JК
Danse Macabre :: Кинг Стивен
Страница: 347 из 359" And I felt a bit the way Johnny Rotten sounds at the beginning of that classic and electrifying Sex Pistols song, "Anarchy for the U.K." He utters a low, throaty chuckle that might have come from Randall Flagg's own throat and then intones, "Right . . . NOW !" we hear that voice, and our reaction is one of intense relief. The worst is now known; we are in the hands of an authentic madman.
In this frame of mind, the destruction of THE WORLD AS WE KNOW IT became an actual relief. No more Ronald McDonald! No more Gong Show or Soap on TV-just soothing snow!
No more terrorists! No more bullshit .' Only the Gordian knot unwinding there in the dust. I am suggesting that below the writer of the moral horror tale (whose feet, like those of Henry Jekyll, are "always treading the upward path") there lies another creature altogether. He lives, let us say, down there on Jack Finney's third level, arid he is a capering nihilist who, to extend the Jekyll-Hyde metaphor, is not content to tread over the tender bones of one screaming little girl but in this case feels it necessary to do the funky chicken over the whole world. Yes, folks, in The Stand I got a chance to scrub the whole human race, and it was fun !
So where is morality now?
Well, I'll give you my idea. I think it lies where it has always lain: in the hearts and minds of men and women of good will. In the case of the writer, this may mean beginning with a nihilistic premise and gradually relearning old lessons of human values and human conduct. In the case of The Stand , this meant beginning with the glum premise that the human race carries a kind of germ with it-I began by seeing this germ symbolically visualized in the SLA, and ended by seeing it visualized in the superflu germ-which grows more and more virulent as technology grows in power. The superflu is unleashed by a single technological misstep (not such a far-fetched presumption, either, when you consider what happened at Three Mile Island last year or the fact that Loring AFB in my own state scrambled bombers and fighters ready to head over the pole toward Russia as the result of an amusing little computer foulup which suggested that the Russians had launched their missiles and the Big Hot One was on). By simple agreement with myself to allow a few survivors-no survivors, no story, am I right?-I was able to envision a world in which all the nuclear stockpiles would simply rust away and some kind of normal moral, political, and ecological balance would return to the mad universe we call home.
In this frame of mind, the destruction of THE WORLD AS WE KNOW IT became an actual relief. No more Ronald McDonald! No more Gong Show or Soap on TV-just soothing snow!
No more terrorists! No more bullshit .' Only the Gordian knot unwinding there in the dust. I am suggesting that below the writer of the moral horror tale (whose feet, like those of Henry Jekyll, are "always treading the upward path") there lies another creature altogether. He lives, let us say, down there on Jack Finney's third level, arid he is a capering nihilist who, to extend the Jekyll-Hyde metaphor, is not content to tread over the tender bones of one screaming little girl but in this case feels it necessary to do the funky chicken over the whole world. Yes, folks, in The Stand I got a chance to scrub the whole human race, and it was fun !
So where is morality now?
Well, I'll give you my idea. I think it lies where it has always lain: in the hearts and minds of men and women of good will. In the case of the writer, this may mean beginning with a nihilistic premise and gradually relearning old lessons of human values and human conduct. In the case of The Stand , this meant beginning with the glum premise that the human race carries a kind of germ with it-I began by seeing this germ symbolically visualized in the SLA, and ended by seeing it visualized in the superflu germ-which grows more and more virulent as technology grows in power. The superflu is unleashed by a single technological misstep (not such a far-fetched presumption, either, when you consider what happened at Three Mile Island last year or the fact that Loring AFB in my own state scrambled bombers and fighters ready to head over the pole toward Russia as the result of an amusing little computer foulup which suggested that the Russians had launched their missiles and the Big Hot One was on). By simple agreement with myself to allow a few survivors-no survivors, no story, am I right?-I was able to envision a world in which all the nuclear stockpiles would simply rust away and some kind of normal moral, political, and ecological balance would return to the mad universe we call home.