"Dan Simmons - Vanni Fucci is Well and Living in Hell" - читать интересную книгу автора (Simmons Dan)

Vanni Fucci Is Alive and Well and Living in
Hell
by Dan Simmons
Introduction
In America as we enter the "discount decade" of the Twentieth Century
($19.90-$19.95, etc.), one is so used to thinking that progress equals improvement
that it is almost heresy to be confronted with the absolute refutation of that premise.
For instance, take current theology. Please.
One can view Dante Alighieri's Inferno section of his Comedy as a personal venting
of spleen mixed with a lib-eral dose of S&M, but to do so would be to see it only
from our current, somewhat obsessed point of view. Dante was also obsessed, but
his objects of obsessionтАФbesides the lovely, lost BeatriceтАФcentered around
Virgil's Aeneid and Aquinas's Summa Theologica. Little wonder then that the
Inferno is a staggeringly complex theology, at once an exploration of cosmic
structure and of the all too personal fear of deathтАФthat fear "so bitterтАФdeath is
hardly more severe" (Inferno, 1,7).
Dante saw that fear of death as the one sure source of poetic and creative energy. In
that respect, little has changed since the early 14th Century.
But let's turn on the TV and see what passes for theol-ogy these six and a half
centuries later. In lieu of the po-etry of the Aeneid, we have the south-baked howl of
the sweating televangelist. In the stead of the intellectual ca-thedrals of the Summa
Theologica, we have the entire cathode-ray-tubed, satellite-relayed, hair-sprayed and
cosmetic-troweled message boiled down -to two words: Send money.
Agreed, televangelists aren't the theologians of this century, and they are excessively
easy targets after the rev-elations of the last few yearsтАФthe Jimmy Swaggart
vulgar-ities, the Rex Humbolt absurdities, and the Jimmy Bakker adulteries and
breakdowns. If it's any excuse, the follow-ing story was written before these
sideshows.
But the revelations were to be expected. As long as we live in a world where
"theology" has become a mixture of P.T. Barnum and Johnny Carson, where we
invite these parasites into our home via cable TV and satellite dish and radio ... well,
as the kid said in the classic New Yorker cartoon, "I say it's spinach, and I say to hell
with it."
***
On his last day on earth, Brother Freddy rose early, showered, shaved his chins,
sprayed his hair, put on his television make-up, dressed in his trademark three-piece
white suit with white shoes, pink shirt, and black string tie, and went down to his
office to have his pre-Hallelujah Breakfast Club breakfast with Sister Donna Lou,
Sister Betty Jo, Brother Billy Bob, and George.
The four munched on sweet rolls and sipped coffee as the slate-gray sky began to
lighten beyond the thirty-foot wall of bulletproof, heavily tinted glass. Clusters of tall,
brick buildings comprising the campus of Brother Freddy's Hallelujah Bible College
and Graduate School of Christian Economics seemed to solidify out of the predawn
Alabama gloom. Far to the east, just visible above the pecan groves, rose the
artificial mountain of the Mount Sinai Mad Mouse Ride in the Bible Land section of
Brother Freddy's Born Again Family Amusement Complex and Christian
Con-vention Center. Much closer, the great dish of a Holy Beamer, one of six huge
satellite dishes on the grounds of Brother Freddy's Bible Broadcast Center, sliced a
black arc from the cloud-laden sky. Brother Freddy glanced at the rain-sullen
weather and smiled. It did not matter what the real world beyond his office window