It
by Stephen King
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Stephen King's idea for It (1986) came from a favorite childhood image: the entire cast of the Bugs Bunny Show coming on at the
beginning. He thought of bringing on all the monsters, one last time: Dracula, Frankenstein's creature, the Werewolf, the Crawling Eye,
Rodan, "It Came from Outer Space."
It is about a group of adults who were once troubled children in the late '50s--"The Losers." One of them is a bestselling horror writer
much like Stephen King (or his friend and collaborator Peter Straub). In order to defeat the protean "It" that threatens their hometown,
they have to go back--not only to the town itself, but deep into their childhood memories, to regain the talent for magic they once had.
King says It is for "the buried child in us, but I'm writing for the grown-up, too. I want grown-ups to look at the child long enough to be
able to give him up."
This huge, baggy beast of a novel is a favorite of Stephen King fans--second in popularity only to
The Stand. Perhaps longtime fans develop mental filters for King's sloppy storytelling to tune out the repetitions and silliness. King is like the pointillist painter Seurat: if you
stand too close to the little dots, the picture falls apart, and it looks meaningless. That's why he makes the storyscape so big--to take you
up to that macro-level where you like the book in spite of its flaws.
--Fiona Webster
On The Flap
Derry: a small city in Maine, a place as hauntingly familiar as your own
home town. Only in Derry the haunting is real...
It began for the Losers on a day in June of 1958, the day school let out
for the summer. That was the day Henry Bowers carved the first letter of his name on
Ben Hanscom's belly and chased him into the Barrens, the day Henry and his Neanderthal
friends beat up on Stuttering Bill Denbrough and Eddie Kaspbrak, the day Stuttering Bill
had to save Eddie from his worst asthma attack ever by riding his bike to beat the devil.
It ended in August, with seven desperate children in search of a creature of
unspeakable evil in the drains beneath Derry. In search of It. And somehow it ended.
Or so they thought. Then.
On a spring night in 1985 Mike Hanlon, once one of those children, makes
six calls. Stan Uris, accountant. Richie "Records" Tozier, L.A. disc
jockey. Ben Hanscom, renowned architect. Beverly Rogan, dress designer.
Eddie Kaspbrak, owner of a successful New York limousine company. And Bill
Denbrough, best-selling writer of horror novels, Bill Denbrough who now only stutters in
his dreams.
These six men and one woman have forgotten their childhood's, have
forgotten the time when they were Losers ... but an unremembered promise draws them back,
the present begins to rhyme dreadfully with the past, and when the Losers reunite, the
wheels of fate lock together and roll them toward the ultimate terror.
In the biggest and most ambitious book of his career, Stephen King gives
us not only his most towering epic of horror but a surprising re-illumination of the
corridor where we pass from the bright mysteries of childhood to those of maturity.
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