"Harlan Ellison - Shatterday" - читать интересную книгу автора (Ellison Harlan)

The Real World exists utterly in the Now; in a present time that seems to find the
dearly remembered Past abhorrent, unbearable. And so, as this story contends, the Present
tries to eradicate the Past. Please note that a distinction is drawn between change and
eradication. This is not one of those embalmed adorations of nostalgic sentimentality. It
merely suggests for your consideration that there are treasures of the Past that we seem too
quickly brutally ready to dump down the incinerator of Progress. At what cost, it suggests, do
we pursue the goal of being au courant?
There are those who ask me, “Where do you get your ideas?” Of all the silly
questions asked of writers, that one, surely, is the silliest. It presupposes there is a place or a
method by which dreams become actualities on paper.
No. There is no such place (though I usually respond with the spine-straightener that I
get my stories from an idea service in Poughkeepsie, New York... $25 a week and they send
me a fresh six-pack of ideas fifty-two times a year). and there is no universally explicable
method (hell, not even Aristotle could codify the act of creation). But you’d be both amazed
and appalled at how many people ask me for the address of that idea service in Poughkeepsie.
But this I can tell you of how I came to write “Jeffty Is Five”:
My friends Walter and Judy Koenig invited me to a party. I don’t like parties. I do
like Walter and Judy. I also like their kids. I went to the party.
Mostly I sat near the fireplace, friendly but not overly ebullient. Mostly I talked to
Walter and Judy’s son, Josh, who is remarkable beyond the telling. And then I overheard a
snatch of conversation. An actor named Jack Danon said--I thought he said--something like
this--”Jeff is five, he’s always five.” No, not really. He didn’t say anything like that at all.
What he probably said was, “Jeff is fine, he’s always fine.” Or perhaps it was something
completely different.
But I had been awed and delighted by Josh Koenig, and I instantly thought of just
such a child who was arrested in time at the age of five. Jeffty, in no small measure, is Josh:
the sweetness of Josh, the intelligence of Josh, the questioning nature of Josh.
Thus from admiration of one wise and innocent child, and from a misheard remark,
the process not even Aristotle could codify was triggered. And soon afterward, Jeffty and
Donny and the terrible and wonderful thing that happened to them ordered itself on paper.
One more thing about this story.
Despite what seems to be a quality of universality that I attribute to you more than to
me or to any great genius in the writing of it, the ending of the story somehow escapes the
slovenly reader. It’s all there, what happened to Jeffty. Very clearly. It’s done with what I
hope is some subtlety, and you may have to read the last page or so with some careful
attention to detail... but it’s all there.
As the Past is always there, if you learn from it; treasure the treasures and let the
dross go without remorse.
Writers take tours in other people’s lives. Jeffty is me; he is also you. This is a short,
memory-filled trip through your own life.
Jeffty is Five

WHEN I WAS FIVE YEARS OLD, there was a little kid I played with: Jeffty. His real name
was Jeff Kinzer, and everyone who played with him called him Jeffty. We were five years old
together, and we had good times playing together.
When I was five, a Clark Bar was as fat around as the gripping end of a Louisville
Slugger, and pretty nearly six inches long, and they used real chocolate to coat it, and it
crunched very nicely when you bit into the center, and the paper it came wrapped in smelled
fresh and good when you peeled off one end to hold the bar so it wouldn’t melt onto your
fingers. Today, a Clark Bar is as thin as a credit card, they use something artificial and awful-