"GL2" - читать интересную книгу автора (vol09)

Night 60. Thursday, February 20th, 1987.(6) [Defective at the
beginning. Ramer's story is lost.]

[When Michael Ramer had finished] reading his story, we sat
in silence for a while. He had not read us anything for a long
time; in fact he had seldom appeared at meetings for a year or
more. His excuses for absence, when he gave any, had been
vague and evasive. On this occasion the Club was better
attended than usual, and no more easy to please. That hardly
accounted for Ramer's nervousness. He is one of our oldest
members, and was at one time one of our most frequent
performers; but to-night he read hastily, boggling and stumb-
ling. So much so that Frankley made him read several sentences
over again, though these interruptions, which only made mat-
ters worse, are omitted above. Now he was fidgetting.
'Well?' he said at last. 'What do you think of it? Will it do?'
A few of us stirred, but nobody spoke.
'Oh, come on! I may as well get the worst over first. What
have you got to say?' he urged, turning to Guildford in the next
chair.
'I don't know,' Guildford answered reluctantly. 'You know
how I dislike criticizing...'

'I've never noticed it before,' said Frankley.
'Go on, Nicholas!' laughed Lowdham. 'You dislike it about
as much as Philip dislikes interrupting.'
'At any rate I don't criticize unfinished sentences,' said
Guildford. 'If I'd not been interrupted, I was going to say I
dislike criticizing off-hand, and still in the heat of listening.'
'In the chill's your more usual temperature,' said Lowdham.(7)
'Most unfair! I'm a voracious reader, and I like stories.'
A chorus of incredulous shouts followed, but Guildford could
just be heard amending his words, first to I read a good many
tales and like most of them, and finally to I do like some stories,
including one or two of Ramer's. 'But it's much more difficult,'
he went on at last, 'to say anything about the liking, especially
so soon. Liking is often much more complex than dislike. And
it's less necessary to say anything about it in a hurry. The feeling
of liking has a very lasting flavour; it can wait, it's often better
for being stored for a bit. But defects stick out all hard and
painful, while one's still close at hand.'
'For those who have the knack of seeing them in every literary
landscape,' Ramer interposed.
'There are minor ones,' Guildford went on unperturbed, 'that
may, of course, get forgotten, or be overlooked by familiarity;
but they are better removed while fresh.'
'The sort that Philip corrects at once while you are reading?'
said Ramer.
'Yes,' said Guildford. 'But there are more serious faults than
his anacolutha and split infinitives that may also get passed, if