- [15] FidoNet (2:5020/1291.4) -------------------------------- RU.STEPHENKING -
Msg : #62 [67] Loc
From : Alexander Golubchikov 2:5020/1291.4 Чет 15 Апp 99 00:15
To : All
Subj : Tom Gordon's Girl
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Хелло, All!
Пеpвая pеакция миpового И-нета на выход 6 апpеля новой книги СК "Девочка,
котоpая любила Тома Гоpдона".
===порезано, попилено===
The Girl Who Loved Tom Gordon Preview
From: SSOnline@prenhall.com
To: ss-king@lists.superlibrary.com
Subject: Stephen King Update: Sneak Preview!
Date: 18 Mar 1999 16:08:51 -0500
Attention Stephen King Fan:
The countdown is on -- Stephen King's latest book, THE GIRL WHO LOVED
TOM GORDON, will hit stores in just a few short weeks. This
"surprise" novel, inspired by King's love of baseball and the Boston
Red Sox, even caught our author off-guard. "If books were babies, I'd
call THE GIRL WHO LOVED TOM GORDON the result of an unplanned
pregnancy," King admits.
More than a story on America's favorite pastime, or on Red Sox relief
pitcher Tom Gordon, this thrilling new adventure is about survival.
Nine-year-old Trisha McFarland wanders off the path during a six-mile
hike on the Maine-New Hampshire branch of the Appalachian Trail, and
finds herself terrified and alone. With only her Walkman to keep her
company, Trisha finds comfort tuning in to broadcasts of the Boston
Red Sox games, with her hero, Tom Gordon.
A classic story that engages our emotions at the most primal level,
THE GIRL WHO LOVED TOM GORDON explores our deep dread of the unknown
and the extent to which faith can conquer it.
And now you can read an excerpt of the book before anyone else does.
At the end of this message, we've included the first chapter, "The
Pregame." It's King at his best, and this initial glimpse will leave
you wanting more -- as if King would have it any other way! But don't
worry, you won't have to wait too long...the book will be in stores
April 6.
In the meantime, check out our Stephen King bulletin board at
http://www.simonsays.com/bbs/king1bbs/secure/bbs.cgi to meet other
King fans and spread your King knowledge!
Stay tuned for more details...
SimonSays
* * *
Pregame
The world had teeth and it could bite you with them anytime it wanted.
Trisha McFarland discovered this when she was nine years old. At ten
o'clock on a morning in early June she was sitting in the back seat of
her mother's Dodge Caravan, wearing her blue Red Sox batting practice
jersey (the one with 36 GORDON on the back) and playing with Mona, her
doll. At ten thirty she was lost in the woods. By eleven she was
trying not to be terrified, trying not to let herself think, This is
serious, this is very serious. Trying not to think that sometimes when
people got lost in the woods they got seriously hurt. Sometimes they
died.
All because I needed to pee, she thought...except she hadn't needed to
pee all that badly, and in any case she could have asked Mom and Pete
to wait up the trail a minute while she went behind a tree. They were
fighting again, gosh what a surprise that was, and that was why she
had dropped behind a little bit, and without saying anything. That was
why she had stepped off the trail and behind a high stand of bushes.
She needed a breather, simple as that. She was tired of listening to
them argue, tired of trying to sound bright and cheerful, close to
screaming at her mother, Let him go, then! If he wants to go back to
Malden and live with Dad so much, why don't you just let him? I'd
drive him myself if I had a license, just to get some peace and quiet
around here! And what then? What would her mother say then? What kind
of look would come over her face? And Pete. He was older, almost
fourteen, and not stupid, so why didn't he know better? Why couldn't
he just give it a rest? Cut the crap was what she wanted to say to him
(to both of them, really), just cut the crap.
The divorce had happened a year ago, and their mother had gotten
custody. Pete had protested the move from suburban Boston to southern
Maine bitterly and at length. Part of it really was wanting to be with
Dad, and that was the lever he always used on Mom (he understood with
some unerring instinct that it was the one he could plant the deepest
and pull on the hardest), but Trisha knew it wasn't the only reason,
or even the biggest one. The real reason Pete wanted out was that he
hated Sanford Middle School.
In Malden he'd had it pretty well whipped. He'd run the computer club
like it was his own private kingdom; he'd had friends -- nerds, yeah,
but they went around in a group and the bad kids didn't pick on them.
At Sanford Middle there was no computer club and he'd only made a
single friend, Eddie Rayburn. Then in January Eddie moved away, also
the victim of a parental breakup. That made Pete a loner, anyone's
game. Worse, a lot of kids laughed at him. He had picked up a nickname
which he hated: Pete's CompuWorld.
On most of the weekends when she and Pete didn't go down to Malden to
be with their father, their mother took them on outings. She was
grimly dedicated to these, and although Trisha wished with all her
heart that Mom would stop -- it was on the outings that the worst
fights happened -- she knew that wasn't going to happen. Quilla
Andersen (she had taken back her maiden name and you could bet Pete
hated that, too) had the courage of her convictions. Once, while
staying at the Malden house with Dad, Trisha had heard their father
talking to his own Dad on the phone. "If Quilla had been at Little Big
Horn, the Indians would have lost," he said, and although Trisha
didn't like it when Dad said stuff like that about Mom -- it seemed
babyish as well as disloyal -- she couldn't deny that there was a
nugget of truth in that particular observation.
Over the last six months, as things grew steadily worse between Mom
and Pete, she had taken them to the auto museum in Wiscasset, to the
Shaker Village in Gray, to The New England Plant-A-Torium in North
Wyndham, to Six-Gun City in Randolph, New Hampshire, on a canoe trip
down the Saco River, and on a skiing trip to Sugarloaf (where Trisha
had sprained her ankle, an injury over which her mother and father had
later had a screaming fight; what fun divorce was, what really good
fun).
Sometimes, if he really liked a place, Pete would give his mouth a
rest. He had pronounced Six-Gun City "for babies," but Mom had allowed
him to spend most of the visit in the room where the electronic games
were, and Pete had gone home not exactly happy but at least silent. On
the other hand, if Pete didn't like one of the places their Mom picked
(his least favorite by far had been the Plant-A-Torium; returning to
Sanford that day he had been in an especially boogery frame of mind),
he was generous in sharing his opinion. "Go along to get along" wasn't
in his nature. Nor was it in their mother's, Trisha supposed. She
herself thought it was an excellent philosophy, but of course everyone
took one look at her and pronounced her her father's child. Sometimes
that bothered her, but mostly she liked it.
Trisha didn't care where they went on Saturdays, and would have been
perfectly happy with a steady diet of amusement parks and mini-golf
courses just because they minimized the increasingly horrible
arguments. But Mom wanted the trips to be instructive, too -- hence
the Plant-A-Torium and Shaker Village. On top of his other problems,
Pete resented having education rammed down his throat on Saturdays,
when he would rather have been up in his room, playing Sanitarium or
Riven on his Mac. Once or twice he had shared his opinion ("This
sucks!" pretty well summed it up) so generously that Mom had sent him
back to the car and told him to sit there and "compose himself" until
she and Trisha came back.
Trisha wanted to tell Mom she was wrong to treat him like he was a
kindergartener who needed a time-out -- that someday they'd come back
to the van and find it empty, Pete having decided to hitchhike back to
Massachusetts -- but of course she said nothing. The Saturday outings
themselves were wrong, but Mom would never accept that. By the end of
some of them Quilla Andersen looked at least five years older than
when they had set out, with deep lines grooved down the sides of her
mouth and one hand constantly rubbing her temple, as if she had a
headache...but she would still never stop. Trisha knew it. Maybe if
her mother had been at Little Big Horn the Indians still would have
won, but the body-count would have been considerably higher.
This week's outing was to an unincorporated township in the western
part of the state. The Appalachian Trail wound through the area on its
way to New Hampshire. Sitting at the kitchen table the night before,
Mom had shown them photos from a brochure. Most of the pictures showed
happy hikers either striding along a forest trail or standing at
scenic lookouts, shading their eyes and peering across great wooded
valleys at the time-eroded but still formidable peaks of the central
White Mountains.
Pete sat at the table, looking cataclysmically bored, refusing to give
the brochure more than a glance. For her part, Mom had refused to
notice his ostentatious lack of interest. Trisha, as was increasingly
her habit, became brightly enthusiastic. These days she often sounded
to herself like a contestant on a TV game show, all but peeing in her
pants at the thought of winning a set of waterless cookware. And how
did she feel to herself these days? Like glue holding together two
pieces of something that was broken. Weak glue.
Quilla had closed the brochure and turned it over. On the back was a
map. She tapped a snaky blue line. "This is Route 68," she said.
"We'll park the car here, in this parking lot." She tapped a little
blue square. Now she traced one finger along a snaky red line. "This
is the Appalachian Trail between Route 68 and Route 302 in North
Conway, New Hampshire. It's only six miles, and rated Moderate.
Well...this one little section in the middle is marked
Moderate-to-Difficult, but not to the point where we'd need climbing
gear or anything."
She tapped another blue square. Pete was leaning his head on one hand,
looking the other way. The heel of his palm had pulled the left side
of his mouth up into a sneer. He had started getting pimples this year
and a fresh crop gleamed on his forehead. Trisha loved him, but
sometimes -- last night at the kitchen table, as Mom explained their
route, for example -- she hated him, too. She wanted to tell him to
stop being a chicken, because that was what it came down to when you
cut to the chase, as their Dad said. Pete wanted to run back to Malden
with his little teenage tail between his legs because he was a
chicken. He didn't care about Mom, didn't care about Trisha, didn't
even care if being with Dad would be good for him in the long run.
What Pete cared about was not having anyone to eat lunch with on the
gym bleachers. What Pete cared about was that when he walked into
homeroom after the first bell someone always yelled, "Hey CompuWorld!
Howya doon, homo-boy?"
"This is the parking lot where we come out," Mom had said, either not
noticing that Pete wasn't looking at the map or pretending not to. "A
van shows up there around three. It'll take us back around to our car.
Two hours later we're home again, and I'll haul you guys to a movie if
we're not too tired. How does that sound?"
Pete had said nothing last night, but he'd had plenty to say this
morning, starting with the ride up from Sanford. He didn't want to do
this, it was ultimately stupid, plus he'd heard it was going to rain
later on, why did they have to spend a whole Saturday walking in the
woods during the worst time of the year for bugs, what if Trisha got
poison ivy (as if he cared), and on and on and on.
Yatata-yatata-yatata. He even had the gall to say he should be home
studying for his final exams. Pete had never studied on Saturday in
his life, as far as Trisha knew. At first Mom didn't respond, but
finally he began getting under her skin. Given enough time, he always
did. By the time they got to the little dirt parking area on Route 68,
her knuckles were white on the steering wheel and she was speaking in
clipped tones which Trisha recognized all too well. Mom was leaving
Condition Yellow behind and going to Condition Red. It was looking
like a very long six-mile walk through the western Maine woods, all in
all.
At first Trisha had tried to divert them, exclaiming over barns and
grazing horses and picturesque graveyards in her best
oh-wow-it's-waterless-cookware voice, but they ignored her and after
awhile she had simply sat in the back seat with Mona on her lap (her
Dad liked to call Mona Moanie Balogna) and her knapsack beside her,
listening to them argue and wondering if she herself might cry, or
actually go crazy. Could your family fighting all the time drive you
crazy? Maybe when her mother started rubbing her temples with the tips
of her fingers, it wasn't because she had a headache but because she
was trying to keep her brains from undergoing spontaneous combustion
or explosive decompression, or something.
To escape them, Trisha opened the door to her favorite fantasy. She
took off her Red Sox cap and looked at the signature written across
the brim in broad black felt-tip strokes; this helped get her in the
mood. It was Tom Gordon's signature. Pete liked Mo Vaughn, and their
Mom was partial to Nomar Garciaparra, but Tom Gordon was Trisha's and
her Dad's favorite Red Sox player. Tom Gordon was the Red Sox closer;
he came on in the eighth or ninth inning when the game was close but
the Sox were still on top. Her Dad admired Gordon because he never
seemed to lose his nerve -- "Flash has got icewater in his veins,"
Larry McFarland liked to say -- and Trisha always said the same thing,
sometimes adding that she liked Gordon because he had the guts to
throw a curve on three-and-oh (this was something her father had read
to her in a Boston Globe column). Only to Moanie Balogna and (once) to
her girlfriend, Pepsi Robichaud, had she said more. She told Pepsi she
thought Tom Gordon was "pretty good-looking." To Mona she threw
caution entirely to the winds, saying that Number 36 was the
handsomest man alive, and if he ever touched her hand she'd faint. If
he ever kissed her, even on the cheek, she thought she'd probably die.
Now, as her mother and her brother fought in the front seat -- about
the outing, about Sanford Middle School, about their dislocated life
-- Trisha looked at the signed cap her Dad had somehow gotten her in
March, just before the season started, and thought this:
I'm in Sanford Park, just walking across the playground to Pepsi's
house on an ordinary day. And there's this guy standing at the hotdog
wagon. He's wearing blue jeans and a white T-shirt and he's got a gold
chain around his neck -- he's got his back to me but I can see the
chain winking in the sun. Then he turns around and I see...oh I can't
believe it but it's true, it's really him, it's Tom Gordon, why he's
in Sanford is a mystery but it's him, all right, and oh God his eyes,
just like when he's looking in for the sign with men on base, those
eyes, and he smiles and says he's a little lost, he wonders if I know
a town called North Berwick, how to get there, and oh God, oh my God
I'm shaking, I won't be able to say a word, I'll open my mouth and
nothing will come out but a little dry squeak, what Dad calls a
mousefart, only when I try I can speak, I sound almost normal, and I
say...
I say, he says, then I say and then he says: thinking about how they
might talk while the fighting in the front seat of the Caravan drew
steadily farther away. (Sometimes, Trisha had decided, silence was
life's greatest blessing.) She was still looking fixedly at the
signature on the visor of her baseball cap when Mom turned into the
parking area, still far away (Trish is off in her own world was how
her father put it), unaware that there were teeth hidden in the
ordinary texture of things and she would soon know it. She was in
Sanford, not in TR-90. She was in the town park, not at an entry-point
to the Appalachian Trail. She was with Tom Gordon, Number 36, and he
was offering to buy her a hotdog in exhange for directions to North
Berwick.
Oh, bliss.
Copyright й 1999 by Stephen King
---
Please feel free to forward a copy of this message to a friend if you
think they might enjoy it. To become a new SimonSays.com Stephen King
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in the subject line, or to include additional text in the body of the
message.
===обрублено===
-------------
Первый в WWW FUN-клуб Стивена Кинга http://members.xoom.com/wdove/king.htm
200-летию Пушкина посвящается... http://members.xoom.com/aspushkin
-------------
Будьте живы! [Team Radio 7 Fans N84]*[Подпишись! RU.STEPHENKING]
Alexander
... P.$. Загляните на мою web-page http://members.xoom.com/wdove, пожалуйста
--- GoldED
* Origin: FUN-club С.Кинга: members.xoom.com/wdove/king.htm (2:5020/1291.4)
- [15] FidoNet (2:5020/1291.4) -------------------------------- RU.STEPHENKING -
Msg : #72 [67] Rcv
From : Alex Mazov 2:5020/1670.13 Сpд 14 Апp 99 00:32
To : Alexander Golubchikov
Subj : Обложки
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Пpивет, Alexander!
Чет Апp 08 1999 01:43, Alexander Golubchikov отписал к All:
AG> Кинга. Хочется составить наиболее полную каpтину и создать аналог
AG> "Cover Gallery", только исключительно по pусским изданиям.
Интеpесная мысль.
AG> Расскижите, пожалуйста, какие еще книги и какого издания имеются у
AG> Вас в наличии.
1. "Hужные вещи", Hовосибиpск: Фиpма "Тимуp", 1993
2. "Темная башня", 1-3 книги, Хаpьков : Дельта, 1995
3. "Темная половина", Москва: Миp, Таганpог: Книжная лавка, 1994
4. "Кэppи", Mосква: ТОО "С.Зяблов и сын" пpи участии АО "Рахманово-Заpечье"
фиpма "АДА" и ТОО "Оссиpис"
5. "Салимов удел", Москва: "Альтpуист" совместно с ТОО "САШКО", 1993
6. "Монстpы", Минск: Мока-Dalfield, 1993
7. "Меpтвая зона", "Воспламеняющая взглядом", Москва: ВАГРИУС, 1993
Arioh.
---
* Origin: Through the forest of Dol Guldur (2:5020/1670.13)
- [15] FidoNet (2:5020/1291.4) -------------------------------- RU.STEPHENKING -
Msg : #73 [67] Rcv
From : Alex Mazov 2:5020/1670.13 Сpд 14 Апp 99 14:20
To : Alexander Golubchikov
Subj : Обложки
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Пpивет, Alexander!
Чет Апp 08 1999 01:43, Alexander Golubchikov отписал к All:
AG> Hе помню, какие книги выходили в следующих изданиях:
AG> Хpонос
"Темная башня": 1-2 книга, Львов: Хpонос, 1994
PS: В пpедыдущем письме ошибся сказав, что все 3 книги выпустила Дельта.
Arioh.
---
* Origin: Through the forest of Dol Guldur (2:5020/1670.13)
- [15] FidoNet (2:5020/1291.4) -------------------------------- RU.STEPHENKING -
Msg : #1909 [67] Loc
From : Alexander Golubchikov 2:5020/1291.4 Сpд 21 Апp 99 21:41
To : All
Subj : Tom Gordon
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Хелло, All!
Обзоp в CNN от 5 Апpеля
---------------------
King winds real life into latest fiction
April 5, 1999
Web posted at: 1:11 p.m. EDT (1711 GMT)
(CNN) -- Is it even possible to mix the words "strange-but-true" and "Stephen
King" in the same thought?
Sure, King writes some strange stuff, that much we all know. This is the man who
25 years ago unleashed a teen-age girl with telekinetic powers upon a small New
England town; the man who breathed life -- and death -- into Christine, a 1958
red Plymouth Fury; the man who, through short stories, novellas, novels,
screenplays and a mini-series, has defined the horror genre (and the depths of
insomnia) for legions of readers.
So what in the world is a real-life, truly existing person doing as a key
element in Stephen King new book "The Girl Who Loved Tom Gordon" -- not only in
the book, but in the title?
What's going on here?
Here's the answer, in King's words:
"My idea was to write a kind of fairy-tale, 'Hansel and Gretel' without Hansel.
My heroine (Trisha) would be a child of divorce living with her mother and
maintaining a meaningful connection with her father mostly through their mutual
love of baseball and the Boston Red Sox. Lost in the woods, she'd find herself
imagining that her favorite Red Sox player was with her, keeping her company and
guiding her through the terrible situation in which she found herself. Tom
Gordon, #36, would be that player. Gordon is a real pitcher for the Red Sox;
without his consent I wouldn't have wanted to publish the book. He did give it,
for which I am deeply grateful.
"'The Girl Who Loved Tom Gordon' isn't about Tom Gordon or baseball, and not
really about love, either," King says. "It's about survival, and God, and it's
about God's opposite as well. Because Trisha isn't alone in her wanderings.
There is something else in the woods -- the God of the Lost is how she comes to
think of it -- and in time she'll have to face it."
You can face it now, with an excerpt from "The Girl Who Loved Tom Gordon".
-------------
Первый в WWW FUN-клуб Стивена Кинга http://members.xoom.com/wdove/king.htm
200-летию Пушкина посвящается... http://members.xoom.com/aspushkin
-------------
Будьте живы! [Team Radio 7 Fans N84]*[Подпишись! RU.STEPHENKING]
Alexander
... P.$. Загляните на мою web-page http://members.xoom.com/wdove, пожалуйста
--- GoldED
* Origin: FUN-club С.Кинга: members.xoom.com/wdove/king.htm (2:5020/1291.4)
- [15] FidoNet (2:5020/1291.4) -------------------------------- RU.STEPHENKING -
Msg : #1910 [67] Loc
From : Alexander Golubchikov 2:5020/1291.4 Пят 23 Апp 99 23:53
To : All
Subj : Hовости Клуба
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Хелло, All!
Самое значительное собывтие в Клубе - это очеpедная смена дизайна. Интеpесно
общественное мнение о новшестве.
Клуб вступил в паpтнеpскую пpогpамму о3он. Таким обpазом, тебеpь не выходя из
Клуба можно заказать книгу или фильм с доставкой на дом. Пока имеется ссылка на
единственную книгу - новое издание "Стpелка" в мягкой обложке. В ближайшее вpемя
появятся все изданыне АСТ книги. Если в вашей коллекции есть pедкие pусские
издания Кинга, пpошу, сообщите издательство, год, пеpеводчика и, если возможно,
выслать по e-mail обложку книги.
-------------
Первый в WWW FUN-клуб Стивена Кинга http://members.xoom.com/wdove/king.htm
200-летию Пушкина посвящается... http://members.xoom.com/aspushkin
-------------
Будьте живы! [Team Radio 7 Fans N84]*[Подпишись! RU.STEPHENKING]
Alexander
... P.$. Загляните на мою web-page http://members.xoom.com/wdove, пожалуйста
--- GoldED
* Origin: FUN-club С.Кинга: members.xoom.com/wdove/king.htm (2:5020/1291.4)
- [15] FidoNet (2:5020/1291.4) -------------------------------- RU.STEPHENKING -
Msg : #1911 [67] Loc
From : Alexander Golubchikov 2:5020/1291.4 Пят 23 Апp 99 23:53
To : All
Subj : Bag of Bones
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Хелло, All!
Хочется узнать мнение общественности о книге "Мешок с костями". Hа мой взгляд (я
уже как-то заявлял об этом) это один из лучших pоманов СК, где он откpыл свое
втоpое дыхание.
Известно, что Кинг пишет свои книги в уединенном коттедже на окpаине Бангоpа.
Точно такая ситуация описана в pомане. Из-за этого, в частности, понимаешь, что
pоман автобиогpафичен, как никакой иной.
-------------
Первый в WWW FUN-клуб Стивена Кинга http://members.xoom.com/wdove/king.htm
200-летию Пушкина посвящается... http://members.xoom.com/aspushkin
-------------
Будьте живы! [Team Radio 7 Fans N84]*[Подпишись! RU.STEPHENKING]
Alexander
... P.$. Загляните на мою web-page http://members.xoom.com/wdove, пожалуйста
--- GoldED
* Origin: FUN-club С.Кинга: members.xoom.com/wdove/king.htm (2:5020/1291.4)
- [15] FidoNet (2:5020/1291.4) -------------------------------- RU.STEPHENKING -
Msg : #1912 [67] Loc
From : Alexander Golubchikov 2:5020/1291.4 Суб 24 Апp 99 23:10
To : All
Subj : Стих про Темную Башню для фан-клуба Кинга
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
======================================================================
* Форварднуто из NETMAIL Александpом Голубчиковым (2:5020/1291.4).
* Изначально было:
* FROM: Alexey Germogenov (2:5020/1291), Суб Апp 10 1999 13:42.
* TO: Alexander Golubchikov (2:5020/1291.4).
* SUBJ: Стих про Темную Башню для фан-клуба Кинга
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
======================================================================
* Форварднуто из FIDO.NETMAIL Люцифером (2:5020/1291).
* Изначально было:
* FROM: Jean Mashkovtseva (2:5056/33.24), Сpд Апp 07 1999 21:25.
* TO: Alexander Golubchikov (2:5020/1291).
* SUBJ: Стих про Темную Башню для фан-клуба Кинга
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Hi, Alexander!
AG> Кстати, пpисоединяйся к конфеpенции RU.STEPHENKING.
А как же!
Стих, собственно (это не название, это чтобы понятно было)
Разрешение на публикацию прилагается - можно :)
И вот пришел он к Темной Башне
И вострубил в свой звонкий рог
И лишь тогда заплакать смог
Поняв как путь его был страшен
Он пал пред нею на колени
И страшным криком прокричал
Сюзан Дельгадо снова звал
И рухнул на ее ступени
Когда сознание вернулось
Кругом стояла тишина
Весь мир теперь была она
незримо Башня содрогнулась
И перед ним поплыли снова
Все времена война любовь
Предательство и снова кровь
Все повторение земного
И снова жизнь свою он прожил
И снова башней бредил он
И крик сорвав на тихий стон
Опять в ее подножье ожил
Все было так же как и прежде
Она алкала своих жертв
И пел струною каждый нерв
Последней рвущейся надеждой
Он вынул пистолет отцовский
К виску седому приложил
но вдруг не стало больше сил
И он услышал смех бесовский
Здесь жизнь и смерть стояли рядом
Здесь было то к чему он шел
И вот когда достиг нашел
Все обратилось темным Адом
(21 декабря 1998)
(С) МЯВ (Машковцева Яна Васильевна АКА Jean SUGUI)
ЗЫ: большая просьба не придумывать аккорды.
ЗЗЫ: хотелось бы увидеть отзывы.
Bye...
Jean.
--- GoldED/W32 3.00.Beta3 UNREG
* Origin: Убивая убивай (FIDO 2:5056/33.24)
======================================================================
Добрый время суток, Человек. ;-) Если ты еще Alexander...
Это тебю...
Бйе! Люц. \\ArtIn [Team Trackers] [Team Radio 7 Fans]
Don't forget to visit http://w3.to/artin
... Что? Пиво, и без меня?!.
--- GoldED
* Origin: Возьми мое сердце, возьми мою душу... (2:5020/1291)
======================================================================
Хелло, All!
Пpошу пpощения у Яны, что затянул это послание.
-------------
Первый в WWW FUN-клуб Стивена Кинга http://members.xoom.com/wdove/king.htm
200-летию Пушкина посвящается... http://members.xoom.com/aspushkin
-------------
Будьте живы! [Team Radio 7 Fans N84]*[Подпишись! RU.STEPHENKING]
Alexander
... P.$. Загляните на мою web-page http://members.xoom.com/wdove, пожалуйста
--- GoldED
* Origin: FUN-club С.Кинга: members.xoom.com/wdove/king.htm (2:5020/1291.4)
- [15] FidoNet (2:5020/1291.4) -------------------------------- RU.STEPHENKING -
Msg : #1913 [67] Loc
From : Alexander Golubchikov 2:5020/1291.4 Вcк 25 Апp 99 18:28
To : All
Subj : Graveyard Shift
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Хелло, All!
Hа лицензионном видеоpынке появился фильм "Смена Кладбища" (Hочная Смена) и
"Способный ученик". Об ученике я уже pассказывал. Разве что можно позавидовать
тем, кто успел пpиобpести нелицензиpованную копию, не опошленную дублиpованным
пеpеводом.
Что же касается "Hочной смены", то я могу ее поpекомендовать всякому. Фильм
частично омеpзителен, но больше он пpопитан чеpным юмоpом.
(Вы не любите Чеpного юмоpа? Hу, вы - pасист!)
Сам Стивен Кинг, посмотpев каpтину, заявил, что никогда не планиpовал постpоить
сюжет таким обpазом.
-------------
Первый в WWW FUN-клуб Стивена Кинга http://members.xoom.com/wdove/king.htm
200-летию Пушкина посвящается... http://members.xoom.com/aspushkin
-------------
Будьте живы! [Team Radio 7 Fans N84]*[Подпишись! RU.STEPHENKING]
Alexander
... P.$. Загляните на мою web-page http://members.xoom.com/wdove, пожалуйста
--- GoldED
* Origin: FUN-club С.Кинга: members.xoom.com/wdove/king.htm (2:5020/1291.4)
- [15] FidoNet (2:5020/1291.4) -------------------------------- RU.STEPHENKING -
Msg : #2773 [67] Rcv
From : Mila Velichko 2:5058/42.12 Сpд 21 Апp 99 00:45
To : Alexander Golubchikov
Subj : Рейтинг
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Alexander! Alexander! How are you ?
AG> лучшая книга (pоман, повесть)
"Кладбище домашних животных"(99), "Оно"(75),"Роза Марена"(80),
"Керри"(90).
AG> худшая книга (pоман, повесть)
Весь цикл "Бесплодные земли"(25), "Томминокеры"(30)
AG> лучший pассказ
"Мартовсий выползень"(100), "Бабуля"(100)
AG> худший pассказ
"Кадиллак Доллана"(25)
* Origin: Совершенно секретно! Перед прочтением сжечь! (2:5058/42.12)
- [15] FidoNet (2:5020/1291.4) -------------------------------- RU.STEPHENKING -
Msg : #3148 [67] +3360
From : Kirill Temnenkov 2:5020/1252.17 Сpд 21 Апp 99 05:33
To : All
Subj : Вопpосец
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Привет, All!
Вот читаю "Пpотивостояние" (астовское издание). Пpедисловие Кинга -
"Тем же читателям, котоpых действительно интеpесует твоpческий пpоцесс, я
советую пpочесть заключительную главу книги "Пляска смеpти", сбивчивый, но
добpотный обзоp литеpатуpы жанpа ужасов, опубликованный мной в 1981 году...
Я пpосто сообщаю, где читатели могут найти мой pассказ о писательской
лабоpатоpии с пpинципиально иной точкой зpения на твоpческий пpоцесс..."
Где бы pаздобыть это - никто не подскажет???
Kirill
--- GoldED/W32 3.0.1
* Origin: No origin (2:5020/1252.17)
- [15] FidoNet (2:5020/1291.4) -------------------------------- RU.STEPHENKING -
Msg : #3360 [67] -3148 Loc
From : Alexander Golubchikov 2:5020/1291.4 Пон 26 Апp 99 01:34
To : Kirill Temnenkov
Subj : Вопpосец
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Хелло, Kirill!
Сpд Апp 21 1999 05:33, Kirill Temnenkov написал для All:
> Вот читаю "Пpотивостояние" (астовское издание). Пpедисловие Кинга -
> "Тем же читателям, котоpых действительно интеpесует твоpческий пpоцесс, я
> советую пpочесть заключительную главу книги "Пляска смеpти", сбивчивый, но
> добpотный обзоp литеpатуpы жанpа ужасов, опубликованный мной в 1981 году...
> Я пpосто сообщаю, где читатели могут найти мой pассказ о
> писательской лабоpатоpии с пpинципиально иной точкой зpения на твоpческий
> пpоцесс..." Где бы pаздобыть это - никто не подскажет??? Kirill
Стивен Кинг "Пляска смеpти" (Danse Macabre) (избpанное ;))
CHAPTER X (1-11)
The Last Waltz - Horror and Morality, Horror and Magic
'Yes, but how do you justify earning a living by feeding off people's worst
fears?'
The police have been summoned by a neighbor who has heard a commotion of some
kind. What they find is a bloodbath - and something worse. The young man admits,
quite calmly, that he has murdered his grandmother with a pipe, and then cut her
throat.
1 needed her blood,' the young man tells the police calmly. I'm a vampire.
Without her blood, I would have died. '
In his room the police find magazine articles about vampires, vampire comic
books, stories, novels.
We'd been having a pretty nice lunch, this reporter from the Washington Post and
I, something I was grateful for. I'd just started a twelve-city tour for my
novel The Dead Zone the day before in New York with a kick-offparty thrown by
the Viking Press at Tavern on the Green, a huge, rococo eating and drinking
establishment on the edge of Central Park. I had tried to take it easy at the
party, but I still managed to put away about eight beers there, and another
six or so at a smaller, more relaxed party with some friends from Maine later
on. Nevertheless I was up the next morning at quarter of five to make the six
o'clock Eastern shuttle to Washington so I could, in turn, make a seven o'clock
TV appearance to plug my novel. Welcome to touring, friends and neighbors.
I made the shuttle handily, telling invisible beads as it ••ook off in a pouring
rainstorm (sitting next to an overweight businessman who read the Wall Street
Journal through the entire flight and ate Turns one after another, deliberately
and reflectively, as if enjoying them) and made A.M. Washington with at least
ten minutes to spare. The television lights intensified the mild hangover I'd
gotten up with, and I was grateful for what had been a fairly laid-back lunch
with the Post reporter, whose questions had been interesting and relatively
unthreatening. Then this spitball about feeding off people's fears comes out of
nowhere. The reporter, a young, lanky guy, was looking at me over his sandwich,
eyes bright.
It's 1960, and a lonely Ohio youth has left the movie theater where he has just
seen Psycho for the fifth time. This young man goes home and stabs his
grandmother to death. The pathologist would later count overforty separate stab
wounds. Why? the police asked. Voices, the young man replies. Voices told me to
do it.
'Look,' I said, putting my own sandwich down. 'You take any big-city
psychiatrist. He's got a marvelous home in the suburbs, a hundred thousand
dollars' worth of house at the very least. He drives a Mercedes-Benz, either
tobacco-brown or silver-gray. His wife has got a Country Squire wagon. His kids
go to private schools during the academic year and to good summer camps in New
England or in the northwest every summer. Sonny has got Harvard
if he can make the grades - money is certainly no problem - and his daughter can
go to some reet and compleet girls' school where the sorority motto is "We don't
conjugate, we decline." And how is he making the money that produces all of
these wonders? He is listening to women weep over their frigidity, he is
listening to men with suicidal impulses, he is dealing with paranoia both high
and low, he's maybe striking on the occasional true schizophrenia. He's dealing
with people who most of all are scared shitless that their lives have somehow
gotten out of control and that things are falling apart . . . and if that isn't
earning a living by feeding off people's fears, I don't know what is.'
I picked up my sandwich again and bit into it, convinced that if I hadn't hit
the spitter he had thrown me, I'd at least managed to foul it back and stay
alive at the plate. When I looked up from my Reuben, the little half-smile on
the reporter's face was gone. 1,' he said softly, 'happen to be in analysis.'
January of 1980. The woman and her mother arc having a worried conference over
the woman's three-month-old baby. The baby won't stop crying. It always cries.
They agree on the source ofthe problem: the baby has been possessed by a demon,
like that little girl in The Exorcist. They pour gasoline on the baby as it lies
crying in its crib and then light the child onfre to drive the demon out. Tht
baby lingers in a burn ward for three days. Then it dies.
The reporter's article was clean and fair for all of that; he was unkind about
my physical appearance and I suppose he had some cause - I was in the slobbiest
shape I've been in for ten years during that late summer of 1979 - but other
than that, I felt I got a pretty square shake. But even in the piece he wrote,
you can feel the place where his path and mine diverged; there is that quiet
snap which is the sound of ideas suddenly going off in two completely different
directions.
'You get the impression that King likes this sort of sparring,' he wrote.
Boston, iQTJ. A woman is killed by a young man who uses a number of kitchen
implements to effect the murder. Police speculate that he might have gotten the
idea from a movie - Brian De Palma 's Carrie,from the novel by Stephen King. In
theftlm version, Carrie kills her mother by causing ail sorts of kitchen
implements -including a corkscrew and a potato-peeler - to fly across the room
and literally nail the woman to the wait.
Prime-time television survived the call by pressure groups to end the excessive,
graphic depletion of violence on the tube for over ten years and House and
Senate subcommittees almost without number which were convened to discuss the
subject. Private eyes went on shooting bad guys and getting clopped over the
head after the assassinations of John F. Kennedy, Robert F. Kennedy, Martin
Luther King; you could order up a dose of carnage at the twist of the channel
selector on any night of the week, including Sundays. The undeclared war in
Vietnam was heating up quite nicely, thank you; body counts were spiralling into
the stratosphere. Child psychologists testified that after watching two hours of
violent prime-time TV, groups of children in the test group showed a marked
increase in play aggressiveness - beating the toy truck against the floor rather
than rolling it back and forth, for instance.
Los Angeles, ig6g. Janis Joplin, who will later die of a drug overdose, is
belting out 'Ball and Chain '. Jim Mornson, who will die of a heart attack in a
bathtub, is chanting 'Kill, kill, kill, kill' at the end of a song titled 'The
End' - Francis Ford Coppola will use the song ten years later to fade in the
prologue of Apocalypse Now. Newsweek publishes a picture of a shyly-smiling U.S.
soldier holding up a severed human ear. And in a Los Angeles suburb, a young boy
puts out his brother's eyes with his fingers. He was, he explained, only trying
to imitate the old Three Stooges two-jingercd boinnng! When they do it on TV,
the weeping child explains, no one gets hurt.
Television's make-believe violence rolled on nevertheless, through the sixties,
past Charles Whitman up on the Texas Tower ('There was a rumor/about a tumor,'
Kinky Friedman and the Texas Jewboys sang gleefully, 'nestled in the base of his
braiyyyyn . . .'), and what finally killed it and ushered in the Sitcom
Seventies was a seemingly unimportant event when compared to the deaths of a
President, a Senator, a great civil rights leader. Television execs were finally
forced to rethink their position because a young girl ran out of gas in Roxbury.
She had a gas can in her trunk, unfortunately. She got it filled at a gas
station, and while walking back to her beached car, she was set upon by a gang
of black youths who took her gas can away from her, doused her with the gas, and
then - like the woman and her mother trying to drive the demon out of the baby -
lit her on fire. Days later she died. The youths were caught, and someone
finally asked them the sixty-four-dollar question: Where did you get such a
horrible idea?
From TV, came the response. From The ABC Movie of the Week.
Near the end of the sixties, Ed McBain (in reality novelist Evan Hunter) wrote
one of the finest 8^th Precinct
novels of the policeman's lot. It was called Fu^, and dealt in part with a gang
of teenagers who went around dousing winos with gasoline and lighting them up.
The film version, which is described by Steven Scheuer in his invaluable
tubeside companion Movies on TV as & 'scatterbrained comedy', starred Burt
Reynolds and Raquel Welch. The biggest yocks in the movie come when several cops
on stakeout dress up as nuns and then chase after a suspect, holding their
habits up to reveal big, clunky workshoes. Pretty funny, right, gang? A real
gut-buster.
McBain's novel isn't a gut-buster. It's grim and almost beautiful. Certainly he
has never come any closer to defining exactly what the policeman's lot may be
than near the end of the novel when Steve Carella, masquerading as a wino, is
lit on fire himself. The producers of the movie apparently saw something between
M*A*S*H and Naked City in this, and the misbegotten result is in most respects
as forgettable as a Tracy Stallard fastball . ... except that one of Stallard's
fastballs went out of Fenway Park to become Roger Maris's record-breaking
sixty-first home run. And Fu% a poorly executed comedy-drama, effectively ended
TV violence.
The message? You are responsible. And network TV accepted the message.
12
'How do you justify the violence of the shower scene in Psycho?' A critic once
asked Sir Alfred Hitchcock.
'How do you justify the opening scene in Hiroshima, Mon Amour?' Hitchcock is
reputed to have replied. In that opening scene, which was certainly scandalous
by American standards in 1959, we see Emmanuele Riva and Eliji Okada in a naked
embrace.
'The opening scene was necessary to the integrity of the film,' the critic
answered. 'So was the shower scene in Psycho,' Hitchcock said.
13
What sort of burden does the writer - particularly the writer of horror fiction
- have to bear in all of this? Certainly there has never been a writer in the
field (with the possible exception of Shirley Jackson) who has not been regarded
with more than a degree of critical caution. The morality of horror fiction has
been called into question for a hundred years. One of the blood-spattered
forerunners of Dratula, Varney the Vampyre, was referred to as a 'penny
dreadful'. Later on, inflation turned the penny dreadfuls into dime dreadfuls.
In the 19305 there were cries that pulps such as Weird Tales and Spicy Stories
(which regularly served up lip-smacking S & M covers on which lovely ladies were
tied down, always in their 'small clothes', and menaced by some beastly - but
identifiably male -creature of the night) were ruining the morals of the youth
of America. Similarly in the fifties, the comics industry choked offsuch outlaw
growths as E.C.'s Tales from the Crypt and instituted a Comics Code when it
became clear that Congress intended to clean their house for them if they would
not clean it for themselves. There would be no more tales of dismemberment,
corpses come back from the dead, and premature burials - or at least not for the
next ten years. The return was signalled by the unpretentious birth of Creepy, a
Warren Group magazine which was a complete throwback to the salad days of Bill
Gaines's E.G. horror comics. Uncle Creepy, and his buddy Cousin Eerie, who came
along two years or so later, were really interchangeable with the Old Witch and
the Crypt-Keeper. Even some of the old artists were back -Joe Orlando, who made
his debut as an E.G. artist, was also represented in the premiere issue of
Creepy, if memory serves.
I would suggest that there has always been a great tendency, particularly when
it comes to such popular forms as movies, television, and mainstream fiction, to
kill the messenger for the message. I do not now and never have doubted that the
youths who burned the lady in Roxbury got the idea from the telecast of Fuzz one
Sunday night on ABC; if it had not been shown, stupidity and lack of imagination
might well have reduced them to murdering her in some more mundane way. The same
holds true with many of the other cases mentioned here.
The danse macabre is a waltz with death. This is a truth we cannot afford to shy
away from. Like the rides in the amusement park which mimic violent death, the
tale of horror is a chance to examine what's going on behind doors which we
usually keep double-locked. Yet the human imagination is not content with locked
doors. Somewhere there is another dancing partner, the imagination whispers in
the night - a partner in a rotting ball gown, a partner with empty eyesockets,
green mold growing on her elbow-length gloves, maggots squirming in the thin
remains of her hair. To hold such a creature in our arms? Who, you ask me, would
be so mad? Well . . . ?
'You will not want to open this door,' Bluebeard tells his wife in that most
horrible of all horror stories, 'because your husband has forbidden it.' But
this, of course, only makes her all the more curious . . . and at last, her
curiosity is satisfied.
'You may go anywhere you wish in the castle,' Count Dracula tells Jonathan
Harker, 'except where the doors arc locked, where of course you will not wish to
go.' But Harker goes soon enough.
And so do we all. Perhaps we go to the forbidden door or window willingly
because we understand that a time comes when we must go whether we want to or
not. . . and not just to look, but to be pushed through. Forever.
Baltimore, 1980. The woman is reading a book and waiting for her bus to arrive.
The demobbed soldier who approaches her is a Vietnam vet, a sometime dope
addict. He has a history of mental problems which seem to date from his period
of service. The woman has noticed him on the bus before, sometimes weaving,
sometimes staggering, sometimes calling loudly and wildly to people who are ml
there. 'That's right. Captain!' she has heard him say. 'That's right, that's
right!'
He attacks the woman as she waits for her bus; later, the police will theorize
he was after drug money. No matter. He will bejust as dead, no matter what he
was after. The neighborhood is a tough one. The woman has a knife secreted upon
her person. In the struggle, she uses it. When the bus comes, the black
ex-soldier lits dying in the gutter.
What were you reading? a reporter asks her later; she shows him The Stand, by
Stephen King.
15
With its disguise of semantics carefully removed and laid aside, what those who
criticize the talc of horror (or who simply feel uneasy about it and their
liking for it) seem to be saying is this: you are selling death and
disfigurement and monstrosity; you are trading upon hate and violence, morbidity
and loathing; you are just another representative of those forces of chaos which
so endanger the world today. You are, in short, immoral. A critic asked George
Romero, following the release of Dawn of the Dead, if he felt such a movie, with
its scenes of gore, cannibalism, and gaudy pop violence, was a sign of a healthy
society. Romero's reply, worthy of the Hitchcock anecdote related earlier, was
to ask the critic if he felt the DC-io engine-mount assembly was a healthy thing
for society. His response was dismissed as a quibble ('You get the impression
Romero likes this kind of sparring,' I can almost hear the critic thinking).
Well, let's see if the quibble really is a quibble - and let's go one layer
deeper than we have yet gone. The hour has grown late, the last waltz is
playing, and if we don't say certain things now, I suppose we never will.
I've tried to suggest throughout this book that the horror story, beneath its
fangs and fright wig, is really as conservative as an Illinois Republican in a
three-piece pinstriped suit; that its main purpose is to reaffirm the
virtues of the norm by showing us what awful things happen to people who venture
into taboo lands. Within the framework of most horror tales we find a moral code
so strong it would make a Puritan smile. In the old E.G. comics, adulterers
inevitably came to bad ends and murderers suffered fates that would make the
rack and the boot look like kiddy rides at the carnival.* Modern horror stories
are not much different from the morality plays of the fifteenth, sixteenth, and
seventeenth centuries, when we get right down to it. The horror story most
generally not only stands foursquare for the Ten Commandments, it blows them up
to tabloid size. We have the comforting knowledge when the lights go down in the
theater or when we open the book that the evildoers will almost certainly be
punished, and measure will be returned for measure.
Further, I've used one pompously academic metaphor, suggesting that the horror
tale generally details the outbreak of some Dionysian madness in an Apollonian
existence, and that the horror will continue until the Dionysian forces have
been repelled and the Apollonian norm restored again. Excluding a powerful if
puzzling prologue set in Iraq, William Friedkin's film The Exonist actually
begins in Georgetown, an Apollonian suburb if ever there was one. In the first
scene, Ellen Burstyn is awakened by a crashing, roaring sound in the attic - it
sounds like maybe someone let a lion loose up there. It is the first crack in
the Apollonian world; soon everything else will pour through in a nightmare
torrent. But this disturbing crack between our normal world and a chaos where
demons are allowed to prey on innocent children is
* My all-time favorite (he said affectionately): A crazed husband stuffs the
hose of an air compressor down his skinny wife's throat and blows her up like a
balloon until she bursts. 'Fal at last,' he tells her happily just moments
before the pop. But later on the husband, who is roughly the size ofJackie
Gleason, trips a booby-trap she has set for him and is squashed to a shadow when
a huge safe falls on him. This ingenious reworking of the old story of Jack
Sprat and his wife is not only gruesomely funny; it offers us a delicious
example of the Old Testament eye-for-an-eye theory. Or, as the Spanish say,
revenge is a dish best eaten cold.
Finally closed again at the end of the film. When Burstyn leads the pallid but
obviously okay Linda Blair to the car in the film's final scene, we understand
that the nightmare is over. Steady state has been restored. We have watched for
the mutant and repulsed it. Equilibrium never felt so good.
Those are some of the things we've talked about in this book . . . but suppose
all of that is only a sham and a false front? I don't say that it is, but
perhaps (since this is the last dance) we ought to discuss the possibility, at
least.
In our discussion of archetypes, we've had occasion to discuss the Werewolf,
that fellow who is sometimes hairy and who is sometimes deceptively smooth.
Suppose there was a double werewolf? Suppose that the creator of the horror
story was, under his/her fright wig and plastic fangs, a Republican in a
three-button suit, as we have said . . . ah, but suppose below that there is a
real monster, with real fangs and a squirming Medusa-tangle of snakes for hair?
Suppose it's all a self-serving lie and that when the creator of horror is
finally stripped all the way to his or her core of being we find not an agent of
the norm but a friend - a capering, gleeful, red-eyed agent of chaos? What about
that possibility, friends and neighbors?
16
About five years ago I finished The Shining, took a month off, and then set
about writing a new novel, the working title of which was The House on Value
Street. It was going to be a roman a clef about the kidnapping of Patty Hearst,
her brainwashing (or her sociopolitical awakening, depending on your point of
view, I guess), her participation in the bank robbery, the shootout at the SLA
hideout in Los Angeles - in my book, the hideout was on Value Street, natch -
the fugitive run across the country, the whole ball of wax. It seemed to me to
be a highly potent subject, and while I was aware that lots of nonfiction books
were sure to be written on the subject, it seemed to me that only a novel might
really succeed in explaining all the contra-
dictions. The novelist is, after all, God's liar, and if he does his job well,
keeps his head and his courage, he can sometimes find the truth that lives at
the center of the lie.
Well, I never wrote that book. I gathered my research materials, such as they
were, to hand (Patty was still at large then, which was another attraction the
idea had for me; I could make up my own ending), and then I attacked the novel.
I attacked it from one side and nothing happened. I tried it from another side
and felt it was going pretty well until I discovered all my characters sounded
as if they had just stepped whole and sweaty from the dance marathon in Horace
McCoy's They Shoot Horses, Don't They? I tried it in medias res. I tried to
imagine it as a stage play, a trick that sometimes works for me when I'm badly
stuck. It didn't work this time.
In his marvelous novel The Hair of Harold Roux, Thomas Williams tells us that
writing a long work of fiction is like gathering characters together on a great
black plain. They stand around the small fire of the writer's invention, warming
their hands at the blaze, hoping the fire will grow into a blaze which will
provide light as well as heat. But often it goes out, all light is extinguished,
and the characters are smothered in black. It's a lovely metaphor for the
fiction-making process, but it's not mine . . . maybe it's too gentle to be
mine. I've always seen the novel as a large black castle to be attacked, a
bastion to be taken by force or by trick. The thing about this castle is, it
appears to be open. It doesn't look buttoned up for siege at all. The drawbridge
is down. The gates are open. There are no bowmen on the turrets. Trouble is,
there's really only one safe way in; every other attempt at entry results in
sudden annihilation from some hidden source.
With my Patty Hearst book, I never found the right way in . . . and during that
entire six-week period, something else was nagging very quietly at the back of
my mind. It was a news story I had read about an accidental CBW spill in Utah.
All the bad nasty bugs got out of their cannister and killed a bunch of sheep.
But, the news article stated, if the wind had been blowing the other way, the
good people of Salt Lake City might have gotten a very nasty surprise. This
article called up memories of a novel called Earth Abides, by George R. Stewart.
In Stewart's book, a plague wipes out most of mankind, and the protagonist, who
has been made immune by virtue of a well-timed snakebite, witnesses the
ecological changes which the passing of man causes. The first half of Stewart's
long book is riveting; the second half is more of an uphill push - too much
ecology, not enough story.
We were living in Boulder, Colorado, at the time, and I used to listen to the
Bible-thumping station which broadcast out of Arvada quite regularly. One day I
heard & preacher dilating upon the text 'Once in every generation the plague
will fall among them.' I liked the sound of the phrase - which sounds like a
Biblical quotation but is not - so well that I wrote it down and tacked it over
my typewriter: Once in every generation the plague will fall among them.
This phrase and the story about the CBW spill in Utah and my memories of
Stewart's fine book all became entwined in my thoughts about Patty Hearst and
the SLA, and one day while sitting at my typewriter, my eyes traveling back and
forth between that creepy homily on the wall to the maddeningly blank sheet of
paper in the machine, I wrote -just to write something: The world cones to an
end but tverybody in the SLA is somehow immune. Snake bit them. I looked at that
for a while and then typed: No more gas shortages. That was sort of cheerful, in
a horrible sort of way. No more people, no more gas lines. Below No more gas
shortages I wrote in rapid order: No more cold war. No more pollution. No more
alligator handbags. No more crime. A season of rest. I liked that last; it
sounded like something that should be written down. I underlined it. I sat there
for another fifteen minutes or so, listening to the Eagles on my little cassette
player, and then I wrote: Donald DeFree^e is a dark man. I did not mean that
DeFreeze was black; it had suddenly occurred to me that, in the photos taken
during the bank robbery in which Patty Hearst participated, you could barely see
DeFreeze's face. He was wearing a big badass hat, and what he looked like was
mostly guesswork. I wrote A dark man with no face and then glanced up and saw
that grisly little motto again: Once in every generation the plague will fall
among them. And that was that. I spent the next two years writing an apparently
endless book called The Stand. It got to the point where I began describing it
to friends as my own little Vietnam, because I kept telling myself that in
another hundred pages or so I would begin to see light at the end of the tunnel.
The finished manuscript was over twelve hundred pages long and weighed twelve
pounds, the same weight as the sort of bowling ball I favor. I carried it thirty
blocks from the U.N. Plaza Hotel to my editor's apartment one warm night in
July. My wife had wrapped the entire block of pages in Saran Wrap for some
reason known only to her, and after I'd switched it from one arm to the other
for the third or fourth time, I had a sudden premonition: I was going to die,
right there on Third Avenue. The Rescue Unit would find me sprawled in the
gutter, dead of a heart attack, my monster manuscript, triumphantly encased in
Saran Wrap, resting by my outstretched hands, the victor.
There were times when I actively hated The Stand, but there was never a time
when I did not feel compelled to go on with it. Even when things were going bad
with my guys in Boulder, there was a crazy, joyful feeling about the book. I
couldn't wait to sit down in front of the typewriter every morning and slip back
into that world where Randy Flagg could sometimes become a crow, sometimes a
wolf, and where the big battle was not for gasoline allocations but for human
souls. There was a feeling - I must admit it - that I was doing a fast, happy
tapdance on the grave of the whole world. Its writing came during a troubled
period for the world in general and America in particular; we were suffering
from our first gas pains in history, we had just witnessed the sorry end of the
Nixon administration and the first presidential resignation in history, we had
been resoundingly defeated in Southeast Asia, and we were grappling with a host
of domestic problems, from the troubling question of abortion-on-demand to an
inflation
rate that was beginning to spiral upward in a positively scary way.
Me? I was suffering from a really good case of career jet lag. Four years
before, I had been running sheets in an industrial laundry for $1.60 an hour and
writing Carrie in the furnace-room of a trailer. My daughter, who was then
almost a year old, was dressed mostly in scrounged clothes. The year before
that, I had married my wife Tabitha in a borrowed suit that was too big for me.
I left the laundry when a teaching position opened up at a nearby school,
Hampden Academy, and my wife Tabby and I were dismayed to learn that my
first-year salary of $6400 was not going to take us much further than my laundry
salary - and pretty soon I'd secured my laundry job back for the following
summer.
Then Carrie sold to Doubleday, and Doubleday sold the reprint rights for a
staggering sum of money which was, in those days, nearly a record-breaker. Life
began to move at Concorde speed. Carrie was bought for films; 'Salem's Lot was
bought for a huge sum of money and then also bought for films; The Shining
likewise. Suddenly all of my friends thought I was rich. That was bad enough,
scary enough; what was worse was the fact that maybe I was. People began to talk
to me about investments, about tax shelters, about moving to California. These
were changes enough to try and cope with, but on top of them, the America I had
grown up in seemed to be crumbling beneath m\ feet . . . it began to seem like
an elaborate castle of sand unfortunately built well below the high-tide line.
The first wave to touch the castle (or the first one that I perceived) was that
long-ago announcement that the Russians had beaten us into space . . . but now
the tide was coming in for fair.
And so here, I think, is the face of the double werewolf, revealed at last. On
the surface, The Stand pretty much conforms to those conventions we have already
discussed: an Apollonian society is disrupted by a Dionysian force (in this case
a deadly strain of superflu that kills almost everybody). Further, the survivors
of this plague discover themselves in two camps: one, located in Boulder,
Colorado, mimics the Apollonian society just destroyed (with a few significant
changes); the other, located in Las Vegas, Nevada, is violently Dionysian.
The first Dionysian incursion in The Exorcist comes when Chris MacNeil (Ellen
Burstyn) hears that lionlike roar in the attic. In The Stand, Dionysus announces
himself with the crash of an old Chevy into the pumps ol'an out-oF-the-way gas
station in Texas. In The Exorcist, the Apollonian steady state is restored when
we see a pallid Regan MacNeil being led to her mother's Mercedes-Benz; in The
Stand I believe that this moment cornea when the book's two main characters, Stu
Redman and Frannie Goldsmith, look through a plate-glass window in the Boulder
hospital at Frannie's obviously normal baby. As with The Exorcist, the return of
equilibrium never felt so good.
But below all of this, hidden by the moral conventions of the horror tale (but
perhaps not all that hidden), the face of the real Werewolf can be dimly seen.
Much of the compulsion I felt while writing The Stand obviously came from
envisioning an entire entrenched societal process destroyed at a stroke. I felt
a bit like Alexander, lifting his sword over the Gordian knot and growling,
'Fuck untying it; I've got a better way.' And I felt a bit the way Johnny Rotten
sounds at the beginning of that classic and electrifying Sex Pistols song,
'Anarchy in the U.K.' He utters a low, throaty chuckle that might have come from
Randall Flagg's own throat and then intones, 'Right . . . NOW" we hear that
voice, and our reaction is one of intense relief. The worst is now known; we are
in the hands of an authentic madman.
In this frame of mind, the destruction of THE WORLD AS WE KNOW IT became an
actual relief. No more Ronald McDonald! No more Gong Show or Soap on TV - just
soothing snow! No more terrorists! No more bullshit! Only the Gordian knot
unwinding there in the dust. I am suggesting that below the writer of the moral
horror talc (whose feet, like those ofHcnryJekyll, are 'always treading the
upward path') there lies another creature altogether.
He lives, let us say, down there on Jack Finney's third level, and he is a
capering nihilist who, to extend the Jekyll-Hyde metaphor, is not content to
tread over the tender bones of one screaming little girl but in this case feels
it necessary to do the funky chicken over the whole world. Yes, folks, in The
Stand I got a chance to scrub the whole human race, and it was fun! So where is
morality now? Well, I'll give you my idea. I think it lies where it has always
lain: in the hearts and minds of men and women of good will. In the case of the
writer, this may mean beginning with a nihilistic premise and gradually
relearning old lessons of human values and human conduct. In the case of The
Stand, this meant beginning with the glum premise that the human race carries a
kind of germ with it - I began by seeing this germ symbolically visualized in
the SLA, and ended by seeing it visualized in the superflu germ - which grows
more and more virulent as technology grows in power. The superflu is unleashed
by a single technological misstep (not such a far-fetched presumption, either,
when you consider what happened at Three Mile Island last year or the fact that
Loring AFB in my own state scrambled bombers and fighters ready to head over the
pole toward Russia as the result of an amusing little computer fouiup which
suggested that the Russians had launched their missiles and the Big Hot One was
on). By simple agreement with myself to allow a few survivors - no survivors, no
story, am I right? - I was able to envision a world in which all the nuclear
stockpiles would simply rust away and some kind of normal moral, political, and
ecological balance would return to the mad universe we call home.
But I don't think anyone knows what they really thin~k - or perhaps even what
they really know - until it's written down, and I came to realize that the
survivors would be very likely to first take up all the old quarrels and then
all the old weapons. Worse, all those deadly toys would be available to them,
and things might well become a sprint to sec which group of loonies could figure
out how to launch them first. My own lesson in writing The Stand was that
cutting the Gordian Knot simply destroys the riddle instead of solving it, and
the book's last line is an admission that the riddle still remains.
The book also tries to celebrate brighter aspects of our lives: simple human
courage, friendship, and love in a world which so often seems mostly loveless.
In spite of its apocalyptic theme, The Stand is mostly a hopeful book that
echoes Albert Camus's remark that 'happiness, too, is inevitable'.
More prosaically, my mother used to tell my brother David and I to 'hope for the
best and expect the worst', and that expresses the book I remember writing as
well as anything.
So, in short, we hope for a fourth level (a triple Werewolf?), one that will
bring us full circle again to the horror writer not just as writer but as human
being, mortal man or woman, just another passenger in the boat, another pilgrim
on the way to whatever there is. And we hope that if he sees another pilgrim
fall down that he will write about it - but not before he or she has helped the
fallen one on his or her feet, brushed off his or her clothes, and seen if he or
she is all right, and able to go on. If such behavior is to be, it cannot be as
a result of an intellectual moral stance; it is because there is such a thing as
love, merely a practical fact, a practical force in human affairs.
Morality is, after all, a codification of those things which the heart
understands to be true and those things which the heart understands to be the
demands of a life lived among others . . . civilization, in a word. And if we
remove the label 'horror story' or 'fantasy genre' or whatever, and replace it
with literature' or more simply still, 'fiction', we may realize more easily
that no such blanket accusations of immorality can be made. If we say that
morality proceeds simply from a good heart - which has little to do with
ridiculous posturings and happily-ever-afterings -and immorality proceeds from a
lack of care, from shoddy observation, and from the prostitution of drama or
melodrama for some sort of gain, monetary or otherwise, then
we may realize that we have arrived at a critical stance which is both workable
and humane. Fiction is the truth inside the lie, and in the tale of horror as in
any other tale, the same rule applies now as when Aristophanes told his horror
tale of the frogs: morality is telling the truth as your heart knows it. When
asked if he was not ashamed of the rawness and sordidness of his
turn-of-the-century novel McTcagut, Frank Norris replied: 'Why should I be? I
did not lie. I did not truckle. I told them the truth.'
Seen in that light, I think the horror tale may more often be adjudged innocent
than guilty.
17
My, look at this . . . I do believe the sun is coming up. We have danced the
night away, like lovers in some old MGM musical. But now the band has packed
their melodies back inside their cases and has quitted the stage. The dancers
have left, all but you and I, and I suppose we must go, as well. I cannot tell
you how much I've enjoyed the evening, and if you sometimes found me a clumsy
partner (or if I occasionally stepped on your toes), I do apologize. I feel as I
suppose all lovers feel when the dance has finally ended, tired . . . but still
gay.
As I walk you to the door, may I tell you one more thing? We'll stand here in
the vestibule as they unroll the rug again and douse the lights. Let me help you
with your coat; I'll not keep you long.
Questions of morality in the pursuit of horror may be bcgg'ig the actual
question. The Russians have a phrase, 'the scream of the woodcock'. The phrase
is derisory because the woodcock is nature's ventriloquist, and if you fire your
shotgun at the place where the sound came from, you'll go hungry. Shoot the
woodcock, not the scream, the Russians say.
So let's sec if we can't find a woodcock -just one - in all these screaming
thickets. It might just be hiding in this item, truth rather than fiction, from
The Book of Lists, the Wallace/Wallechinsky clan's attic full of fascinating
rick-
rack and useful junk. As you get ready to leave, think about this . . . or brood
upon it:
THE MYSTERY OF LITTLE MISS NOBODY On July 6, 1944' ^c Ringling Brothers and
Barnum & Bailey circus was giving a performance in Hartford, Connecticut, before
7,000 paid customers. A fire broke out; 168 persons died in the blaze and ^87
were injured. One of the dead, a small girl thought to be six years old, was
unidentified. Since no one came to claim her, and since her face was unmarred, a
photograph was taken of her and distributed locally and then throughout the U.S.
Days passed, weeks and months passed, but no relative, no playmate, no one in
the nation came forward to identify her. She remains unknown to this day.
My idea of growing up is that the process consists mainly of developing a good
case of mental tunnel vision and a gradual ossification of the imaginative
faculty (what about Little Miss Nobody, you ask me - well, hang on; we'll get
there). Children see everything, consider everything; the typical expression of
the baby which is full, dry, and awake is a wide-eyed goggle at everything.
Hello, pleased to meet you, freaked to be here. A child has not yet developed
the obsessional behavior patterns which we approvingly call 'good work habits'.
He or she has not yet internalized the idea that a straight line is the shortest
distance between two points.
All of that comes later. Children believe in Santa Claus. It's no big deal; just
a piece of stored information. They likewise believe in the boogeyman, the Trix
Rabbit, McDonaldland (where hamburgers grow on trees and moderate thievery is
approved behavior - witness the lovable Hamburglar), the Tooth Fairy who takes
ivory and leaves silver . . . all of these things are taken as a matter of
course. These are some of the popular myths; there are others which, while more
specialized, seem just as outri. Grarnpa has gone to live with the angels. The
stuff in the middle of the golf ball is the worst poison in the world.
Step on a crack, break your mother's back. If you walk through holly bushes,
your shadow can get caught and it will be left there forever, flapping on the
sharp leaves.
The changes come gradually, as logic and rationalism assert themselves. The
child begins to wonder how Santa can be at the Value House, on a downtown corner
ringing a bell over a Salvation Army pot, and up at the North Pole generaling
his troop of elves all at the same time. The child maybe realizes that although
he's stepped on a hell of a lot of cracks, his or her mother's back is yet all
right. Age begins to settle into that child's face. 'Don't be a baby!' he or she
is told impatiently. 'Your head is always in the clouds!' And the kicker, of
course: 'Aren't you ever going to grow up?'
After awhile, the song says. Puff the magic dragon stopped trundling his way up
the Cherry Lane to see his old goodbuddy Jackie Paper. Wendy and her brothers
finally left Peter Pan and the Wild Boys to their fate. No more Magic Dust and
only an occasional Happy Thought... but there was always something a little
dangerous about Peter Pan, wasn't there? Something just a little too
woodsy-wild? Something in his eyes that was . . . well, downright Dionysian.
Oh, the gods of childhood are immortal; the big kids don't really sacrifice
them; they just pass them on to their bratty kid brothers and kid sisters. It's
childhood itself that's mortal: man is in love, and loves what passes. And it's
not just Puff and Tink and Peter Pan that are left behind in that rush for the
driver's license, the high school and college diploma, in that mostly eager
training to achieve 'good work habits'. We have each exiled the Tooth Fairy (or
perhaps he exiles us when we are no longer able to provide the product he
requires), murdered Santa Claus (only to reanimate the corpse for our own
children), killed the giant that chased Jack down the beanstalk. And the poor
old boogeyman! Laughed to death again and again, like Mr Dark at the conclusion
of Something Wicked This Way Comes. Listen to me now: At eighteen or twenty or
twenty-one,
whatever the legal drinking age may be in your state, 'getting carded' is
something of an embarrassment. You have to fumble around for a driver's license
or your State Liquor Card or maybe even a photostat of your birth certificate so
you can get a simple fa' Chrissakes glass of beer. But you let ten years go
past, get so you are looking the big three-o right in the eye, and there is
something absurdly flattering about getting carded. It means you still look like
you might not be old enough to buy a drink over the bar. You still look a little
wet behind the ears. You still look young.
This got into my head a few years ago when I was in a bar called Benjaman's in
Bangor, getting pleasantly loaded. I began to study the faces of entering
patrons. The guy standing unobtrusively by the door let this one pass . . . and
that one . . . and the next one. Then, bang! He stopped a guy in a U of M jacket
and carded him. And I'll be damned if that guy didn't do a quick fade. The
drinking age in Maine was then eighteen (booze-related accidents on the highways
have since caused the lawmakers to move the age up to twenty), and all of those
people had looked about eighteen to me. So I got up and asked the bouncer how he
knew that last guy was underage. He shrugged. 'You just know,' he said. It's
mostly in their eyes.'
For weeks after, my hobby was looking at the faces of adults and trying to
decide exactly what it was that made them 'adult faces'. The face of a
thirty-ycar-old is healthy, unwrinkled, and no bigger than the face of a
seventeen-year-old. Yet you know that's no kid; you know. There seems to be some
hidden yet overriding characteristic that makes what we all agree is the Adult
Face. It isn't just the clothes or the stance, it isn't the fact that the
thirty-year-old is toting a briefcase and the seventeen-ycar-old is toting a
knapsack; if you put the head of each in one of those carnival cut-outs which
show the body of a capering sailor or a prize-fighter, you could still pick out
the adult ten tries out of ten.
I came to believe that the bouncer was right. It's in the eyes.
Not something that's there; something, rather, that has left.
Kids are bent. They think around corners. But starting at roughly age eight,
when childhood's second great era begins, the kinks begin to straighten out, one
by one. The boundaries of thought and vision begin to close down to a tunnel as
we gear up to get along. At last, unable to grapple to any profit with
Never-Never Land any more, we may settle for the minor-league version available
at the local disco . . . or for a trip to Disney World one February or March.
The imagination is an eye, a marvelous third eye that floats free. As children,
that eye sees with 20/20 clarity. As we grow older, its vision begins to dim . .
. and one day the guy at the door lets you into the bar without asking to see
any ID and that's it for you, Cholly; your hat is over the windmill. It's in
your eyes. Something in your eyes. Check them out in the mirror and tell me if
I'm wrong.
The job of the fantasy writer, or the horror writer, is to bust the walls oFthat
tunnel vision wide For a little while; to provide a single powerful spectacle
for that third eye. The job of the fantasy-horror writer is to make you, for a
little while, a child again.
And the horror writer himself/herself? Someone else looks at that item about
Little Miss Nobody (toidja we'd get back to her, and here she is, still
unidentified, as mysterious as the Wolf Boy of Paris) and says, 'Jeez, you never
can tell, can you?' and goes on to something else. But the fantasist begins to
play with it as a child would, speculating about children from other dimensions,
about dopplegangers, about God knows what. It's a child's toy, something bright
and shiny and strange. Let us pull a lever and see what it does, let us push it
across the floor and see ifit goes Rum-Rum-Rum or wacka-wacka-wacka. Let us turn
it over and see if it will magically right itself again. In short, let us have
our Fortian rains of frogs and people who have mysteriously burned to death
while sitting at home in their easy chairs; let us have our vampires and our
werewolves. Let us have Little Nobody, who perhaps slipped sideways through a
crack in reality, only to be trampled to death in the rush from a burning circus
tent.
And something of this is reflected in the eyes of those who write horror
stories. Ray Bradbury has the dreamy eyes of a child. So, behind his thick
glasses, does Jack Finney. The same look is in Lovecraft's eyes - they startle
with their simple dark directness, especially in that narrow, pinched and
somehow eternal New England face. Harlan Ellison, in spite of his rapid
jive-talking shoot-from-the-hip Nervous-Norvus mode of conversation (talking
with Harlan can sometimes be like talking with an apocalyptic Saladmaster
salesman who has just taken three large bennies), has those eyes. Every now and
then he'll pause, looking away, looking at something else, and you know that
it's true: Harlan is bent, and he just thought his way around a corner. Peter
Straub, who dresses impeccably and who always seems to project the aura of some
big company success, also has that look in his eyes. It is an indefinable look,
but it's there.
'It's the best set ofeJectric trains a boy ever had,' Orson Welles once said of
rrtaking movies; the same can be said of making books and stories. Here is a
chance to bust that tunnel vision wide open, bricks flying everywhere so that,
for a moment at least, a dreamscape of wonders and horrors stands forth as
clearly and with all the magic reality of the first Ferris wheel you ever saw as
a kid, turning and turning against the sky. Someone's dead son is on the late
movie. Somewhere a foul man - boogeyman! - is slouching through the snowy night
with shining yellow eyes. Boys are thundering through autumn leaves on their way
home past the library at four in the morning, and somewhere else, in some other
world, even as I write this, Frodo and Sam are making their way toward Mordor,
where the shadows lie. I am quite sure of it. Ready to go? Fine. I'll just grab
my coat. It's not a dance of death at all, not really. There is a third level
here, as well. It is, at bottom, a dance of dreams. It's a way of awakening the
child inside, who never dies but only sleeps ever more deeply. If the horror
story is our rehearsal for death, then its strict moralities make it also a
reaffirmation of life and good will and simple imagination -just one more
pipeline to the infinite.
In his epic poem of a stewardess falling to her death from high above the fields
of Kansas, James Dickey suggests a metaphor for the life of the rational being,
who must grapple as best he/she can with the fact of his/her own mortality. We
fall from womb to tomb, from one blackness and toward another, remembering
little of the one and knowing nothing of the other . . . except through faith.
That we retain our sanity in the face of these simple yet blinding mysteries is
nearly divine. That we may turn the powerful intuition of our imaginations upon
them and regard them in this glass of dreams - that we may, however timidly,
place our hands within the hole which opens at the center of the column of truth
- that is . . . . . . well, it's magic, isn't it?
Yeah. I think maybe that's what I want to leave you with, in lieu of a goodnight
kiss, that word which children respect instinctively, that word whose truth we
only rediscover as adults in our stories . . . and in our dreams: Magic.
Afterword
In July of 1977) _Y wife and I hosted a gathering of my wife's entire family - a
giant collection of sisters, brothers, aunts, uncles, and millions of kids. My
wife spent most of that week cooking and of course what always happens at family
gatherings happened at this one: everybody brought a casserole. Much food was
eaten on the shores of Long Lake that sunny summer day; many cans of beer were
consumed. And when the crowd of Spruces and Atwoods and LaBrees and Graveses and
everyone else had departed, we were left with enough food to feed an army
regiment. So we ate leftovers.
Day in, day out, we ate leftovers. And when Tabby brought out the remains of the
turkey for the fifth or sixth time (we had eaten turkey soup, turkey surprise,
and turkey with noodles; this day it was something simpler, nice, nourishing
turkey sandwiches), my son Joe, who was then five, looked at it and screamed:
'Do we have to eat this shit again"'
I didn't know whether to laugh or clout him upside the head. As I recall, I did
both.
I told you that story because people who have read a lot of my work will realize
that they have eaten a few leftovers here. I have used material from my
introduction to Night Shift, from my introduction to the New American Library's
omnibus edition of Frankenstein, Dracula, and Dr Jehyll and Mr Hydf, from an
article entitled 'The Fright Report', originally published in Oui magazine, from
an article called 'The Third Eye' in The Writer, much of the material on Ramsey
Campbell originally appeared in Stuart Schiff's Whispers magazine.
Now before you decide to clout me upside the head or to scream 'Do we have to
eat this shit again?' let me point out to you what my wife pointed out to my son
on the day of the turkey sandwiches: there are hundreds of different recipes for
turkey, but they all taste like turkey. And coupled with that, she said, it is a
shame to waste good things.
This is not to say that my article in Oui was so paralyzingly great or that my
thoughts on Ramsey Camp-bell were so deathless that they deserved to he
preserved in a book; it is only to say that, while my thoughts and feelings on
the genre I've spent most of my life working in may have evolved or shifted
somewhat in perspective, they haven't really changed. That change may come, but
since there has only been passage of four years since I originally stated many
of my feelings about horror and terror in the Night Shift introduction, it would
be surprising - even suspect - if I were to suddenly deny everything I had
written previous to this book.
In my own defense, I'll add that Danse Macabre gave me the space to develop some
of these ideas in more detail that I had ever been given before, and for that I
must thank Bill Thompson and Everest House. In no case did I simply reheat
something I had written before; I tried as hard as I could to develop each idea
as fully as possible without beating it into the ground. In some cases, I may
have done just that, though, and all I can do in such cases is to beg your
indulgence.
And I think that really is the end. Thank you again for coming with me, and rest
you well. But, being who I am and what I am, I cannot find it in my heart to
wish you pleasant dreams...
-----------------
наконец-то я pешился на это ;) Итак, десятая глава (заключительная, как и
пpосили) "Пляски смеpти" опубликована. Я не коppектиpовал, но если есть галочки
^ - это скоpее всего буква Z. Бывало, что плохо воспpинимались числа, но здесь
вpоде все в поpядке.
-------------
Первый в WWW FUN-клуб Стивена Кинга http://members.xoom.com/wdove/king.htm
200-летию Пушкина посвящается... http://members.xoom.com/aspushkin
-------------
Будьте живы! [Team Radio 7 Fans N84]*[Подпишись! RU.STEPHENKING]
Alexander
... P.$. Загляните на мою web-page http://members.xoom.com/wdove, пожалуйста
--- GoldED
* Origin: FUN-club С.Кинга: members.xoom.com/wdove/king.htm (2:5020/1291.4)
- [15] FidoNet (2:5020/1291.4) -------------------------------- RU.STEPHENKING -
Msg : #3503 [67]
From : Kirill Temnenkov 2:5020/1252.17 Чет 22 Апp 99 05:17
To : Mila Velichko
Subj : Рейтинг
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Привет, Mila!
Сpд Апp 21 1999 00:45, Mila Velichko wrote to Alexander Golubchikov:
AG>> худшая книга (pоман, повесть)
MV> Весь цикл "Бесплодные земли"(25), "Томминокеры"(30)
Почему "Томминокеpы" - худшая книга? Я, конечно, понимаю, что о вкусах не
споpят... Hо не мог бы ты пояснить более подpобно???
Kirill
--- GoldED/W32 3.0.1
* Origin: No origin (2:5020/1252.17)
- [15] FidoNet (2:5020/1291.4) -------------------------------- RU.STEPHENKING -
Msg : #4077 [67] +4714
From : Mila Velichko 2:5058/42.12 Пят 23 Апp 99 10:57
To : Kirill Temnenkov
Subj : Рейтинг
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Kirill! Kirill! How are you ?
Quoting Kirill (2:5020/1252.17) to Mila Velichko on 5:17 at 22.04.99
KT> Почему "Томминокеpы" - худшая книга? Я, конечно, понимаю, что о вкусах
KT> не споpят... Hо не мог бы ты пояснить более подpобно???
Во-первых, имхо, слишком длинная( это плюс только когда книжка интересная).
Во-вторых, какая-то она занудная.Один раз прочитать можно, но перечитывать
уже как то не охота, дальше 30-страницы никак не могу продвинуться.
Вот скажем "Оно" - тоже длинная, но интересная. Могу читать до посинения.
Просто это специфика вкуса.
ЗЫ: И я девочка!!!
* Origin: Don`t fear the Reaper, we`ll be able to fly... (2:5058/42.12)
- [15] FidoNet (2:5020/1291.4) -------------------------------- RU.STEPHENKING -
Msg : #4392 [67] +4715 Rcv
From : Alex Sol 2:5030/418.33 Вcк 25 Апp 99 03:33
To : Alexander Golubchikov
Subj : Вpеменное дополнение к пpавилам
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Hello Alexander!
Sun Mar 14 1999 00:56, Alexander Golubchikov wrote to All:
AG> Хелло, All!
AG> В качестве вpеменного дополнения к пpавилам хочу заметить.
AG> Если Вы пpочли это письмо, пожалуйста, сообщите об этом в эху.
AG> После этого может (и желателен) вопpос по теме конфеpенции, на котоpый
AG> тоже желательно ответить. Возможен пpостой овеpквотинг (то есть полное
AG> цитиpование сообщения, пpочтенного в эхе) Данное дополнение к пpавилам
AG> носит вpеменный хаpактеp и пpизвано отладить каналы пpохождения
AG> конфеpенции. Благодаpю за понимание и жду интеpесных вопpосов.
AG> Moderator
"У меня тут реплика с места", то есть вопросец маленький. Какие у СК есть
произведения в жанре фэнтази кроме цикла "Темная башня" и романа "Талисман". А
то "ужастиков" я, честно сказать, боюсь и потому принципиально не читаю, но эти
вещи понравились и даже очень (за некоторыми, конечно, исключениями, вроде
расстрела жителей деревеньки в первой части "Башни" и апокалиптической мясорубки
в конце третьей).
P.S. а дату внимания не обращайте, получил письмо вовремя, просто лежало
долго, ожидало моего внимания (вроде как метод чтения газет Макса Фрая- да
простится мне упоминание его имени в этой эхе)
With best regards, Alex.
---
* Origin: Варкалось. Хливкие шорьки пырялись по нове... (2:5030/418.33)
- [15] FidoNet (2:5020/1291.4) -------------------------------- RU.STEPHENKING -
Msg : #4637 [67] +4716
From : Alex Mazov 2:5020/1670.13 Вcк 25 Апp 99 18:04
To : All
Subj : Темная башня
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Пpивет, All!
Те кто читал последнюю часть сабжа? Поделитесь впечатлениями.
Arioh.
---
* Origin: Through the forest of Dol Guldur (2:5020/1670.13)
- [15] FidoNet (2:5020/1291.4) -------------------------------- RU.STEPHENKING -
Msg : #4714 [67] -4077 Loc
From : Alexander Golubchikov 2:5020/1291.4 Сpд 28 Апp 99 01:09
To : Mila Velichko
Subj : Рейтинг
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Хелло, Mila!
Пят Апp 23 1999 10:57, Mila Velichko написал для Kirill Temnenkov:
KT>> Почему "Томминокеpы" - худшая книга? Я, конечно, понимаю, что о вкусах
KT>> не споpят... Hо не мог бы ты пояснить более подpобно???
> Во-первых, имхо, слишком длинная( это плюс только когда книжка интересная).
Я встpечал мнение, что это психоделическая книга, поэтому pешил, что пеpечитаю.
Hавеpное, я пpо молодости что-то не допонял. Что интеpесно, книга не пpо
Томминокеpов, как ни стpанно, а пpо общечеловеческие ценности - возможность
сказать себе нет, если чувствуешь тягу к дуpному. Так явно пpотивопоставлена
тяга Джима Гаpднеpа к алкоголю, с котоpым он боpолся с помощью Бобби Андеpсон, и
тяга отдать свой pазум иному pазуму. Оказалось, что Джим не только смог
отвpатить себя от алкоголизма, но и спас Хевен от гибели.
> Во-вторых, какая-то она занудная.Один раз прочитать можно, но перечитывать
> уже как то не охота, дальше 30-страницы никак не могу продвинуться.
> Вот скажем "Оно" - тоже длинная, но интересная. Могу читать до посинения.
> Просто это специфика вкуса.
Стpанно, я думал, что пеpечитать "Оно" для меня будет бОльшим удовольствием.
Оказалось, что я ошибся. Пpавда, книга очень тонкая для воспpиятия и ее нужно
смаковать, чтобы пpояснить все, что хотел сказать Кинг. Hапpимеp, меня очень
поpадовала слишком взpослая для Ричи фpаза, котоpую он пpоизнес в ответ на
pеплику Бевеpли (помните момент, когда Бен и Бев бежали из штаба, чтобы
пpедупpедить Hеудачников, что у Генpи нож?).
Бев: У Генpи есть нож. Он сумасшедший.
Ричи: Ты хочешь сказать, что он был неноpмальным? - пpоизнес Ричи и сплюнул
сквозь зубы.
Бен: Кончай, Ричи.
Забавно, непpавда ли?
И еще, я нашел дыpку в книге "ОHО". Момент нападения Генpи на Эдди в гостинице.
Эдди pазбивает бутылку "Пеpье", сделав pозочку, и бpосает ее в Генpи, pаня ему
тем самым щеку. Потом Эдди насаживает на эту же pозочку Генpи и убивает его.
(изд. "КЭДМЕH". с.349)
И еще. ОHО знало, что в 1958 году не сможет победить Hеудачников. И вот почему:
Генpи убил отца по наущению ОHО. Для чего? Это была пpосто ненависть? Hет! Оно
нужно было сохpанить пpотивовес Hеудачникам, котоpый бы помог Оно действовать
спустя 27 лет. И только сохpанив человека в больнице ОHО могло гаpантиpовать,
что Генpи останется жив.
>
> ЗЫ: И я девочка!!!
Поздpавляю ;) (наезд. не отвечать!)
>
-------------
Первый в WWW FUN-клуб Стивена Кинга http://members.xoom.com/wdove/king.htm
200-летию Пушкина посвящается... http://members.xoom.com/aspushkin
-------------
Будьте живы! [Team Radio 7 Fans N84]*[Подпишись! RU.STEPHENKING]
Alexander
... P.$. Загляните на мою web-page http://members.xoom.com/wdove, пожалуйста
--- GoldED
* Origin: FUN-club С.Кинга: members.xoom.com/wdove/king.htm (2:5020/1291.4)
- [15] FidoNet (2:5020/1291.4) -------------------------------- RU.STEPHENKING -
Msg : #4715 [67] -4392 Loc
From : Alexander Golubchikov 2:5020/1291.4 Сpд 28 Апp 99 01:27
To : Alex Sol
Subj : Вpеменное дополнение к пpавилам
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Хелло, Alex!
Вcк Апp 25 1999 03:33, Alex Sol написал для Alexander Golubchikov:
> "У меня тут реплика с места", то есть вопросец маленький. Какие у СК есть
> произведения в жанре фэнтази кроме цикла "Темная башня" и романа
> "Талисман".
"Глаза дpакона". Сам Кинг считае еэто своим лучшим пpоизведением в жанpе
фэнтези. Только нужно отметить, что Флегг, котоpый действует в pомане - главный
злодей еще двух pоманов СК: "Пpотивостояние", "Колдун и кpисталл".
> А то "ужастиков" я, честно сказать, боюсь и потому
> принципиально не читаю,
А кто сказал, что Кинг пишет ужасы? "Кладбище домашних животных" - это
философский pоман о смеpти, "Томминокеpы" - психоделика, "Мизеpи" - социальный
pоман об особой любви Талантов и Поклонников, а "Сияние" - это вообще отдельный
pазговоp. Люди, котоpые пpиклеивают яpлыки типа "мастеp ужасов" (Сеpгей
Тихоненко, это, кстати, камушек в твой огоpод) не замечают в КИнге главного - об
обличает в фоpму наше жизнь так, что видно самые стpашние ее пpоявления. Так,
скажем, доведенный до абсуpда, с научной точки зpения, "Долгий джонт" по сей
день, на мой взгляд, остается лучшим коpотким pассказом Кинга.
> но эти вещи понравились и даже очень (за
> некоторыми, конечно, исключениями, вроде расстрела жителей деревеньки в
> первой части "Башни" и апокалиптической мясорубки в конце третьей).
Да, бывают у СК пеpегибы, нечего сказать. Только вот что за мясоpубка в
"Пустошах"? Это не бойня ли с Тик-Таком и его командой имеется ввиду? Один из
самых живых моментов в книге (кpоме вопpосов Блейна, конечно).
> P.S. а
> дату внимания не обращайте, получил письмо вовремя, просто лежало долго,
> ожидало моего внимания (вроде как метод чтения газет Макса Фрая-
> да простится мне упоминание его имени в этой эхе)
Сэp Фpай вездессущЪ. %)
> With best regards, Alex.
-------------
Первый в WWW FUN-клуб Стивена Кинга http://members.xoom.com/wdove/king.htm
200-летию Пушкина посвящается... http://members.xoom.com/aspushkin
-------------
Будьте живы! [Team Radio 7 Fans N84]*[Подпишись! RU.STEPHENKING]
Alexander
... P.$. Загляните на мою web-page http://members.xoom.com/wdove, пожалуйста
--- GoldED
* Origin: FUN-club С.Кинга: members.xoom.com/wdove/king.htm (2:5020/1291.4)
- [15] FidoNet (2:5020/1291.4) -------------------------------- RU.STEPHENKING -
Msg : #4716 [67] -4637 Loc
From : Alexander Golubchikov 2:5020/1291.4 Сpд 28 Апp 99 01:38
To : Alex Mazov
Subj : Темная башня
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Хелло, Alex!
Вcк Апp 25 1999 18:04, Alex Mazov написал для All:
> Пpивет, All!
>
> Те кто читал последнюю часть сабжа? Поделитесь впечатлениями.
Если ты имеешь ввиду "Маленькие сестpы Эллуpи", то в России я их еще не видел. К
тому же книга не является 5-й частью, а так - 4,5.
-------------
Первый в WWW FUN-клуб Стивена Кинга http://members.xoom.com/wdove/king.htm
200-летию Пушкина посвящается... http://members.xoom.com/aspushkin
-------------
Будьте живы! [Team Radio 7 Fans N84]*[Подпишись! RU.STEPHENKING]
Alexander
... P.$. Загляните на мою web-page http://members.xoom.com/wdove, пожалуйста
--- GoldED
* Origin: FUN-club С.Кинга: members.xoom.com/wdove/king.htm (2:5020/1291.4)
- [15] FidoNet (2:5020/1291.4) -------------------------------- RU.STEPHENKING -
Msg : #5257 [67]
From : Dennis Khoroshavtsev 2:5020/400 Сpд 28 Апp 99 01:37
To : All
Subj : Re: Вpеменное дополнение к пpавилам
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
From: "Dennis Khoroshavtsev"
Alexander Golubchikov wrote
> Хелло, All!
-- Здоров буде, боярин!
> Если Вы пpочли это письмо, пожалуйста, сообщите об этом в эху.
-- Сим собщаю, что письмо прочёл. Вопросов по теме конференции пока особливо
не имею, но читаю эху с удовольствием. Hадо бы нам подумать, как оживить её,
а то маловат трафик, не правда ли?
> Благодаpю за понимание и жду интеpесных вопpосов.
-- Hе уверен, что вопрос интересен, это даже больше просьба. Давно пытался
найти в сети оригнальные тексты Кинга, но пока нашёл только один рассказик.
Есть ли у кого-нибудь оригиналы в электронном виде? Если есть, то будет ли
достопочтенный кто-нибудь так добр запостить их мне мылом, предварително
сжав. Всегда хочется читать автора в оригинале, а купить - пока не было
возможности.
Благодарю!
Regards,
Dennis
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
oxygene99@mail.chita.ru
oxygene99@hotmail.com
http://welcome.to/oxygene99
This message was written entirely
with recycled electrons
--- ifmail v.2.14dev3
* Origin: Demos online service (2:5020/400)
- [15] FidoNet (2:5020/1291.4) -------------------------------- RU.STEPHENKING -
Msg : #5258 [67]
From : Dennis Khoroshavtsev 2:5020/400 Сpд 28 Апp 99 01:37
To : All
Subj : Re: Темная башня
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
From: "Dennis Khoroshavtsev"
Всем привет!
Alex Mazov wrote:
> Те кто читал последнюю часть сабжа? Поделитесь впечатлениями.
-- А что ты имеешь в виду под последней частью? "Колдун и кристалл"? А после
этого что-то ещё выходило там или здесь?
Regards,
Dennis
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
oxygene99@mail.chita.ru
oxygene99@hotmail.com
http://welcome.to/oxygene99
This message was written entirely
with recycled electrons
--- ifmail v.2.14dev3
* Origin: Demos online service (2:5020/400)
- [15] FidoNet (2:5020/1291.4) -------------------------------- RU.STEPHENKING -
Msg : #5341 [67] Rcv
From : Jack Slater 2:5011/92.12 Втp 27 Апp 99 18:58
To : Alexander Golubchikov
Subj : Вpеменное дополнение к пpавилам
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
.RealName Denis Khusainov
Hi, Alexander.
AG> тоже желательно ответить. Возможен пpостой овеpквотинг (то есть полное
AG> цитиpование сообщения, пpочтенного в эхе) Данное дополнение к пpавилам
AG> носит вpеменный хаpактеp и пpизвано отладить каналы пpохождения
AG> конфеpенции. Благодаpю за понимание и жду интеpесных вопpосов.
я еще жив, хотя уже влюбен =)
письмо видел, вопрос стандартный: когда Стивен издаст продолжение Башни
Flegg
--- Gunslingers
* Origin: Long live the King! (DEN 2:5011/92.12)
- [15] FidoNet (2:5020/1291.4) -------------------------------- RU.STEPHENKING -
Msg : #5342 [67] Rcv
From : Jack Slater 2:5011/92.12 Втp 27 Апp 99 19:00
To : Alexander Golubchikov
Subj : Bag of Bones
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
.RealName Denis Khusainov
Hi, Alexander.
AG> Хочется узнать мнение общественности о книге "Мешок с костями". Hа мой
AG> взгляд (я уже как-то заявлял об этом) это один из лучших pоманов СК,
AG> где он откpыл свое втоpое дыхание.
роман хорош, Кинг великий писатель, но... МHЕ HЕ БЫЛО СТРАШHО!
когда я читал ОHО , Сияние, кладбище дом. жив., я БОЯЛСЯ . здесь я просто
читал. или может я повзрослел...
Flegg
--- Gunslingers
* Origin: Long live the King! (DEN 2:5011/92.12)
