JК
Danse Macabre :: Кинг Стивен
Страница: 224 из 359A great many writers who have attempted the horror story have also realized that it is exactly this blurring about where the evil is coming from that differentiates the good or the merely effective from the great, but realization and execution are two different things, and in attempting to produce the paradox, most succeed only in producing a muddle . . . . Lovers Living, Lovers Dead by Richard Lutz is one example.
This is a case where you either hit the target dead-bang or miss it altogether. Straub hits it.
"I really wanted to expand things much more than I ever had before," Straub says. "I wanted to work on a large canvas. 'Salem's Lot showed me how to do this without getting lost among a lot of minor characters. Besides the large canvas, I also wanted a certain largeness of effect . . . . I had been imbued with the notion that horror stories are best when they are ambiguous and low key and restrained. Reading [ 'Salem's Lot ], I realized that idea was self-defeating. Horror stories were best when they were big and gaudy, when the natural operatic quality in them was let loose. So part of the 'expansion' was an expansion of effect-I wanted to work up to big climaxes, create more tension than I ever had, build in big big scares. What all this means is that my ambition was geared up very high. Very much on my mind was doing something which would be very literary, and at the same time take on every kind of ghost situation I could think of. Also I wanted to play around with reality, to make the characters confused about what was actually real. So: I built in situations in which they feel they are 1.) acting out roles in a book; 2.) watching a film; 3.) hallucinating; 4. ) dreaming; 5.) transported into a private fantasy. * This kind of thing, I think, is what our kind of book can do very well, what it is naturally suited to do.
The material is sort of naturally absurd and unbelievable, and therefore suits a narrative in which the characters are bounced around a whole set of situations, some of which they know rationally to be false. And it seemed fitting to me that this kind of plot would emerge from a group of men telling stories-it was self-referring, which always pleases me very deeply in novels. If the structure had a relationship to the events, the book has more resonance.” He offers a final anecdote about writing the book: "There was one very happy accident . . . . Just when I was going to start the second part, two Jehovah's Witnesses showed up on the doorstep, and I bought three or four pamphlets from them. One . . . had a headline about Dr. Rabbitfoot-this was for a story written by a trombonist named Trummy Young, who once played with Louis Armstrong. Dr.
This is a case where you either hit the target dead-bang or miss it altogether. Straub hits it.
"I really wanted to expand things much more than I ever had before," Straub says. "I wanted to work on a large canvas. 'Salem's Lot showed me how to do this without getting lost among a lot of minor characters. Besides the large canvas, I also wanted a certain largeness of effect . . . . I had been imbued with the notion that horror stories are best when they are ambiguous and low key and restrained. Reading [ 'Salem's Lot ], I realized that idea was self-defeating. Horror stories were best when they were big and gaudy, when the natural operatic quality in them was let loose. So part of the 'expansion' was an expansion of effect-I wanted to work up to big climaxes, create more tension than I ever had, build in big big scares. What all this means is that my ambition was geared up very high. Very much on my mind was doing something which would be very literary, and at the same time take on every kind of ghost situation I could think of. Also I wanted to play around with reality, to make the characters confused about what was actually real. So: I built in situations in which they feel they are 1.) acting out roles in a book; 2.) watching a film; 3.) hallucinating; 4. ) dreaming; 5.) transported into a private fantasy. * This kind of thing, I think, is what our kind of book can do very well, what it is naturally suited to do.
The material is sort of naturally absurd and unbelievable, and therefore suits a narrative in which the characters are bounced around a whole set of situations, some of which they know rationally to be false. And it seemed fitting to me that this kind of plot would emerge from a group of men telling stories-it was self-referring, which always pleases me very deeply in novels. If the structure had a relationship to the events, the book has more resonance.” He offers a final anecdote about writing the book: "There was one very happy accident . . . . Just when I was going to start the second part, two Jehovah's Witnesses showed up on the doorstep, and I bought three or four pamphlets from them. One . . . had a headline about Dr. Rabbitfoot-this was for a story written by a trombonist named Trummy Young, who once played with Louis Armstrong. Dr.