It’s the Lord of the Rings,
I think, where one of the characters says that “way leads on to way”; that you
could start at a path leading nowhere more fantastic than your own front steps
to the sidewalk, and from there you could go…well, anywhere at all. It’s the
same way with stories. One leads to the next, to the next, and to the next; maybe
they go in the direction you wanted to go, but maybe they don’t. Maybe in the
end it’s the voice that tells the stories more than the stories themselves that
matters.
It turns out that finishing Lord
Have Mercy Part II dovetailed neatly with finishing my reread of the giant
Clown Book, and that is in no way a coincidence. I spent six months on both,
though one was a considerably more arduous task.
I’ve always thought it’s
important for an author to reread their favorite books. The first reading is an
unconscious effort – or, we’ll say less conscious. You’re riding the suspense,
you’re turning the pages quickly. You’re reacting. And at the close of
the story, you’re left with an impression that’s more emotional than cerebral.
The reread is where, now that you
know what happens plot-wise, you can linger. You can dig into the mechanics of
the story, highlight your favorite passages, and try to understand why this
particular book left such a lasting impression, and then use those answers to
further and better your own work. Rereading is an active process, and it’s also
where the details shine especially bright.
I don’t really know what
possessed me to pick Stephen King’s killer clown doorstop up late this summer –
nostalgia, most likely, a repressed need to seek comfort in the words of
someone who helped to shape my author voice – but it turned out to be the best
decision I could have made while tackling Lord Have Mercy.
I decided I’d treat myself to a
new paperback edition to give my screened-out eyes a breather, and in a twist
of rather delightful kismet, it arrived on an afternoon when it was bucketing
rain, and the cover’s got some permanent water damage. I was dismayed for about
a nanosecond, and then chuckled over it. Maybe every copy of It should
come with a wet, crinkled-up cover. Because I like to keep my books as pristine
as possible – I’m one of those annoying nerds who doesn’t want the spines to
get cracked – I usually copy all my favorite quotes down in a notebook as
though I didn’t have better and more pressing things to do. But I took the
highlighter to this one, and now, flipping through it, it becomes obvious,
picked out in bright yellow, that this is one of those books that has managed
to capture the whole of the human experience. It’s too long? It drags? Well,
amongst its pages you’ll find some of the silliest, dumbest passages you’ve
ever read, and you’ll find fear, and loss, and heartbreak, and absolute unfairness,
and then you’ll come across lines that are absolute gems, that represent not
just a deft hand with a typewriter, but a beautifully-subtle stroke at the
deeper human feelings we so often, like Pennywise’s true form, cannot define in
their exact shapes, and so we couch them in simpler, more wholesome terms.
Maybe, he thought,
there aren’t any such things as good friends or bad friends – maybe there are
just friends, people who stand by you when you’re hurt and who help you feel
not so lonely. Maybe they’re always worth being scared for, and hoping for, and
living for. Maybe worth dying for, too, if that’s what has to be. No good
friends. No bad friends. Only people you want, need to be with; people who build
their houses in your heart.
It is the best and the
worst of humanity laid out on the page, and in that sense, thirteen-hundred
pages is quite the feat of restraint.
Reading it in a post-It:
Chapter Two (2019) world definitely shaped the way I interpreted
certain scenes.
“Put him down,” Beverly said. “He
can stay here.”
“It’s too dark,” Richie sobbed. “You
know…it’s too dark. Eds…he…”
“No, it’s okay,” Ben said. “Maybe
this is where he’s supposed to be. I think maybe it is.”
They put him down, and Richie
kissed Eddie’s cheek. Then he looked blindly up at Ben. “You sure?”
“Yeah. Come on, Richie.”
Richie got up, and turned toward
the door. “F*ck you, B*tch!” he cried suddenly, and kicked the door shut with
his foot…
“Why’d you do that?” Beverly
asked.
“I don’t know,” Richie said, but
he knew well enough.
(He knew well enough is
the line that sent me sprinting to ao3 in 2019, where there is some impeccable
fix-it fic from some insanely talented writers.)
I had a moment, near the end,
when I knew what was coming, and nearly skipped over Eddie’s death, but didn’t.
That didn’t seem fair to leave him in the dark, even if the Losers had to.
Also, I’m not a skipper. I don’t “skim” anything I read, and that’s what this
post is really about.
Taking 500 words to get to the
point? Me? No.
I don’t post about the books I
read as often as I’d like, but when I do post about them, it’s not simply
because I like chatting about books. I do, but, also, I feel like it’s an
opportunity to help readers, or potential readers, understand my approach to
writing so they know what to expect when they pick up one of my books.
The whole idea that anyone does
skim a book they’re reading for supposed pleasure is anathema to me. I know
everyone reads differently, but I genuinely can’t imagine just reading parts
of a book, if I truly enjoyed it, to “get to the point” so I could move on to
the next, and the next. I hate the ways Goodreads has turned the incomparable
pleasure of reading into a beauty contest, a footrace, and a high school
lunchroom. It’s provided me with the sad realization that there are people out
there judging and rating books who genuinely do not like the act of reading.
Who don’t read each and every word. Who don’t savor the imagery, and the play
of language. The way a sentence can punch like a fist, and the way a sentence
can trickle slowly and musically like a clear, cold stream burbling over smooth
pebbles in the deep of a forest. I love words. I love what human beings –
singular, unique, creative human beings, not AI users – can accomplish with the
twenty-six letters of the English alphabet. It is astonishing.
Some of my favorite moments in It
are when King goes on his about-Derry tangents. Talk of topography, and
vegetation. The history of the Standpipe, and the glass umbilicus connecting
the adult to the children’s libraries. The imagery of the Barrens, and the
trainyard, and the sunflowers nodding on their stalks in the yard at 29 Neibolt
Street. Watching the bloody rags slosh and froth through the glass door of the
washing machine in the laundromat. Fidgeting in the chair in Mr. Keene’s
office, the milkshake dashed to the floor when Eddie learns what a placebo is.
That level of detail is what
makes me love stories. It’s what makes me want to write stories. It’s…me.
I knew before I began Lord
Have Mercy that it was going to put me through the wringer. I spent three
years and five books building up to it, because I knew it would be a heavy
commitment, and because I honestly didn’t want to deal with the skimmers and
scanners whining about it when its monstrous, detail-heavy final form slumped
out into the world. But rereading one of my absolute favorite books proved the
shot in the arm I needed. It helped me take a deep breath and shove the noise
aside and write the way I wanted to. The way it needs to be written.
Lots of people can write lots of books, but this is my book. These are my
brain children, and I’m the only one who can tell their story.
I know not everyone enjoys
lengthy, detailed, layered books, but that’s what this is. This one’s for the deep-dive
readers. For the lovers of words. For those who want the full Dartmoor
experience. I crawled through the sewers of Derry, Maine, and came out in
Knoxville, Tennessee, smiling. This one’s gonna be good.
“Nothing lasts forever,” Richie
repeated. He looked up at Bill, and Bill saw tears cut slowly through the dirt
on Richie’s cheeks.
“Except maybe for love,” Ben
said.
…
They walked into the Town House
on a wave of laughter, and as Bill pushed through the glass door, Beverly
caught sight of something which she never spoke of but never forgot. For just a
moment she saw their reflections in the glass – only there were six, not four,
because Eddie was behind Richie and Stan was behind Bill, that little
half-smile on his face.
