I’m mixed on King. On the one hand, I think that among the group of authors who are megabestsellers, whose books stock every airport bookstore in the country, he’s the best of the best. I think he’s an above average talent who’s spent a lifetime churning out mediocre novels, with a few really good ones under his belt. But he could be two or three times the writer he is if he would only do some drafting and revision.

And I don’t have any particular problem with that scene in IT. Sure, it’s gross and weird but IT is a novel that’s deliberately gross and weird. Much of the first half of the novel is an escalating series of scenes of child murder, interspersed with scenes of spousal abuse and racial violence. The book is written like a deliberate psychic assault on the reader. So I really don’t see the scene as King going “look at these sexy children.”

Though I will say that the mystification and magical Bagger Vance-ing of native people seems in line with what I got out of that bit in IT about the shaman dream magic ritual.