JК
Danse Macabre :: Кинг Стивен
Страница: 325 из 359Sucha dull fact, however, is hardly enough to kill such a powerful image . . . and I understand that a movie which takes this image as its text is on the way.
Ellison has always been a sociological sort of writer, and we can almost feel him seizing upon the symbolic possibilities of such an idea, and when the protagonist descends deep enough into this purgatorial world, he discovers a mystery of cryptic, Lovecraftian proportions: At the entrance to their land someone-not the children, they couldn't have done it-long ago built a road sign. It is a rotted log on which has been placed, carved from fine cherrywood, a book and a hand. The book is open, and the hand rests on the book, one finger touching the single word carved in the open pages. The word is CROATOAN.
Further along, the secret is revealed. Like the alligators of the myth, the fetuses have not died. The sin is not so easily gotten rid of. Used to swimming in placental waters, in their own way as primitive and reptilian as alligators themselves, the fetuses have survived the flush and live here in the dark, symbolically existing in the filth and the shit dropped down on them from the society of our overworld. They are the embodiment of such Old Testament maxims as "Sin never dies" and "Be sure your sin will find you out.” Down here in this land beneath the city live the children. They live easily and in strange ways. I am only now coming to know the incredible manner of their existence. How they eat, what they eat, how they manage to survive, and have managed for hundreds of years, these are all things I learn day by day, with wonder surmounting wonder.
I am the only adult here.
They have been waiting for me.
They call me father.
At its simplest, "Croatoan" is a tale of the just Revenge. The protagonist is a rotter who has casually impregnated a number of women; the abortion on Carol is not the first one his friends Denise and Joanna have performed for this irresponsible Don Juan ( although they swear it will be the last). The Just Revenge is that he finds his dodged responsibilities have been waiting for him all along, as implacable as the rotting corpse which so often returned from the dead to hunt down its killer in the archetypical Haunt of Fear story ( the Graham Ingles classic "Horror We? How's Bayou?" for instance) .
But Ellison's prose style is arresting, his grasp of this myth-image of the lost alligators seems solid and complete, and his evocation of this unsuspected underworld is marvelous.
Ellison has always been a sociological sort of writer, and we can almost feel him seizing upon the symbolic possibilities of such an idea, and when the protagonist descends deep enough into this purgatorial world, he discovers a mystery of cryptic, Lovecraftian proportions: At the entrance to their land someone-not the children, they couldn't have done it-long ago built a road sign. It is a rotted log on which has been placed, carved from fine cherrywood, a book and a hand. The book is open, and the hand rests on the book, one finger touching the single word carved in the open pages. The word is CROATOAN.
Further along, the secret is revealed. Like the alligators of the myth, the fetuses have not died. The sin is not so easily gotten rid of. Used to swimming in placental waters, in their own way as primitive and reptilian as alligators themselves, the fetuses have survived the flush and live here in the dark, symbolically existing in the filth and the shit dropped down on them from the society of our overworld. They are the embodiment of such Old Testament maxims as "Sin never dies" and "Be sure your sin will find you out.” Down here in this land beneath the city live the children. They live easily and in strange ways. I am only now coming to know the incredible manner of their existence. How they eat, what they eat, how they manage to survive, and have managed for hundreds of years, these are all things I learn day by day, with wonder surmounting wonder.
I am the only adult here.
They have been waiting for me.
They call me father.
At its simplest, "Croatoan" is a tale of the just Revenge. The protagonist is a rotter who has casually impregnated a number of women; the abortion on Carol is not the first one his friends Denise and Joanna have performed for this irresponsible Don Juan ( although they swear it will be the last). The Just Revenge is that he finds his dodged responsibilities have been waiting for him all along, as implacable as the rotting corpse which so often returned from the dead to hunt down its killer in the archetypical Haunt of Fear story ( the Graham Ingles classic "Horror We? How's Bayou?" for instance) .
But Ellison's prose style is arresting, his grasp of this myth-image of the lost alligators seems solid and complete, and his evocation of this unsuspected underworld is marvelous.