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Danse Macabre :: Кинг Стивен
Страница: 265 из 359Currey) have chosen wisely and well, and in the library of any reader who cares honestly about science fiction-and about books themselves as lovely artifacts-you're apt to find one or more of these distinctive green volumes with the red-gold stamping on the spines.
Oh dear God, we're off on another tangent. Well, never mind; I believe that what I started to say was simply that I think Finney's contention that The Body Snatchers is just a story is both right and wrong. My own belief about fiction, long and deeply held, is that story must be paramount over all other considerations in fiction; that story defines fiction, and that all other considerations-theme, mood, tone, symbol, style, even characterization-are expendable.
There are critics who take the strongest possible exception to this view of fiction, and I really believe that they are the critics who would feel vastly more comfortable if Moby-Dick were a doctoral thesis on cetology rather than an account of what happened on the Pequod 's final voyage. A doctoral thesis is what a million student papers have reduced this tale to, but the story still remains-"This is what happened to Ishmael." As story still remains in Macbeth, The Faerie Queen, Pride and Prejudice, Jude the Obscure, The Great Gatsby . . . and Jack Finney's The Body Snatchers . And story, thank God, after a certain point becomes irreducible, mysterious, impervious to analysis. You will find no English master's thesis in any college library titled "The Story-Elements of Melville's Moby Dick ." And if you do find such a thesis, send it to me. I'll eat it. With A-1 Steak Sauce.
All very fine. And yet I don't think Finney would argue with the idea that story values are determined by the mind through which they are filtered, and that the mind of any writer is a product of his outer world and inner temper. It is just the fact of this filter that has set the table for all those would-be English M.A.'s, and I certainly would not want you to think that I begrudge them their degrees-God knows that as an English major I slung enough bullshit to fertilize most of east Texas-but a great number of the people who are sitting at the long and groaning table of Graduate Studies in English are cutting a lot of invisible steaks and roasts . . . not to mention trading the Emperor's new clothes briskly back and forth in what may be the largest academic yard sale the world has ever seen.
Still, what we have here is a Jack Finney novel, and we can say certain things about it simply because it is a Jack Finney novel. First, we can say that it will be grounded in absolute reality-a prosy reality that is almost humdrum, at least to begin with.
Oh dear God, we're off on another tangent. Well, never mind; I believe that what I started to say was simply that I think Finney's contention that The Body Snatchers is just a story is both right and wrong. My own belief about fiction, long and deeply held, is that story must be paramount over all other considerations in fiction; that story defines fiction, and that all other considerations-theme, mood, tone, symbol, style, even characterization-are expendable.
There are critics who take the strongest possible exception to this view of fiction, and I really believe that they are the critics who would feel vastly more comfortable if Moby-Dick were a doctoral thesis on cetology rather than an account of what happened on the Pequod 's final voyage. A doctoral thesis is what a million student papers have reduced this tale to, but the story still remains-"This is what happened to Ishmael." As story still remains in Macbeth, The Faerie Queen, Pride and Prejudice, Jude the Obscure, The Great Gatsby . . . and Jack Finney's The Body Snatchers . And story, thank God, after a certain point becomes irreducible, mysterious, impervious to analysis. You will find no English master's thesis in any college library titled "The Story-Elements of Melville's Moby Dick ." And if you do find such a thesis, send it to me. I'll eat it. With A-1 Steak Sauce.
All very fine. And yet I don't think Finney would argue with the idea that story values are determined by the mind through which they are filtered, and that the mind of any writer is a product of his outer world and inner temper. It is just the fact of this filter that has set the table for all those would-be English M.A.'s, and I certainly would not want you to think that I begrudge them their degrees-God knows that as an English major I slung enough bullshit to fertilize most of east Texas-but a great number of the people who are sitting at the long and groaning table of Graduate Studies in English are cutting a lot of invisible steaks and roasts . . . not to mention trading the Emperor's new clothes briskly back and forth in what may be the largest academic yard sale the world has ever seen.
Still, what we have here is a Jack Finney novel, and we can say certain things about it simply because it is a Jack Finney novel. First, we can say that it will be grounded in absolute reality-a prosy reality that is almost humdrum, at least to begin with.