Books: King of Horror

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Pennywise, a brightly dressed clown, beguiles the young passers-by. The lucky ones elude the creature. The others are never seen again -- alive. This is obviously not your average Ringling Bros. fool with bulbous nose and orange sideburns. When it shucks off its costume, it resembles a spider. Or a crawling eye. Or a mummy. Its breath is foul, its eyes are mere holes, and its diet consists of human entrees. Pennywise's address is the sewers of Derry, Me., but the monster is only renting there. Its permanent home is a far stranger dwelling: the mind of Stephen Edwin King.

In his new novel, It (Viking; $22.95), Stephen proves once again that he is the indisputable King of horror, a demon fabulist who raises gooseflesh for fun and profit. At 39, he seems to be the country's best-known writer. When he appeared on an American Express commercial to ask onlookers "Do you know me?," the answer was obvious: Of course, they did. His face, sometimes . bearded, now clean shaven, appears on most of the 20-odd books written under two names. More than 60 million of them have been in distribution worldwide, including two volumes -- Carrie and The Dead Zone -- that were presented by Nicholas Daniloff, minutes before his arrest, to Misha, his Soviet friend. Some dozen films have been based on King's fictions, and there are more on the way. He has earned over $20 million so far, including a $3 million advance for It, which fulfilled expectations by vaulting to the top of the best- seller list before official publication.

Hurtling down two streams of time, the '50s and the '80s, the book displays all the author's patented tics and tropes. The Beautiful Losers: a black, a homosexual, and -- among others persecuted in adolescence and now called home to disinter a buried memory -- a stutterer and an abused girl. The Validated Nightmare: "At the last instant, as the ax slowed to its apogee and balanced there, Richie understood that this wasn't a dream at all . . ." The Disgusting Colloquialism: "She drew in a great, hitching breath and hocked a remarkably large looey onto the top of his head." The Brand-Name Maneuver: "Here sits a man with Bass Weejuns on his feet and Calvin Klein underwear to cover his ass." The Comic-Strip Effect: "Whack-whack-whack-whack -- And suddenly it was in his hands, a great living thing that pumped and pulsed against his palms, pushing them back and forth. (nonononononono)." The Burlesque Locution: " 'Good ahfternyoon, deah lady,' Richie said in his best Baron Butthole Voice. 'I am in diah need of three tickey-tickies to youah deah old American flicktoons.' " The Fancy Juxtaposition: epigraphs from Virgil and Mean Streets. The Self-Deflating Jape: "I am . . . the only survivor of a dying planet. I have come to rob all the women . . . rape all the men . . . and learn to do the Peppermint Twist!" And, most discouraging of all, the Unconscionable Length: 1,138 pages.