"Harlan Ellison - Paingod & Other Delusions" - читать интересную книгу автора (Ellison Harlan)

PAINGOD
AND OTHER DELUSIONS
HARLAN ELLISON
The first edition of this book was dedicated to a friend of fourteen years’ brotherhood. He is now a friend of
twenty-nine years’ shared joys and agonies. If anything, this rededication is even more appropriate, tagged as it is for

ROBERT SILVERBERG
Contents

New Introduction: Your Basic Crown of Thorns
Introduction to First Edition: SPERO MELIORA: From the Vicinity of Alienation
Paingod
“Repent, Harlequin!” Said the Ticktockman
The Crackpots
Sleeping Dogs
Bright Eyes
The Discarded
Wanted in Surgery
Deeper Than the Darkness
New Introduction:
Your Basic Crown of Thorns
ONE NIGHT, SOME YEARS AGO, maybe five or six, I woke up in the darkness and saw words burning bright-red on
the ceiling of my bedroom.

ARE YOU AWARE OF HOW MUCH
PAIN THERE IS IN THE WORLD?

I crawled out of the rack and felt my way through the house to my office, sat down at the typewriter, put on
the light and-still asleep-typed the words on paper. I went back to bed and forgot all about it. That night I had
programmed my dreams for a Sergio Leone spaghetti western with score by Morricone. No cartoon, no short subjects.
The next morning, coffee cup in hand, I went to my typewriter and found the question waiting for me, all alone
on a sheet of yellow foolscap. Rhetorical. Of course I knew how much pain there was in the world...is in the world.
But I couldn’t quite bring myself to ripping the sheet off the roller and getting on with what I should have
been working at. I sat and stared at it for the longest time.
Understand something: I am not a humanitarian. I distrust selfless philanthropists and doers of good deeds.
When you discover that the black natives of Lamborene hated Schweitzer, you begin to suspect noble individuals
have some secret need in them to be loved, to look good in others’ eyes, to succor themselves or dissipate their guilts
with benevolent gestures. Rather than the sanctimonious bullshit of politicians about “the good people of this fair
state” I would joyously vote for any candidate who had the courage to stand Up and say, “Look, I’m going to steal
from you. I’m going to line my pockets and those of my friends, but I’m not going to steal too much. But in the deal I’ll
give you better roads, safer schools, better education and a happier condition of life. I’m not going to do it out of
compassion or dedication to the good people of this fair state; I’m going to do it because if I do these things, you’ll
elect me again and I can steal a little bit more.” That joker has my vote, no arguments.
(Rule of thumb: whenever you hear a politician call it “the United States of America”‘ instead of simply..the
U.S.”-you know he’s bullshitting you. It’s like the convoluted syntax of college textbooks. When they start writing in a
prolix manner that makes you read a paragraph seven times to get the message See Dick and Jane run, oh oh oh! you
know someone is trying to flummox you. Same for politicians; if they start running a fast ramadoolah past you, instead
of speaking simply and directly, they’re trying to weasel. This lesson in good government comes to you through the
courtesy of a man who was snookered by Eugene McCarthy and George McGovern.)
So what I’m trying to tell you is that I’m last in the line of noble, unselfish, golden humanitarians. What I do