JК
Danse Macabre :: Кинг Стивен
Страница: 234 из 359It seemed to me that in this day of pragmatists and materialists, a conventional spectre would be almost laughable; in the suburb that I envisioned, the people do notbelieve in that sort of thing; it is almost improper. A traditional ghoulie would be laughed out of the neighborhood. So what would get to my quasi-sophisticated suburbanite? What would break relationships and crumble defenses and penetrate suburban armors? It would have to be different in each case. Each person has his own built-in horror button. Let's have a house that can isolate and push it, and then you've really got a case of the suburban willies.
"The plot of the book emerged in one typewriter sitting almost whole and in infinite detail, as though it had been there all along just waiting :o be uncovered . . . . The House Next Door was plotted and whole in a day. From there it looked to be great fun, and I set off on it with a light heart, because I thought it would be an easy book to write. And in a sense, it was: these are my people. I am of this world. I know them from the skin out. They were of course, caricatures in most cases; most of the people I know are, thankfully, far more eccentric and not so determinedly suburban as this set of folks. But I needed them to be the way they were to make a point. And I found the limning of them went like greased lightning.
"Because the whole point of this book, of course, is not so much the house and its peculiar, terrible power, but what effect it has on the neighborhood, and on the relationships between neighbors and friends, and between families, when they are forced to confront and believe the unbelievable. This has always been the power of the supernatural to me . . . that it blasts and breaks relationships between people and other people and between people and their world and, in a way, between people and the very essences of themselves. And the blasting and breaking leaves them defenseless and alone, howling in terror before the thing that they have been forced to believe. For belief is everything; belief is all. Without belief, there is no terror.
And I think it is even more terrible when a modern man or woman, girded round with privilege and education and all the trappings of the so-called good life and all the freight of the clever, pragmatic, vision-hungry modern mind, is forced to confront utter, alien, and elemental evil and terror. What does he know of this, what has it to do with him? What has the unspeakable and the unbelievable got to do with second homes and tax shelters and private schools for the kids and a pâté in every terrine and a BMW in every garage? Primitive man might howl before his returning dead and point; his neighbor would see, and howl along with him . . . .
"The plot of the book emerged in one typewriter sitting almost whole and in infinite detail, as though it had been there all along just waiting :o be uncovered . . . . The House Next Door was plotted and whole in a day. From there it looked to be great fun, and I set off on it with a light heart, because I thought it would be an easy book to write. And in a sense, it was: these are my people. I am of this world. I know them from the skin out. They were of course, caricatures in most cases; most of the people I know are, thankfully, far more eccentric and not so determinedly suburban as this set of folks. But I needed them to be the way they were to make a point. And I found the limning of them went like greased lightning.
"Because the whole point of this book, of course, is not so much the house and its peculiar, terrible power, but what effect it has on the neighborhood, and on the relationships between neighbors and friends, and between families, when they are forced to confront and believe the unbelievable. This has always been the power of the supernatural to me . . . that it blasts and breaks relationships between people and other people and between people and their world and, in a way, between people and the very essences of themselves. And the blasting and breaking leaves them defenseless and alone, howling in terror before the thing that they have been forced to believe. For belief is everything; belief is all. Without belief, there is no terror.
And I think it is even more terrible when a modern man or woman, girded round with privilege and education and all the trappings of the so-called good life and all the freight of the clever, pragmatic, vision-hungry modern mind, is forced to confront utter, alien, and elemental evil and terror. What does he know of this, what has it to do with him? What has the unspeakable and the unbelievable got to do with second homes and tax shelters and private schools for the kids and a pâté in every terrine and a BMW in every garage? Primitive man might howl before his returning dead and point; his neighbor would see, and howl along with him . . . .