"Фредерик Браун. Night of the Jabberwock (англ) " - читать интересную книгу автора

admit that even the bad things have occasional touches of brilliance. There
are moments in Sylvie and Bruno that are almost worth reading through the
thousands of dull words to reach. And there are occasional good lines or
stanzas in even the worst poems. Take the first three lines of The Palace of
Humbug:
I dreamt I dwelt in marble halls,
And each damp thing that creeps and crawls
Went wobble-wobble on the walls.

"Of course he should have stopped there instead of adding fifteen or
twenty bad triads. But 'Went wobble-wobble on the walls' is marvelous."
He nodded. "Let's drink to it."
We drank to it.
He said, "Go on."
"No," I said. "I'm just realizing that I could easily go on for hours.
I can quote every line of verse in the Alice books and most of The Hunting
of the Snark. But, I both hope and presume, you didn't come here to listen
to me lecture on Lewis Carroll. My information about him is fairly thorough,
but quite orthodox. I judge that yours isn't, and I want to hear it."
I refilled our glasses.
He nodded slowly: "Quite right, Doctor. My I should say our
information is extremely unorthodox. I think you have the background and the
type of mind to understand it, and to believe it when you have seen proof.
To a more ordinary mind, it would seem sheer fantasy."
It was getting better by the minute. I said, "Don't stop now."
"Very well. But before I go any farther, I must warn you, of something,
Doctor. It is also very dangerous information to have. I do not speak
lightly or metaphorically. I mean that there is serious danger, deadly
danger."
"That," I said, "is wonderful."
He sat there and toyed with his glass still with the third drink in it
and didn't look at me. I studied his face. It was an interesting face. That
long, thin, pointed nose, so incongruous to his build that it might have
been false a veritable Cyrano de Bergerac of a nose. And now that he was in
the light, I could see that there were deep laughter-lines around his
generous mouth. At first I would have guessed his age at thirty instead of
the forty he claimed to be; now, studying his face closely, I could see that
he had not exaggerated his age. One would have to laugh a long time to etch
lines like those.
But he wasn't laughing now. He looked deadly serious, and he didn't
look crazy. But he said something that sounded crazy.
He said, "Doctor, has it ever occurred to you that that the fantasies
of Lewis Carroll are not fantasies at all?"
"Do you mean," I asked, "in the sense that fantasy is often nearer to
fundamental truth than is would-be realistic fiction?"
"No. I mean that they are literally, actually true. That they are not
fiction at all, that they are reporting."
I stared at him. "If you think that, then who or what do you think
Lewis Carroll was?"
He smiled faintly, but it wasn't a smile of amusement.