JК
Danse Macabre :: Кинг Стивен
Страница: 42 из 359In many ways I see the horror films of the late fifties and early sixties-up until Psycho , let us say-as paeans to the congested pore. I've suggested that it may be impossible for a people whose bellies are full to feel real horror. Similarly, Americans have had to severely limit their conceptions of physical deformity-and that is why the pimple has played such an important part in the developing psyche of the American teenager.
Of course, there's probably a guy out there, a guy born with a congenital birth defect, who's muttering to himself: don't talk to me about deformity, you asshole . . . and it is certainly true that there are Americans with club feet, Americans without noses, amputee Americans, blind Americans ( I've always wondered if the blind of America felt discriminated against by that McDonald's jingle that goes, "Keep your eyes on your fries . . ."). Beside such cataclysmic physical fuck-ups of God, man, and nature, a few pimples look about as serious as a hangnail. But I should also point out that in America, cataclysmic physical fuckups are (so far, at least) the exception rather than the rule. Walk down any ordinary street in America and count the serious physical defects you see. If you can walk three miles and come up with more than half a dozen, you're beating the average by a good country mile. Look for people under forty whose teeth have rotted right down to the gum line, children with the bloated bellies of oncoming starvation, folks with smallpox scars, and you will look in vain. You'll not find folks in the A & P with running sores on their faces or untreated ulcers on their arms and legs; if you set up a Head Inspection Station at the corner of Broad and Main, you could check a hundred heads and come up with only four or five really lively colonies of head lice. Incidence of these and other ailments rise in. white rural areas and in the inner cities, but in the towns and suburbs of America, most people are looking good. The proliferation of self-help courses, the growing cult of personal development ("I'm going to be more assertive, if that's all right with you," as Erma Bombeck says), and the increasingly widespread hobby of navel-contemplation are all signs that, for the time being, great numbers of Americans have taken care of the nitty-gritty realities of life as it is for most of the world-the survival trip.
I can't imagine anyone with a severe nutritional deficiency caring much about I'm OK-You're OK , or anyone trying to scratch out a subsistence-level existence for himself, his wife, and his eight kids giving much of a toot about Werner Erhard's est course or Rolfing. Such things are for rich folks.
Of course, there's probably a guy out there, a guy born with a congenital birth defect, who's muttering to himself: don't talk to me about deformity, you asshole . . . and it is certainly true that there are Americans with club feet, Americans without noses, amputee Americans, blind Americans ( I've always wondered if the blind of America felt discriminated against by that McDonald's jingle that goes, "Keep your eyes on your fries . . ."). Beside such cataclysmic physical fuck-ups of God, man, and nature, a few pimples look about as serious as a hangnail. But I should also point out that in America, cataclysmic physical fuckups are (so far, at least) the exception rather than the rule. Walk down any ordinary street in America and count the serious physical defects you see. If you can walk three miles and come up with more than half a dozen, you're beating the average by a good country mile. Look for people under forty whose teeth have rotted right down to the gum line, children with the bloated bellies of oncoming starvation, folks with smallpox scars, and you will look in vain. You'll not find folks in the A & P with running sores on their faces or untreated ulcers on their arms and legs; if you set up a Head Inspection Station at the corner of Broad and Main, you could check a hundred heads and come up with only four or five really lively colonies of head lice. Incidence of these and other ailments rise in. white rural areas and in the inner cities, but in the towns and suburbs of America, most people are looking good. The proliferation of self-help courses, the growing cult of personal development ("I'm going to be more assertive, if that's all right with you," as Erma Bombeck says), and the increasingly widespread hobby of navel-contemplation are all signs that, for the time being, great numbers of Americans have taken care of the nitty-gritty realities of life as it is for most of the world-the survival trip.
I can't imagine anyone with a severe nutritional deficiency caring much about I'm OK-You're OK , or anyone trying to scratch out a subsistence-level existence for himself, his wife, and his eight kids giving much of a toot about Werner Erhard's est course or Rolfing. Such things are for rich folks.