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Danse Macabre :: Кинг Стивен
Страница: 271 из 359During the Q-and-A period, they were asking sober, concernedquestions about just how the conspiracy was working, who was in charge, how they got their orders out, et cetera.
Finally I got up and said something like, "Are you really suggesting that there is an actual Board of Fascist Conspiracy in this country? That the conspirators-the president of GM and Exxon, plus David and Nelson Rockefeller-are maybe meeting in a big underground chamber beneath the Bonneville Salt Flats with agendas containing items on how more blacks can be drafted and the war in Southeast Asia prolonged?" I was finishing with the suggestion that perhaps these executives were arriving at their underground fortress in flying saucers-thus handily accounting for the upswing in UFO sightings as well as for the war in Vietnam-when the audience began to shout angrily for me to sit down and shut up. Which I did posthaste, blushing furiously, knowing how those eccentrics who mount their soapboxes in Hyde Park on Sunday afternoons must feel. I did not much relish the feeling.
The Panther who spoke did not respond to my question (which, to be fair, wasn't a question at all, really) ; he merely said softly, " You got a surprise, didn't you, man?" This was greeted with a burst of applause and laughter from the audience.
I did get a surprise-and a pretty unpleasant one, at that. But some thought has convinced me that it was impossible for those of my generation, propelled harum-scarum through the sixties, hair flying back from our foreheads, eyes bugging out with a mixture of delight and terror, from the Kingsmen doing "Louie Louie" to the blasting fuzztones of the Jefferson Airplane, to get from point A to point Z without a belief that someone-even Nelson Rockefeller-was pulling the strings.
In various ways throughout this book I've tried to suggest that the horror story is in many ways an optimistic, upbeat experience; that it is often the tough mind's way of coping with terrible problems which may not be supernatural at all but perfectly real.
Finally I got up and said something like, "Are you really suggesting that there is an actual Board of Fascist Conspiracy in this country? That the conspirators-the president of GM and Exxon, plus David and Nelson Rockefeller-are maybe meeting in a big underground chamber beneath the Bonneville Salt Flats with agendas containing items on how more blacks can be drafted and the war in Southeast Asia prolonged?" I was finishing with the suggestion that perhaps these executives were arriving at their underground fortress in flying saucers-thus handily accounting for the upswing in UFO sightings as well as for the war in Vietnam-when the audience began to shout angrily for me to sit down and shut up. Which I did posthaste, blushing furiously, knowing how those eccentrics who mount their soapboxes in Hyde Park on Sunday afternoons must feel. I did not much relish the feeling.
The Panther who spoke did not respond to my question (which, to be fair, wasn't a question at all, really) ; he merely said softly, " You got a surprise, didn't you, man?" This was greeted with a burst of applause and laughter from the audience.
I did get a surprise-and a pretty unpleasant one, at that. But some thought has convinced me that it was impossible for those of my generation, propelled harum-scarum through the sixties, hair flying back from our foreheads, eyes bugging out with a mixture of delight and terror, from the Kingsmen doing "Louie Louie" to the blasting fuzztones of the Jefferson Airplane, to get from point A to point Z without a belief that someone-even Nelson Rockefeller-was pulling the strings.
In various ways throughout this book I've tried to suggest that the horror story is in many ways an optimistic, upbeat experience; that it is often the tough mind's way of coping with terrible problems which may not be supernatural at all but perfectly real.