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Danse Macabre :: Кинг Стивен
Страница: 287 из 359and I think this defusingreinforces the moral judgments he makes. In spite of imagery that sometimes swamps us instead of uplifting us, he manages to retain his own clear point of view.
This isn't to say Bradbury doesn't make a romantic myth of childhood, because he sure does. Childhood itself is a myth for almost all of us. We think we remember what happened to us when we were kids, but we don't. The reason is simple: we were crazy then. Looking back into this well of insanity as adults who are, if not totally insane, then at least neurotic instead of out-and-out psychotic, we attempt to make sense of things which made no sense, read importance into things which had no importance, and remember motivations which simply didn't exist. This is where the process of myth making begins.*
Rather than trying to row against this strong current (as Golding and Hughes do), Bradbury uses it in Something Wicked This Way Comes ; blending the myth of childhood with the myth of the dream-father, whose part is played here by Will's dad, Charles Halloway . . . and, if Bradbury himself is to be believed, who is also played by that Illinois power-linesman who was Ray Bradbury's Dad. Halloway is a librarian who lives his own life of dreams, who is enough boy to understand Will and Jim, but who is also enough adult to provide, in the end, what the boys cannot provide for themselves, that final ingredient in our perception of Apollonian morality, normality, and rectitude: simple accountability.
*The only novels I can think of that avoid making childhood into a myth or a fairy tale and still succeed wonderfully as stories are William Golding's Lord of the Flier and A High Wind in Jamaica by Richard Hughes.
Someone will write me a letter and suggest that I should have added either Ian McEwan's The Cement Garden or Beryl Bainbridge's Harriet Said , but I think that, in their differing ways (but uniquely British outlook), both of these short novels romanticize childhood as thoroughly as Bradbury ever did.
Childhood is the time, Bradbury insists, when you are still able to believe in things you know cannot be true: "It's not true anyway," Will gasped. "Carnivals don't come this late in the year. Silly darn-sounding thing. Who'd go to it?” "Me." Jim stood quiet in the dark.
Me, thought Will, seeing the guillotine flash, the Egyptian mirrors unfold accordions of light, and the sulphur-skinned devil-man sipping lava, like gunpowder tea.
They simply believe; their hearts are still capable of overruling their heads.
This isn't to say Bradbury doesn't make a romantic myth of childhood, because he sure does. Childhood itself is a myth for almost all of us. We think we remember what happened to us when we were kids, but we don't. The reason is simple: we were crazy then. Looking back into this well of insanity as adults who are, if not totally insane, then at least neurotic instead of out-and-out psychotic, we attempt to make sense of things which made no sense, read importance into things which had no importance, and remember motivations which simply didn't exist. This is where the process of myth making begins.*
Rather than trying to row against this strong current (as Golding and Hughes do), Bradbury uses it in Something Wicked This Way Comes ; blending the myth of childhood with the myth of the dream-father, whose part is played here by Will's dad, Charles Halloway . . . and, if Bradbury himself is to be believed, who is also played by that Illinois power-linesman who was Ray Bradbury's Dad. Halloway is a librarian who lives his own life of dreams, who is enough boy to understand Will and Jim, but who is also enough adult to provide, in the end, what the boys cannot provide for themselves, that final ingredient in our perception of Apollonian morality, normality, and rectitude: simple accountability.
*The only novels I can think of that avoid making childhood into a myth or a fairy tale and still succeed wonderfully as stories are William Golding's Lord of the Flier and A High Wind in Jamaica by Richard Hughes.
Someone will write me a letter and suggest that I should have added either Ian McEwan's The Cement Garden or Beryl Bainbridge's Harriet Said , but I think that, in their differing ways (but uniquely British outlook), both of these short novels romanticize childhood as thoroughly as Bradbury ever did.
Childhood is the time, Bradbury insists, when you are still able to believe in things you know cannot be true: "It's not true anyway," Will gasped. "Carnivals don't come this late in the year. Silly darn-sounding thing. Who'd go to it?” "Me." Jim stood quiet in the dark.
Me, thought Will, seeing the guillotine flash, the Egyptian mirrors unfold accordions of light, and the sulphur-skinned devil-man sipping lava, like gunpowder tea.
They simply believe; their hearts are still capable of overruling their heads.