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Danse Macabre :: Кинг Стивен
Страница: 256 из 359These slumming critics, unaware both of their own infuriating elitism and their total ignorance of what popular fiction does and what it is about, are able to see the foolishness spawned as a by-product of the bubbling potions, the pointy black hats, and all the other clanking huggermugger trappings of the supernatural tale, but are unable to see-or refuse to see-the strong and universal archetypes that underlie the best of them.
The foolishness is there, all right; this is Rosemary's first look at the child she has given birth to: His eyes were golden-yellow, all golden-yellow, with neither whites nor irises; all golden-yellow, with vertical black-slit pupils.
She looked at him.
He looked at her, golden-yellowly, and then at the swaying upside-down crucifix.
She looked at them watching her and knife-in-hand screamed at them, " What have you done to his eyes? ” They stirred and looked to Roman.
"He has His Father's eyes," he said.
We have lived and suffered with Rosemary Woodhouse for two hundred and nine pages up to this point, and Roman Castevet's response to her question seems almost like the punchline of a long, involved shaggydog story-one of the ones that ends with something like, "My, that's a long way to tip a Rari," or "Rudolph the Red knows rain, dear." Besides yellow eyes, Rosemary's baby turns out to have claws ("They're very nice," Roman tells Rosemary, ". . . very tiny and pearly. The mitts are only so He doesn't scratch Himself . . ."), and a tail, and the buds of horns. While I was teaching the book at the University of Maine to an undergraduate class entitled Themes in Horror and the Supernatural, one of my students mused that ten years later Rosemary's baby would be the only kid on his Little League team who needed a custom-tailored baseball cap.
Basically, Rosemary has given birth to the comic-book version of Satan, the L'il Imp we were all familiar with as children and who sometimes put in an appearance in the motion picture cartoons, arguing with a L'il Angel over the main character's head. Levin broadens the satire by giving us a Satanist coven comprised almost entirely of old people; they argue constantly in their waspy voices about how the baby should be cared for. The fact that Laura-Louise and Minnie Castevet are much too old to care for a baby somehow adds the final macabre touch, and Rosemary's first tentative bonding to her baby comes when she tells LauraLouise that she is rocking "Andy" much too fast, and that the wheels of his bassinette need to be oiled.
Levin's accomplishment is that such satire does not deflate the horror of his story but actually enhances it.
The foolishness is there, all right; this is Rosemary's first look at the child she has given birth to: His eyes were golden-yellow, all golden-yellow, with neither whites nor irises; all golden-yellow, with vertical black-slit pupils.
She looked at him.
He looked at her, golden-yellowly, and then at the swaying upside-down crucifix.
She looked at them watching her and knife-in-hand screamed at them, " What have you done to his eyes? ” They stirred and looked to Roman.
"He has His Father's eyes," he said.
We have lived and suffered with Rosemary Woodhouse for two hundred and nine pages up to this point, and Roman Castevet's response to her question seems almost like the punchline of a long, involved shaggydog story-one of the ones that ends with something like, "My, that's a long way to tip a Rari," or "Rudolph the Red knows rain, dear." Besides yellow eyes, Rosemary's baby turns out to have claws ("They're very nice," Roman tells Rosemary, ". . . very tiny and pearly. The mitts are only so He doesn't scratch Himself . . ."), and a tail, and the buds of horns. While I was teaching the book at the University of Maine to an undergraduate class entitled Themes in Horror and the Supernatural, one of my students mused that ten years later Rosemary's baby would be the only kid on his Little League team who needed a custom-tailored baseball cap.
Basically, Rosemary has given birth to the comic-book version of Satan, the L'il Imp we were all familiar with as children and who sometimes put in an appearance in the motion picture cartoons, arguing with a L'il Angel over the main character's head. Levin broadens the satire by giving us a Satanist coven comprised almost entirely of old people; they argue constantly in their waspy voices about how the baby should be cared for. The fact that Laura-Louise and Minnie Castevet are much too old to care for a baby somehow adds the final macabre touch, and Rosemary's first tentative bonding to her baby comes when she tells LauraLouise that she is rocking "Andy" much too fast, and that the wheels of his bassinette need to be oiled.
Levin's accomplishment is that such satire does not deflate the horror of his story but actually enhances it.