“It was not the last war, but the last victory.” Dmitry Bykov* - About Stephen King, who predicted everything

At the end of May, in the entire reading world, except Russia, Steven King’s new romance “Never Flinkh” was released. Dmitry Bykov* read it as quickly as he could (carefully: spoilers), and reflects on the face, after which the composition of the horror stops to insure from real horrors and begins to attract them. And also with a bonus offers its version of the Russian translation of the name of the novel.

The originality of Stephen King as a classic of a horror is that he does not set himself the task of entertaining or scaring the reader: his books are 90 percent autotherapy, for which, according to a pleasant coincidence, they pay well. More than half a century - since 1974, when Carrie had come out, although he had composed for 15 years before - King has been leading a chronicle of dysfunction, personal alarmism, terrible suspicions that came to the head of well -read neuroticism. As stated in the old story of another craftswoman Horror, Lyudmila Petrushevskaya: “Who was there to win - old people, women and neurotics, or what? Another thing is that we are all like that. ” And this seems to prove the popularity of King.

King is very quickly understood (he himself wrote in the afterword to a recent collection of stories that the story of the novel manages to fully form in his head while he is fastened with a shirt), and he came to mind a lot of terrible opportunities. Throwing out (more precisely, by throwing) these nightmarish probabilities in the world of King buys a little peace of mind, and at the same time - radio stations and shares. But spiritual peace of mind, I have no doubt, is more expensive for him. That is, I just know it by myself.

Barack Obama gives Steve King a US National Medal in the field of art, 2015

Reuters / Kevin Lamarque / Scanpix

I would call King the main writer of the post -war world, since the main sense of mankind after the prosperous, seemingly the end of the Second World War was a foreboding of much more serious cataclysms. The six -volume story of Churchill's work ended on an alarming note - he assured that nuclear weapons, since it was open, almost certainly would be used. Israel was created - but instead of turning the promised into the Earth, he became a splinter, the outpost of Jewry and the West in an extremely hostile environment. Stalin’s power was strengthened, but collapsed with him, and soon the Soviet project began to decompose with inevitably. America, this Siamese twin symmetrical Russia, after the collapse of the USSR, lost not only the enemy, but also the competitor who kept it in tone, and relaxed it, degrading in all directions.

What was happening today only highlighted and emphasized those anxieties, suspicions and threats, about which many preferred to be silent, so as not to be known as psycho - but the main evolution of the world in the post -war 80 years went in a rather unexpected direction:

In 1945, it seemed to many that this was the last war. Already in 1946, after Fulton, many suspected that this was the last victory.

In fact, the victory of mankind over fascism - what the surviving Bonzes of the Third Reich warned - was not final, purely temporary and in many ways random. If in 1945 it was possible to believe that a person by nature is a Christian and strives for creativity and knowledge, then 80 years later, where it is easier to believe (I resist, but many have already surrendered) that a person is more expensive than comfort and many times the screening of freedom, and units can withstand the instinct and pressure of the crowd. There is no doubt that in any critical situation, humanity is relaxed on the stagnant majority and the progressive “small herd”, but they will not be able to get along, as many hoped, as many people hoped.

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