"Flood" - читать интересную книгу автора (Vachss Andrew)

INTRODUCTION TO THE VINTAGE EDITION

Flood was not my first published book. The first effort was nonfiction: a textbook on juvenile violence and proposed solutions which arose from my stint running a maximum-security prison for youthful offenders. That first book was a “critical” success, but it never reached outside the “profession.” An itinerant preacher with a then-unacceptable brand of gospel that we make our own monsters and build our own beasts, that pervasive abuse and neglect of children is a greater danger to our species than cocaine and Communism combined, I longed for a bigger congregation. So I turned to “fiction,” essentially adding plot, characters (keeping the characteristics) and (I hoped) sufficient narrative force to get the reader engrossed sufficiently to present my case.

But I couldn’t get anyone to publish Flood, despite the best efforts of a wonderful, dedicated agent (Victor Chapin, to whom this book is dedicated) who maintained his belief in me despite reams of rejection letters which looked like photocopies: all saying what a wonderful writer I was, what a great “ear” for dialogue I had, what a “powerful narrative voice,” but… the material was “just impossible.” At that time (the early 1980s), the material that drives all my work was dismissed as “horror stories” or “grotesque exaggeration.”

We know better now. If I had one wish, it would be that the material from which I draw my novels was “fictional.” Once journalism “discovered” child abuse, it quickly became apparent that I was not “inventing” or “imagining” anything… I was simply reporting from Ground Zero. Where I have worked for three ugly decades.

Critical reaction to my books has varied (widely) ever since. But criticism on “authenticity” grounds has vanished with the tidal wave of headlines. The truth is inescapable. All that remains are the solutions, and the will to implement them.

Victor didn’t live to see Flood published. I wish he had. And I wish that this reprint was now “dated.” It is not. The beast still walks among us. I see myself not as a “writer,” but as a soldier in the only “Holy War” worthy of the name. This was the first shot I fired.