JК
Danse Macabre :: Кинг Стивен
Страница: 73 из 359I don't have any interest in reheating that hash here; if you're interested in pursuing that subject, I recommend the introduction to you; all my relatives loved it.
The question here is a more esoteric one: Why do people have such an interest in my interest-and in their own? I believe that, more than anything else, it's because we all have a postulate buried deep in our minds: that an interest in horror is unhealthy and aberrant. So when people say, "Why do you write that stuff?" they are really inviting me to lie down on the couch and explain about the time I was locked in the cellar for three weeks, or my toilet training, or possibly some abnormal sibling rivalry. Nobody wants to know if Arthur Hailey or Harold Robbins took an unusually long time learning to use the potty, because writing about banks and airports and How I Made My First Million are subjects which seem perfectly normal.
There is something totally American in wanting to know how things work (which goes a long way toward explaining the phenomenal success of the Penthouse Forum , I think; what all those letters are really discussing is the rocketry of intercourse, the possible trajectories of oral sex and the how-to of various exotic positions-all as American as apple pie; Forum is simply a sexual plumbing manual for the enthusiastic do-it-yourselfer), but something unsettlingly alien about a taste for monsters, haunted houses, and the Thing that Crawled Out of the Crypt at Midnight. Questioners automatically turn into reasonable facsimiles of that amusing comic-strip psychiatrist Victor De Groot, ignoring the fact that making things up for money-which is what any writer of fiction does-is a pretty bizarre way to earn a living.
In March of 1979, I was invited to be one of three speakers on a panel discussing horror at an event known as the Ides of Mohonk (a onceyearly gathering of mystery writers and fans sponsored by Murder Ink, a nifty mystery-and-detection bookshop in Manhattan). During the course of the panel discussion I told a story that my mother had told me about myself-the event occurred when I was barely four, so perhaps I can be excused for remembering her story of it but not the actual event.
According to Mom, I had gone off to play at a neighbor's house-a house that was near a railroad line. About an hour after I left I came back (she said), as white as a ghost. I would not speak for the rest of that day; I would not tell her why I'd not waited to be picked up or phoned that I wanted to come home; I would not tell her why my chum's mom hadn't walked me back but had allowed me to come alone.
The question here is a more esoteric one: Why do people have such an interest in my interest-and in their own? I believe that, more than anything else, it's because we all have a postulate buried deep in our minds: that an interest in horror is unhealthy and aberrant. So when people say, "Why do you write that stuff?" they are really inviting me to lie down on the couch and explain about the time I was locked in the cellar for three weeks, or my toilet training, or possibly some abnormal sibling rivalry. Nobody wants to know if Arthur Hailey or Harold Robbins took an unusually long time learning to use the potty, because writing about banks and airports and How I Made My First Million are subjects which seem perfectly normal.
There is something totally American in wanting to know how things work (which goes a long way toward explaining the phenomenal success of the Penthouse Forum , I think; what all those letters are really discussing is the rocketry of intercourse, the possible trajectories of oral sex and the how-to of various exotic positions-all as American as apple pie; Forum is simply a sexual plumbing manual for the enthusiastic do-it-yourselfer), but something unsettlingly alien about a taste for monsters, haunted houses, and the Thing that Crawled Out of the Crypt at Midnight. Questioners automatically turn into reasonable facsimiles of that amusing comic-strip psychiatrist Victor De Groot, ignoring the fact that making things up for money-which is what any writer of fiction does-is a pretty bizarre way to earn a living.
In March of 1979, I was invited to be one of three speakers on a panel discussing horror at an event known as the Ides of Mohonk (a onceyearly gathering of mystery writers and fans sponsored by Murder Ink, a nifty mystery-and-detection bookshop in Manhattan). During the course of the panel discussion I told a story that my mother had told me about myself-the event occurred when I was barely four, so perhaps I can be excused for remembering her story of it but not the actual event.
According to Mom, I had gone off to play at a neighbor's house-a house that was near a railroad line. About an hour after I left I came back (she said), as white as a ghost. I would not speak for the rest of that day; I would not tell her why I'd not waited to be picked up or phoned that I wanted to come home; I would not tell her why my chum's mom hadn't walked me back but had allowed me to come alone.