling over at nearly the climax. Below, Bill and Ritchie find it, and Bill reaches into a hole and squeezes IT's heart until it explodes.


There's a lot more of them struggling above ground, and everything above ground going to shit (ending with the streets collapsing into the canal, and a lot more people dying) but we've reached the climax. They take the still alove but catatonic Audra and flee to the surface.

And unlike most other King books, we get a denouement that's the exact right length, and unspeakably  beautiful. But I'll try my best to wrap it all up next time.

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