"Harlan Ellison - Shatterday" - читать интересную книгу автора (Ellison Harlan)

Alive and Well and on a Friendless Voyage
All the Birds Come Home to Roost
Opium
The Other Eye of Polyphemus
The Executioner of the Malformed Children
Shatterday
Fear is implanted in us as a preservative from evil; but its duty, like that of other passions, is
not to overbear reason, but to assist it. It should not be suffered to tyrannize in the
imagination, to raise phantoms of horror, or to beset life with supernumerary distresses.

--DR. JOHNSON
Introduction
MORTAL DREADS

WITH A TOUCH of quiet pride the Author states that he has watched the Johnny Carson
Show only once in his life. (The single blot on an otherwise exemplary record occurred when
I was pressed, one night, into sitting through consummate dreariness to reach the moment
when Robert Blake, a friend of many years even though heтАЩs an actor, was to sit and talk to
Orson Welles, one of my heroes despite his hawking of inferior commercial wines. It was a
moment I wish had been denied me. Bob, a good and decent and talented man, clever, witty
and articulate, perhaps driven mad by the fame and cheap notoriety of having become a
television cult hero for several seasons, proceeded to insult Mr. Welles in a manner I suppose
he thought was bright badinage. It was a maleficent spectacle in overwhelming bad taste,
culminating in BobтАЩs passing a remark about Mr. WellesтАЩs girth.
(Welles sat silently for a moment as the audience--and I--winced in disbelief and
horror. Then he said, very softly, very softly, тАЬMy weight is correctable only with enormous
difficulty at my age, but I live with it comfortably; as opposed to your bad manners.тАЭ)
There should be benign deities who would send ravens to pluck out oneтАЩs eyes so
such sights could be avoided.
I did not need to see my friend make an ass of himself. And I sat there thinking, for a
wonder, is this what a vast segment of the American viewing public truly accepts as тАЬthe
rebirth of conversationтАЭ? This endless babble and confluence of self-serving тАЬcelebritiesтАЭ
who warm studio sets with the indispensable intelligence that theyтАЩll be doing Pal Joey at the
Country Squire Dinner Theatre in Lubbock, Texas from June 12th to 18th?
And I could not contain my sorrow that my friend had been driven mad by television,
to sit there having been gulled into thinking he was having a тАЬconversationтАЭ before so many
millions of moon-white eyes in darkened bedrooms. But this time I will not inveigh against
the Monster Video; that was the fulmination that served to introduce my previous collection
of stories, Strange Wine.
No, this time I would speak of conversation; of speaking to the true and universal
darkness that fills so much of our souls. Of mortal dreads and the value of such terrors as I
present here.
I do a considerable number of college lectures every year. It helps pay the freight so I
donтАЩt have to write television ever again. From my lips to the ear of god...or whoeverтАЩs in
charge. And frequently I will say something about the human condition that seems perfectly
rational and proper to me, because I know we all share the same thoughts. Invariably, some
feep in the audience will attempt to pillory me with the stunning accusation, тАЬYou only said
that to shock!тАЭ
My response is always the same:
тАЬYou bet your ass, slushface. Of course I said it to shock you (or wrote it to shock