"William Tenn - The Human Angle" - читать интересную книгу автора (Tenn William)

very low in the back. When you sat in it, things began sliding out of your
pocketsтАФloose change, keys, wallets, anythingтАФand into the jungle of rusty springs
and rotting wood-work below.
Whenever newcomers came to the place, Morniel would make a big fuss about
showing them to "the com-fortable chair. " And as they twisted about painfully try-ing
to find a spot between the springs, his eyes would gleam and he'd get all lit up with
good cheer. Because the more they moved about, the more would fall out of their
pockets.
After a party, he 'd take the chair apart and start count-ing the receipts, like a store
owner hitting the cash regis-ter the evening after a fire sale.
The only trouble was, to sit in the wooden chair, you had to concentrate, since it
teetered.
Morniel couldn't loseтАФhe always sat on the bed.
"I can't wait for the day," he was saying, "when some dealer, some critic, with an
ounce of brain in his head sees my work. I can't miss, Dave, I know I can 't miss; I'm
just too good. Sometimes I get frightened at how good I amтАФit 's almost too much
talent for one man."
"Well," I said, "there's always theтАФ"
"Not that it's too much talent for me," he went on, fearful that I might have
misunderstood him. "I 'm big enough to carry it, fortunately; I'm large enough of soul.
But another, lesser guy would be destroyed by this much totality of perception, this
comprehension of the spiritual gestalt as I like to put it. His mind would just crack
wide open under the load. Not me, though, Dave, not me. "
"Good, " I said. "Glad to hear it. Now if you don 't mтАФ "
"
Do you know what I was thinking about this morn-ing? "
 "No," I said. "But, to tell you the truth, I don 't reallyтАФ"
"
I was thinking about Picasso, Dave. Picasso and Roualt. I'd just gone for a walk
through the pushcart area to have my breakfastтАФyou know, the old
the-hand-is-quicker-than-the-eye MornielтАФand I started to think about the state of
modern painting. I think about that a lot, Dave. It troubles me."
"You do?" I said. "Well, I tend toтАФ"
"I walked down Bleecker Street, then I swung into Washington Square Park, and
while I walked, I was thinking: Who is doing really important work in paint-ing today
who is really and unquestionably great? I could think of only three names: Picasso,
RoualtтАФand me. There's nobody else doing anything worthwhile and orig-inal
nowadays. Just three names out of the whole host of people painting all over the
world at this moment: just three names, no more. It made me feel very lonely, Dave."
"
I can see that, " I said. "But then, youтАФ "
"And then I asked myself, why is this so? Has absolute genius always been so
rare, is there an essential statistical limitation on it in every period, or is there another
reason, peculiar to our own time. And why has my impending discovery been
delayed so long? I thought about it for a long time, Dave. I thought about it humbly,
carefully, because it's an important question. And this is the answer I came up with. "
I gave up. I just sat back in my chairтАФnot too far back, of courseтАФand listened
to him expound a theory of es-thetics I'd heard at least a dozen times before, from a
dozen other painters in the Village. The only point of difference between them was
on the question of exactly who was the culmination and the most perfect living