JК
Danse Macabre :: Кинг Стивен
Страница: 344 из 359All the bad nasty bugs got out of their cannister and killed a bunch of sheep. But, the news article stated, if the wind had been blowing the other way, the good people of Salt Lake City might have gotten a very nasty surprise. This article called up memories of a novel called Earth Abides , by George R. Stewart.
In Stewart's book, a plague wipes out most of mankind, and the protagonist, who has been made immune by virtue of a well-timed snakebite, witnesses the ecological changes which the passing of man causes. The first half of Stewart's long book is riveting; the second half is more of an uphill push-too much ecology, not enough story.
We were living in Boulder, Colorado, at the time, and I used to listen to the Bible-thumping station which broadcast out of Arvada quite regularly. One day I heard a preacher dilating upon the text "Once in every generation the plague will fall among them." I liked the sound of the phrase-which sounds like a Biblical quotation but is not-so well that I wrote it down and tacked it over my typewriter: Once in every generation the plague will fall among them .
This phrase and the story about the CBW spill in Utah and my memories of Stewart's fine book all became entwined in my thoughts about Patty Hearst and the SLA, and one day while sitting at my typewriter, my eyes traveling back and forth between that creepy homily on the wall to the maddeningly blank sheet of paper in the machine, I wrote-just to write something: The world comes to an end but everybody in the SLA is somehow immune. Snake bit them . I looked at that for a while and then typed: No more gas shortages . That was sort of cheerful, in a horrible sort of way. No more people, no more gas lines. Below No more gas shortages I wrote in rapid order: No more cold war. No more pollution. No more alligator handbags. No more crime. A season of rest . I liked that last; it sounded like something that should be written down. I underlined it. I sat there for another fifteen minutes or so, listening to the Eagles on my little cassette player, and then I wrote: Donald DeFreeze is a dark man . I did not mean that DeFreeze was black; it had suddenly occurred to me that, in the photos taken during the bank robbery in which Patty Hearst participated, you could barely see DeFreeze's face. He was wearing a big badass hat, and what he looked like was mostly guesswork. I wrote A dark man with no face and then glanced up and saw that grisly little motto again: Once in every generation the plague will fall among them . And that was that. I spent the next two years writing an apparently endless book called The Stand .
In Stewart's book, a plague wipes out most of mankind, and the protagonist, who has been made immune by virtue of a well-timed snakebite, witnesses the ecological changes which the passing of man causes. The first half of Stewart's long book is riveting; the second half is more of an uphill push-too much ecology, not enough story.
We were living in Boulder, Colorado, at the time, and I used to listen to the Bible-thumping station which broadcast out of Arvada quite regularly. One day I heard a preacher dilating upon the text "Once in every generation the plague will fall among them." I liked the sound of the phrase-which sounds like a Biblical quotation but is not-so well that I wrote it down and tacked it over my typewriter: Once in every generation the plague will fall among them .
This phrase and the story about the CBW spill in Utah and my memories of Stewart's fine book all became entwined in my thoughts about Patty Hearst and the SLA, and one day while sitting at my typewriter, my eyes traveling back and forth between that creepy homily on the wall to the maddeningly blank sheet of paper in the machine, I wrote-just to write something: The world comes to an end but everybody in the SLA is somehow immune. Snake bit them . I looked at that for a while and then typed: No more gas shortages . That was sort of cheerful, in a horrible sort of way. No more people, no more gas lines. Below No more gas shortages I wrote in rapid order: No more cold war. No more pollution. No more alligator handbags. No more crime. A season of rest . I liked that last; it sounded like something that should be written down. I underlined it. I sat there for another fifteen minutes or so, listening to the Eagles on my little cassette player, and then I wrote: Donald DeFreeze is a dark man . I did not mean that DeFreeze was black; it had suddenly occurred to me that, in the photos taken during the bank robbery in which Patty Hearst participated, you could barely see DeFreeze's face. He was wearing a big badass hat, and what he looked like was mostly guesswork. I wrote A dark man with no face and then glanced up and saw that grisly little motto again: Once in every generation the plague will fall among them . And that was that. I spent the next two years writing an apparently endless book called The Stand .