"Thomas M. Disch - The Shadow" - читать интересную книгу автора (Disch Thomas M)

THE SHADOW
Thomas M. Disch




Thomas M. Disch
(www.michaelscycles.freeserve.co.uk/tmd.htm)
lives in New York City and in rural
Pennsylvania. He is a prominent science
fiction writer who occasionally writes fantasy
and horror. Though his early reputation was
based on the excellence of his SF novels
—The Genocides (1965), The Puppies
of Terra (1966), and Camp
Concentration (1968)—he has a broad
range and has had success outside the SF &
fantasy field as a poet, critic, and novelist.
On Wings of Song (1979) was his last
published SF novel. He published two horror
novels, The Businessman: A Tale of
Terror (1984) and The M.D.: A Horror
Story (1991). His most notable
contributions to American pop culture are his
children’s books, The Brave Little
Toaster (1981) and The Brave Little
Toaster Goes to Mars, (1988), both of
which have been made into Disney films.
Though the Toaster books have the
earnestness appropriate to their audience,
usually Disch has a wicked sense of humor.
 “The Shadow,” which appeared in
F&SF, shows Disch in his dark satirical
mode. It is one of several good stories we’ve
seen recently dealing with Alzheimer’s. Here
Disch gives this sensitive subject a treatment
reminiscent of the dark fantastic tales of
E.T.A. Hoffmann, something that shouldn’t
work, but does!




Her neighbors said of Angie Sweetwater that she was afraid
of her own shadow, and in a way they were right, though not in the
way they meant and not in any way that Angie—or her neighbors,
for that matter—could have understood. The thing is, Angie had a
nasty shadow, always thinking dark thoughts and itching to have a
life of its own away from Angie and the little brick house on Wythe
Lane where she lived all by herself. She’d lived there alone like that