On Reading (Part 2)

A brief, spoiler-free synopsis: In 1958, a group of children band together to defeat the monster that is stalking the (fictional) town of Derry, Maine. In 1985, they re-unite, hoping to kill the creature once and for all. I first read the book when I was 14 or 15, just a few years older than the characters in the 1958 interludes. Now, I found myself slipping back into the book a few years younger than the adults those children became. As a result, reading It became very meta. A key plot point is that the adult characters had forgotten about their original time in Derry, about what they had done as children. Like them, my memories of It had disappeared as well.  I knew the general outline of the plot, a few of Pennywise’s infamous one liners, but the details? Gone.

It was almost like reading It for the first time, yet now from the vantage point of adulthood. When I went through my initial Stephen King phase in middle and high school, adults would tell me they couldn’t read his books because they were “too real”. I can remember thinking, “Too real?! There are vampires, haunted hotels, and psychic teachers. What’s so real about that?” But now, reading It again, what jumped out at me was the violence and the cruelty between the human characters—you don’t have to look far in the real world to see this reflected.  A strand running throughout the book itself is a meditation on how children and adults see the world in very different ways, and I found it fascinating how It was a perfect example of this in action.

Yet despite the different perspective gained over the past 20 years, something that never seems to change is the power of a book to transport you: when lost in one, everything else disappears. Coming back to reality, such as after reading during my lunch break or on my commute, was jarring. I hated having to stop in the middle of the chapter, irrationally picturing the characters like they inhabited Jasper Fforde’s Bookverse: if I stepped away during a dramatic part they would be held in an unpleasant limbo until I returned. Finishing It proved a bit of a paradox: as much as I wanted to press ahead to the end and wrap up the narrative, I also enjoyed my time visiting this world and its familiar characters.

I wish I could say this kicked off a new phase of fiction reading, but overall my summer reading list tilted more towards behavioural science than science fiction. Yet for a few weeks this summer, it was wonderful to have the opportunity to be re-introduced to the pleasure of reading for nothing more than sheer enjoyment, and to be reminded of the magic imbued in the written word.