This actually started in my head as a review to the recent film adaptation of IT, that I finally saw last night. When I drive to work my brain tends to drift and work on random stuff, in this case I had read a few very negative reviews on IMDB and while driving down the freeway my brain started coming up with a review in response. The film is not a perfect adaptation of IT, far from it, but it really is not a 1/10 train wreck like some of the reviewers claim. The film had an impact on me in a way I did not expect, while it was good and scary as it should be it got me thinking about the book, and how it affected me.
I read IT in the spring of 1989 when I was fifteen years old, which means I do not remember much more of what happened in it than what they brought into the movie. However, I do remember how it made me feel. It made me feel longing, dread, love, loss and sorrow. When I finished the book I cried the rest of the night, not because of what happened to the characters in it, but because I wanted to be with them. They were my friends and I would never be able to be with them again, and that hurt more than anything I had ever experienced before. IT was the first and still is one of very few books that has ever had that effect on me, watching the film last night brought some of those feelings back.
Like I said I was fifteen when I read IT, it was not my first Stephen King book (that was Christine I think) but it was the last one I read translated to my native language. My mother had moved to Spain with me and IT happened to be the last one of the bundle of books I had brought with me, from then on I had to make do with what English paperbacks I could find in Spanish bookshops. Which was not a whole lot, at least not of the type of books I wanted to read, but they did have Stephen King. By the time we moved back I was fluent in English and never had to read translated books again.
Anyway, what I am trying to get at is that IT had a profound effect on me. I was a geeky boy so of course I identified with the kids in the book, add the stampeding hormones in my fifteen year old frame to that and you have a formula for long-lasting effects. I dreamed of becoming an author, I started on a dozen books or so but never finished so much as a chapter. I wanted to write something great but my brain just would not let me produce anything up to the standard I wanted, which was of course the kind of stuff King wrote. Talk about setting up unrealistic goals for oneself… I ended up working with very different things, but I still love books and although I have read less and less King over the years I there is no doubt that his writing shaped the adult I became.
It has been 29 years since I read IT and watching the film made me realize just how little I actually remember of it, so I just bought an English paperback edition. I’m about to meet my friends again and I couldn’t be happier, not a bad result for the film after all...
I read IT in the spring of 1989 when I was fifteen years old, which means I do not remember much more of what happened in it than what they brought into the movie. However, I do remember how it made me feel. It made me feel longing, dread, love, loss and sorrow. When I finished the book I cried the rest of the night, not because of what happened to the characters in it, but because I wanted to be with them. They were my friends and I would never be able to be with them again, and that hurt more than anything I had ever experienced before. IT was the first and still is one of very few books that has ever had that effect on me, watching the film last night brought some of those feelings back.
Like I said I was fifteen when I read IT, it was not my first Stephen King book (that was Christine I think) but it was the last one I read translated to my native language. My mother had moved to Spain with me and IT happened to be the last one of the bundle of books I had brought with me, from then on I had to make do with what English paperbacks I could find in Spanish bookshops. Which was not a whole lot, at least not of the type of books I wanted to read, but they did have Stephen King. By the time we moved back I was fluent in English and never had to read translated books again.
Anyway, what I am trying to get at is that IT had a profound effect on me. I was a geeky boy so of course I identified with the kids in the book, add the stampeding hormones in my fifteen year old frame to that and you have a formula for long-lasting effects. I dreamed of becoming an author, I started on a dozen books or so but never finished so much as a chapter. I wanted to write something great but my brain just would not let me produce anything up to the standard I wanted, which was of course the kind of stuff King wrote. Talk about setting up unrealistic goals for oneself… I ended up working with very different things, but I still love books and although I have read less and less King over the years I there is no doubt that his writing shaped the adult I became.
It has been 29 years since I read IT and watching the film made me realize just how little I actually remember of it, so I just bought an English paperback edition. I’m about to meet my friends again and I couldn’t be happier, not a bad result for the film after all...
