Review of It by Stephen King

A gratuitous lump of a novel about an amorphous entity that prefers to appear as a clown in order to torment kids and vulnerable adults, often but not always murdering them in the most shlocky ways imaginable. 

The main characters are kids for a lot of the book, and when we see their adult selves, they act like kids while discussing their success at life, which is like a thin membrane hiding the messed-up-ness inside them. The evil lurking within. The hidden darkness. ‘It’ is an ill-defined thing that brings out the character’s inner demons. Filled with dark visions that stand as probably unequaled terrifying sequences of gruesome horror, the book details some of the most demented bullying ever committed to paper, amid the frolicsome joy of a heinous presence which drives humans to hurt one another in a myriad of disturbing ways.
King deftly extrapolates dream sequences over dozens of pages, using short chapters to tempt the continual page-turning reflex, blurring timelines, and depicting shifts in characters in a more impressive way than one might expect from the demands of this premise and genre. Compared to his other books, it more messily encapsulates his central concerns. One might say It is his War and Peace. Except Tolstoy would probably chuck the book into his fireplace while making a sign of the cross.
Combining the many themes and tropes SK returns to throughout his career: undeniable human malice, urination, drug use, evil aliens, the human condition, it congeals into an enjoyable ensemble of resonant jump scares. The faintly nostalgic tone contrasts with the grotesque, lumbering evil gallivanting through the later chapters.
I found the ending difficult to tolerate, since it strains the suspension of disbelief to unheard-of lengths. Some have described what happens at the end as an orgy. I think a gang bang would be more accurate. You’ll have to read it to decide for yourself.
Flaunting its profanity, crudity, and violence, it may qualify as a masterpiece of the horror genre. In a genre seldom impressive for depth and heart, this book brings some of those dimensions out in a cheesy pseudo-revenge plot, which despite its enormous girth, leaves countless threads dangling. For most of the reading experience you will be in the ‘splash zone.’ King’s descriptions of mutilation are impressive. He also brings to bear his gift for quirky dialogue, colloquialisms, and his less-than-realistic conception of basic human meanness. Few of his books capitalize so heavily on the complete reliability of the human mind to concoct the worst possible situation and then, through worrying, bring that event about. Our inner conflicts manifest outwardly. Our behavior proceeds from our hearts/ minds – those icky emotions dripping in the dark backlands of the human soul.
The twisted cosmogony of the creature’s origin was less convincing than it was interesting. A questionable slip into omniscient perspective but a major break in the narrative flow.
Whether they are crawling through sewers with only matches to light the way (really?) or building a dam (why do they spend so much time on the dam?) it is indeed entertaining to follow these stuttering, variously abused characters from one phase to the next. It is a metaphor for maturing in a broken society, where the comforts of childhood prove adulthood to be a cesspit of boiling wrath and that peace promised us in our early days is but a faint dream of our wicked hearts, grasping at the last straw of our dwindling innocence.
If you haven’t had enough clown nightmares after finishing this book, follow this up with Carlton Mellick’s Why I Married a Clown Girl from the Dimension of Death. And then read his Clownfellas and Cannibals of Candyland for good measure. And after that, if you still haven’t had enough clown horror, please reevaluate your priorities. The perfect exposure therapy for your crippling coulrophobia.