"Confessions of A Crap Artist (1975)" - читать интересную книгу автора (Dick Phillip K)

Like an observer from another planet entirely,
he is a kind of gutter sociologist among us. I
like him; I approve of him. I wonder, another
twenty years from now, if his opinions may not
seem even more right on. He is, in many ways, a
superior person.

At the end, for instance, when he realizes he
was wrong, that the world is not going to end,
he is able to survive this extraordinary (for
him) realization; he adjusts. I wonder if we
could do as well if we learned that he was
right, and we were wrong. But perhaps most
important of all, as Jack himself observed,
didn't we see all the normal human beings, the
sane and educated and balanced ones, destroy
themselves in truly dreadful ways? And see Jack
steer clear, throughout, of virtually all moral
wrongdoing? If his common sense, his practical
judgment as to what is, and as to what he can or
can't do, is fucked, what about his refusal to
be led into criminal and evil acts? He stays
free; from a realistic standpoint he is doomed
and damned, but from a moral one, a spiritual
one if you will, he winds up untarnished. . .and
it is certainly his victory, and a measure of
his shrewd judgment, that he realizes this and
points it out.

So Jack has insight into himself and the world
around him to an enormous degree. He is no
dummy. From a purely survival standpoint, maybe
he will--and ought to--make it. Maybe, like the
Emperor Claudius of Rome, like "The Idiot," he
is one of God's favored fools; maybe he is an
authentic avatar of Parsifal, the guileless fool
of the medieval legends. . .if so, we can use
him, and a lot more like him.

This forgiving man, capable of evaluating
without prejudice (in the final analysis) the
hearts and actions of his fellow men, is to me a
sort of romantic hero; I certainly had myself in
mind when I wrote it, and now, after reading it
again so many years later, I am pleased at my
inner model, my alter self, Jack Isidore of
Seville, California: more selfless than I am,
more kind, and in a deep deep way a better man.