When ‘It’ ends?
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‘the Turtle is dead oh God the Turtle really is dead’
If you haven’t finished the book, best be warned there are spoilers ahead.
The arrival of the second half of Andy Muschietti’s It adaptation this September 6, with the accompanying new edition of King’s door-stopper of a novel, gives me another chance – these seem to be a lot of those coming round nowadays – to re-read an old Stephen King classic before catching the movie. Remembering that wide-eyed teen with the whole world ahead, I was one of those who read the version of It with the evil eyes staring out from the storm drain on the cover. It was the early 90s, the Tommy Lee Wallace-directed mini-series was on Sky One, and the threat of Tim Curry’s vicious Pennywise was lurking in every chapter. After THAT beginning, all I wanted was more guts, gore and Pennywise, even if some chapters seemed inordinately long for a fifteen year old’s attention span.
Yes, that beginning. The killing of Georgie Denbrough is one of the great openings in genre fiction. You get this perfect encapsulation of the threat, of those most at risk, and of a world which seems blithely disinterested in the fate of a young boy chasing his sail boat. It becomes a tale of the Losers’ Club – Big Bill, Richie, Eddie, Mike, Stan, Ben and Bev – against a malevolent evil that they are facing for one of the most personal of reasons. And then there are the usual childhood traumas and threats like disinterested parents, burgeoning hormones, and schoolyard bullies – although not on the same maniacal level, if you didn’t have someone like Henry Bowers in your school then maybe you were the Henry Bowers of your school (just saying). The world is a scary place for a kid. And Derry is a scarier place than most.
Reading It again – over quarter of a decade older if not quite as commensurately that much wiser – the fact that Pennywise, so front and centre in the media adaptations and later book covers, is only a visualisation of the threat is so much clearer. King’s writing-chops makes the town of Derry, Maine seem worse than the Sunnydale Hellmouth, with the townsfolk here also accepting with not much more than a shrug the kinds of events that should get most population centers shut down by shady government organisations. The time strands – 27 years apart – are like two train tracks occasionally interweaving yet heading for the same destination. As children, the Losers are battling an ancient evil that preys on their relative powerlessness; as adults they are as much seeking a way to fix lives perhaps irreparably damaged as a result of having been brought up in a town where the inhabitants don’t truly care for the weak. They may put up missing posters and call for curfews, but every 3 decades or so they trade in others’ lives to maintain the relatively comfortable status quo. The weak of Derry – children, those who euphemistically ‘don’t belong’, criminals – are the cattle. And whatever is lurking in the sewers is hungry.
Whatever is under the town is only part of it because Derry’s history is more blood-soaked than most. The Ironworks explosion, the killings including that of Adrian Mellon, whoever set the fire at the Black Spot – all represents a manifestation of what evil lurks both below ground and in the hearts of those above. The man who folds a newspaper and goes back inside when a girl is being attacked is showing that these townsfolks are either willingly ignorant or easily blinded to the things happening in their town. Pennywise represents a physical manifestation of the cancer that exists here, and is a fantastic image to put on a book cover or a movie poster. Because who doesn’t love clowns? But ultimately, what me-at-15 completely missed, was that a more apt image would have been a town map or a group portrait of the townspeople, continuing on with their humdrum existences without anyone piecing together what a kid with a library card can do. Because after all, ‘Derry is not like any town.’
I find comparisons between King and Quentin Tarantino impossible to resist. Both seem convinced that the mantra ‘less is more’ is something dreamt up by either creatives with not enough time on their hands or similarly time-obsessed readers and audiences who have something else to be getting on with. At just over 1,100 pages, It is itself something of a monster, building a world long on description and characterisation. The scenes of action and drama – primarily the scenes which feature in the films and TV mini-series – are front-loaded by thoughts and feelings of the main characters which allows King access to his usual themes of parental neglect (that his own father walked out on him is well-known), the importance of history and how the present rhymes with the past, and that the underdog can win (against near insurmountable odds) but that win may be bittersweet.
Those nearly insurmountable odds – 7 kids / damaged adults against a power of near unlimited abilities – is where Maturin, the Space Turtle – referenced above – enters the fray as much needed support. And this is where the suspension of disbelief – even in a world terrorised by a clown living in the sewers – takes a particularly tough hit. The world of Derry has been built with such meticulous attention to detail and this world includes Pennywise or whatever power he represents. Derry is so richly – and at times shockingly – tapestried that something as leftfield as this – even if introduced in tandem with It’s potential origins and its presence in King’s The Dark Tower universe, leaves me almost giggling at the very incongruity of it. Muschietti has already stated that he plans to include Maturin in the film, and whether this is true or simply a red herring designed to keep up intrigue is impossible to say. The ending to the book (and that 1990 mini-series), without saying too much too soon, has had more than its fair share of detractors over the years, and Muschetti – whose earlier horror Mama suffered from the lack of a satisfying closing – has a challenge ahead if he’s going to deliver a finale that satisfies the casual cinema-goer as much as Chapter 1 did. Especially, I fear, if that ending features a giant turtle. I await September 6 with some excitement but also no little trepidation. But for now at least, I can put the dog-eared Kings aside and look for some new fiction.
And yet. Roll on Doctor Sleep. Stephen King is an industry.
