Things a book can be good at. [Writing resources]

[Sci-2]

While I'm not really a fan of Stephen King, I have to give him credit for making thousands of people believe that a piece of crap like It is worth reading.

You do realize disparaging a book sans explanation is against the very idea of this thread?

We should turn this into a thread about why It is awesome. I'll go first. I love the feeling of the late fifties town, it just got a great atmosphere.

I've probably already said it in here, but one of the most important things to me that a book can be good at is creating an atmosphere, a world that you get sucked into.

I think It is legitimately scary (at least until the ending). Maybe a reread would disabuse me of that notion, but I recall multiple times being very terrified of what was happening in between its covers.

[Goodbye World]

In short Stephen King's It is stupid, bloated, and scary.

Or at least, it's as scary as a horror novel can be IMO, after all, I don't think I've ever been legitimately terrified while reading a book. I say it's bloated because it could have been 350-500 pages instead of 1,090. And although it starts out very strong, towards the end it devolves into something that can only be described as brain-damage inducing batshit.

[Chun-Li]

You do realize disparaging a book sans explanation is against the very idea of this thread?

Ok let's see, it's a book about an eternal evil entity who's a giant spider that looks like a clown, and the way to beat him is by having a ten year old girl have a sexual orgy with 6 of her friends. If that's not crap, I don't know what is.

[polishgenius]

Ok let's see, it's a book about an eternal evil entity who's a giant spider that looks like a clown, and the way to beat him is by having a ten year old girl have a sexual orgy with 6 of her friends. If that's not crap, I don't know what is.

While that's disgusting (I haven't read It so I don't know how accurate it is), it's not really telling me anything about why the book is bad...

[Goodbye World]

While that's disgusting (I haven't read It so I don't know how accurate it is), it's not really telling me anything about why the book is bad...

Not exactly accurate I would say, but ignoring that for a second. CL said that that makes the book 'crap' and you're saying that it makes it 'disgusting', well, then I'm not really sure what is there more to tell because most crap is disgusting.

[polishgenius]

Not exactly accurate I would say, but ignoring that for a second. CL said that that makes the book 'crap' and you're saying that it makes it 'disgusting', well, then I'm not really sure what is there more to tell because most crap is disgusting.

There's a difference between disgusting to the sensibilities and disgusting to the senses. If your aim is to repel, shock or offend, and in horror it often is, then writing something that achieves those things doesn't mean the work is badly done.

[john]

The sex scene in It is done for a reason. The theme of the book is adulthood vs childhood and how people as adults no longer understand what it's like to experience life as a child. The children having sex linked them to the adult world and allowed them to remember when they got older that scary things like evil clowns are literally real.

Whether you think that makes it better is up to you. :P

[Manhole Eunuchsbane]

The sex scene in It is done for a reason. The theme of the book is adulthood vs childhood and how people as adults no longer understand what it's like to experience life as a child. The children having sex linked them to the adult world and allowed them to remember when they got older that scary things like evil clowns are literally real.

Whether you think that makes it better is up to you. :P

This. King worked that theme really well. I would agree that the finale was a bit lacking, but for other reasons. I don't think King should've ever revealed the true form of the creature, as it was much freakier as a fear eating doppleganger that could just adopt whatever form its victim was most afraid of.

[Ser Rodrigo Belmonte]

Not exactly accurate I would say, but ignoring that for a second. CL said that that makes the book 'crap' and you're saying that it makes it 'disgusting', well, then I'm not really sure what is there more to tell because most crap is disgusting.

Uh Martin's books are filled with disgusting stuff like incest, really shitty sex scenes, craster,rape, cannibalism etc. Yet no one sane will claim ASOIAF as crap.

I rank IT with the shining and The Stand as being one of his best novels. I love the Derry feel, it's why I enjoyed 11/22/63 so much as well. The characters are great as well. The ending did suck cause i don't find giant spiders scary in anyway possible..

[Sci-2]

Uh Martin's books are filled with disgusting stuff like incest, really shitty sex scenes, craster,rape, cannibalism etc. Yet no one sane will claim ASOIAF as crap.

I rank IT with the shining and The Stand as being one of his best novels. I love the Derry feel, it's why I enjoyed 11/22/63 so much as well. The characters are great as well. The ending did suck cause i don't find giant spiders scary in anyway possible..

But IIRC King does this with his novels - the demonic villain is usually putting on a facade. Or rather, once you describe said villain it becomes an entry in the D&D monster manual rather than a legitimately frightening being.

[Goodbye World]

Uh Martin's books are filled with disgusting stuff like incest, really shitty sex scenes, craster,rape, cannibalism etc. Yet no one sane will claim ASOIAF as crap.

I feel like you guys took that comment about crap=disgusting a bit too seriously.

Anyway, I'm not sure if this counts as thread derailing or not but I thought the sex scene was terrible. Here is a book about friendship and all of a sudden an 11-year old girl decides that to get her friends out of a sewer she has to fuck them all one by one, and here are 7 pages describing the act in detail. I know King said he wanted to connect adulthood to childhood or something, but was that the best way to do it?

What's weird is that he was asked about this scene and said: "I wasn't really thinking of the sexual aspect of it.", really? Oh, and the giant spider, lol.

Other than that, it was a good horror novel except being too long.

[Chun-Li]

There's a difference between disgusting to the sensibilities and disgusting to the senses. If your aim is to repel, shock or offend, and in horror it often is, then writing something that achieves those things doesn't mean the work is badly done.

That scene wasn't meant to repel, shock, or offend, it was meant to be romantic.

[Sci-2]

I don't think it's necessarily derailing, so long as people are explaining why they thought the scene was good or bad.

I'll need to see if there's a copy at the library - I just don't remember the scene well enough.

[Chun-Li]

I don't think it's necessarily derailing, so long as people are explaining why they thought the scene was good or bad.

I'll need to see if there's a copy at the library - I just don't remember the scene well enough.

So why did you call it stupid earlier?

[Sci-2]

So why did you call it stupid earlier?

Huh? When did I do that?

[Chun-Li]

Huh? When did I do that?

I'm thinking Stephen King and his ability to scare with stuff that would be stupid outside of context. (See stuff that happens in It.)

That said, King has my utmost respect because I couldn't read IT during the night and he made what should have been dumb as fuck shit in that book scary as Hell.

[polishgenius]

I'm amazed at the psychic powers that allow you to know from those vague quotes that Sci was specifically remembering the details of that one scene.

[Chun-Li]

I was asking why he called the book stupid, not the scene. Perhaps I should have made that clear and not made it a reply to that quote.

[Sci-2]

On the "stupid" stuff in It:

I was talking about the scene with bugs at dinner, and the bird with balloons tied to its wings. Out of context if someone regaled me with those scenes I couldn't understand why they'd be scary.

[Sci-2]

Experiments with Weird: Eugène Savitzkaya

Degrees of reification have sometimes been used to draw lines: between spec fic and lit fic, between allegory and story, between poetry and fiction. If the monster’s a metaphor, it’s lily-livered literary, but if the monster’s a monster — well, now we’re talking. Speculative fiction is the imagined made real, so that it must be contended with, at a physical, visceral level: blood and guts, meat and sweat. Literature, ever polite, merely entertains the imagined, as in a parlor of conjecture.

But I would argue Savitzkaya’s very power derives from his refusal to reify, his insistence on simply stating. Reification, Savitzkaya shows us, can in its own way be a kind of reassurance, a signposting, letting us know where we stand. When we tightrope between is-it? or isn’t-it?, a fuller reification tips us off, tips us to one side. As an elaboration of the simply stated, reifying is also a bringing-into-the-world that entails history and rules and a certain kind of sense-making: all the basics of that spec staple, coherent worldbuilding.