Ellison, e-books, e-książki, ksiązki, , .-y
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Comes now the double-cross. If you're reading these consecu-tively, Ellison follows Ballard like a double-shot of Jack Daniel'safter a whisky sour. He is about to punch you in the belly. Hisprose is as stark as a skull by Georgia O'Keefe and as steady<w a jackhammer. His themes are always different and alwaysinteresting. He never wastes a word, though he's got a lot ofthem in him. Also, though ifs not why he's here, nor intendedto be intrusive, he's one of the few people in the world I con-inder a friend. So I'll tell you a thing about him: unlike Nor-man Mailer, he need not refer to anything specifically as anadvertisement for himself. Everything he writes fills this bill.He writes the most beautiful introductions I have ever readfor his own stories. Consider the fact that everything a manwrites is really only a part of one big story, to be ended by theend of his writing life. Consider that, as so many have said,everything a man writes is, basically, autobiographical. Pick upany book by this man, and you will be entranced by learningprecisely what went into the creative process. He tells youbeforehand, then follows with the story. This one began in LasVegas and ended with sickness and beauty. I tell you thesethings because every writer who has ever lived is unique.Harlan, though, is so damned unique that most editors don'tknow what to .make of him. If you ever meet him, you'll knowwhat I mean. There is no separation whatsoever between thesubject and the object, the man and his work. When he writes,that's what he is. I'd say intense, but that's triteand if youknow him, redundant, too.PRETTY MAGGIE MONEYEYESHarlan EllisonWith an eight hole-card and a queen showing, with the dealershowing a four up, Kostner decided to let the house do thework. So he stood, and the dealer turned up. Six.The dealer looked like something out of a 1935 GeorgeRaft film: Arctic diamond-chip eyes, manicured fingers longas a brain surgeon's, straight black hair slicked flat away fromthe pale forehead. He did not look- up as he peeled them off.A three. Another three. Barn. A five. Barn. Twenty-one, andKostner saw his last thirty dollarssix five-dollar chipsscraped on the edge of the cards, into the dealer's chip racks.Busted. Flat. Down and out in Las Vegas, Nevada. Play-ground of the Western World.He slid off the comfortable stool-chair and turned his backon the blackjack table. The action was already starting again,like waves closing over a drowned man. He had been there,was gone, and no one had noticed. No one had seen a manblow the last tie with salvation. Kostner now had his choice:he could bum his way into Los Angeles and try to find some-thing that resembled a new life . . . or he could go blow hisbrains out through the back of his head.Neither choice showed much light or sense.He thrust his hands deep into the pockets of his worn anddirty chinos, and started away down the line of slot machinesclanging and rattling on the other side of the aisle betweenblackjack tables.He stopped. He felt something in his pocket. Beside him,but all-engrossed, a fiftyish matron in electric lavender capris,high heels and Ship 'n' Shore blouse was working two slots,loading and pulling one while waiting for the other to clockdown. She was dumping quarters in a seemingly inexhaustiblesupply from a Dixie cup held in her left hand. There was asurrealistic presence to the woman. She was almost auto-mated, not a flicker of expression on her face, the eyes fixedand unwavering. Only when the gong rang, someone down theline had pulled a jackpot, did she look up. And at that momentKostner knew what was wrong and immoral and deadly aboutVegas, about legalized gambling, about setting the traps allbaited and open in front of the average human. The woman'sface was gray with hatred, envy, lust and dedication to thegamein that timeless instant when she heard anotherdrugged soul down the line winning a minuscule jackpot. Ajackpot that would only lull the player with words like luckand ahead of the game. The jackpot lure; the sparkling,hobbling many-colored wiggler in a sea of poor fish.The thing in Kostner's pocket was a silver dollar.He brought it out and looked at it.The eagle was hysterical.But Kostoer pulled to an abrupt halt, only one half-footetepfrom the sign indicating the limits of Tap City. He was stillwith it. What the high-rollers called the edge, the vigorish,the fine hole-card. One buck. One cartwheel. Pulled out of thepocket not half as deep as the pit into which Kostner hadjust been about to plunge.What -the hell, he thought, and turned to the row of slotmachines.He had thought they'd all been pulled out of service, thesilver dollar slots. A shortage of coinage, said the UnitedStates Mint. But right there, side by side with the nickel andquarter bandits, was one cartwheel machine. Two thousanddollar jackpot. Kostner grinned foolishly. If you're gonna goout, go out like a champ.He thumbed the silver dollar into the coin slot and grabbedthe heavy, oiled handle. Shining cast aluminum and pressedsteel. Big black plastic ball, angled for arm-ease, pull it all dayand you won't get weary.Without a prayer in the universe, Kostner pulled .thehandle.She had been born in Tucson, mother full-blooded Chero-kee, father a bindlestiff on his way through. Mother had beenworking a truckers' stop, father had popped for spencer steakand sides. Mother had just gotten over a bad scene, indeter-minate origins, unsatisfactory culminations. Mother hadpopped for bed. And sides. Margaret Annie Jessie had comenine months later; black of hair, fair of face, and born intoa life of poverty. Twenty-three years later, a determinedproduct of Miss Clairol and Berlitz, a dream-image formed byVogue and intimate association with the rat race, MargaretAnnie Jessie had become a contraction.Maggie.Long legs, trim and coltish; hips a trifle large, the kind thatpromote that specific thought in men, about getting their handsaround it; belly flat, isometrics; waist cut to the bone, a waistthat works in any style from dirndl to disco-slacks; no breastsall nipple, but no breast, like an expensive whore (the wayO'Hara pinned it)and no padding . . . forget the cans, baby,there's other, more important action; smooth, Michelangelo-sculpted neck, a pillar, proud; and all that face.Outthrust chin, perhaps a tot too much belligerence, but ifyou'd walloped as many gropers, you too, sweetheart; nar-ro< mouth, petulant lower lip, nice to chew on, a lower lip asthough filled with honey, bursting, ready for things to hap-pen; a nose that threw the right sort of shadow, flaringnostrils, the acceptable wordsaquiline, patrician, classic,(dlathat; cheekbones: as stark and promontory as a spit ofland after ten years of open ocean; cheekbones holding dark-ness like narrow shadows, sooty beneath the taut-fleshed bone-structure; amazing cheekbones, the whole face, really; simpleuptitted eyes, the touch of the Cherokee, eyes that looked outat you, as you looked in at them, like someone peering out ofthe keyhole as you peered in; actually, dirty eyes, they saidyou can get it.Blonde hair, a great deal of it, wound and rolled andsmoothed and flowing, in the old style, the pageboy thing menalways admire; no tight little cap of slicked plastic; no rattedand teased Anapurna of bizarre coiffure; no ironed-flat dis-cothique hair like number 3 flat noodles. Hair, the way aman wants it, so he can dig his hands in at the base of theneck and pull all that face very close.An operable woman, a working mechanism, a rigged andsudden machinery of softness and motivation.Twenty-three, and determined as hell never to abide in thatvale of poverty her mother had called purgatory for her en-tire life; snuffed out in a grease fire in the last trailer, some-where in Arizona, thank God no more pleas for a little moneyfrom babygirl Maggie hustling drinks in a Los Angeles toplessjoint. (There ought to be some remorse in there somewhere,for a Mommy gone where all the good grease-fire victims go.Look around, you'll find it.)Maggie.Genetic freak. Mammy's Cherokee uptilted eye-shape, andPolack quickscrewing Daddy WithoutaName's blue w inno-cence color.Blue-eyed Maggie, dyed blonde, alla that face, alla that leg,fifty bucks a night can get it and it sounds like it's having aclimax.Irish-innocent blue-eyed innocent French-legged innocentMaggie. Polack. Cherokee. Irish. All-woman and going on themarket for this month's rent on the stucco pad, eighty bucks'worth of groceries, a couple months' worth for a Mustang,three appointments with the specialist in Beverly Hills aboutthat shortness of breath after a night on the Bugalu.Maggie, Maggie, Maggie, pretty Maggie Moneyeyes, whocame from Tucson and trailers and rheumatic fever and asurge to live that was all kaleidoscope frenzy of clawingscrabbling no-nonsense. If it took laying on one's back andmaking sounds like a panther in the desert, then one did it,because nothing, but nothing, was as bad as being dirt-poor,itchy-skinned, soiled-underwear, scuff-toed, hairy and ashamedlousy with the no-gots. Nothing!Maggie. Hooker. Hustler. Grabber. Swinger. If there's abuck in it, there's rhythm and the onomatopoeia is MaggieMaggie Maggie.She who puts out. For a price, whatever that might be.Maggie was dating Nuncio. He was Sicilian. He had darkeyes and an alligator-grain wallet with slip-in pockets forcredit cards. He was a spender, a sport, a high-roller. Theywent to V egos.Maggie and the Sicilian. Her blue eyes and his slip-inpockets. But mostly her blue eyes.The spinning reels behind the three long glass windowsblu... [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]
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Comes now the double-cross. If you're reading these consecu-tively, Ellison follows Ballard like a double-shot of Jack Daniel'safter a whisky sour. He is about to punch you in the belly. Hisprose is as stark as a skull by Georgia O'Keefe and as steady<w a jackhammer. His themes are always different and alwaysinteresting. He never wastes a word, though he's got a lot ofthem in him. Also, though ifs not why he's here, nor intendedto be intrusive, he's one of the few people in the world I con-inder a friend. So I'll tell you a thing about him: unlike Nor-man Mailer, he need not refer to anything specifically as anadvertisement for himself. Everything he writes fills this bill.He writes the most beautiful introductions I have ever readfor his own stories. Consider the fact that everything a manwrites is really only a part of one big story, to be ended by theend of his writing life. Consider that, as so many have said,everything a man writes is, basically, autobiographical. Pick upany book by this man, and you will be entranced by learningprecisely what went into the creative process. He tells youbeforehand, then follows with the story. This one began in LasVegas and ended with sickness and beauty. I tell you thesethings because every writer who has ever lived is unique.Harlan, though, is so damned unique that most editors don'tknow what to .make of him. If you ever meet him, you'll knowwhat I mean. There is no separation whatsoever between thesubject and the object, the man and his work. When he writes,that's what he is. I'd say intense, but that's triteand if youknow him, redundant, too.PRETTY MAGGIE MONEYEYESHarlan EllisonWith an eight hole-card and a queen showing, with the dealershowing a four up, Kostner decided to let the house do thework. So he stood, and the dealer turned up. Six.The dealer looked like something out of a 1935 GeorgeRaft film: Arctic diamond-chip eyes, manicured fingers longas a brain surgeon's, straight black hair slicked flat away fromthe pale forehead. He did not look- up as he peeled them off.A three. Another three. Barn. A five. Barn. Twenty-one, andKostner saw his last thirty dollarssix five-dollar chipsscraped on the edge of the cards, into the dealer's chip racks.Busted. Flat. Down and out in Las Vegas, Nevada. Play-ground of the Western World.He slid off the comfortable stool-chair and turned his backon the blackjack table. The action was already starting again,like waves closing over a drowned man. He had been there,was gone, and no one had noticed. No one had seen a manblow the last tie with salvation. Kostner now had his choice:he could bum his way into Los Angeles and try to find some-thing that resembled a new life . . . or he could go blow hisbrains out through the back of his head.Neither choice showed much light or sense.He thrust his hands deep into the pockets of his worn anddirty chinos, and started away down the line of slot machinesclanging and rattling on the other side of the aisle betweenblackjack tables.He stopped. He felt something in his pocket. Beside him,but all-engrossed, a fiftyish matron in electric lavender capris,high heels and Ship 'n' Shore blouse was working two slots,loading and pulling one while waiting for the other to clockdown. She was dumping quarters in a seemingly inexhaustiblesupply from a Dixie cup held in her left hand. There was asurrealistic presence to the woman. She was almost auto-mated, not a flicker of expression on her face, the eyes fixedand unwavering. Only when the gong rang, someone down theline had pulled a jackpot, did she look up. And at that momentKostner knew what was wrong and immoral and deadly aboutVegas, about legalized gambling, about setting the traps allbaited and open in front of the average human. The woman'sface was gray with hatred, envy, lust and dedication to thegamein that timeless instant when she heard anotherdrugged soul down the line winning a minuscule jackpot. Ajackpot that would only lull the player with words like luckand ahead of the game. The jackpot lure; the sparkling,hobbling many-colored wiggler in a sea of poor fish.The thing in Kostner's pocket was a silver dollar.He brought it out and looked at it.The eagle was hysterical.But Kostoer pulled to an abrupt halt, only one half-footetepfrom the sign indicating the limits of Tap City. He was stillwith it. What the high-rollers called the edge, the vigorish,the fine hole-card. One buck. One cartwheel. Pulled out of thepocket not half as deep as the pit into which Kostner hadjust been about to plunge.What -the hell, he thought, and turned to the row of slotmachines.He had thought they'd all been pulled out of service, thesilver dollar slots. A shortage of coinage, said the UnitedStates Mint. But right there, side by side with the nickel andquarter bandits, was one cartwheel machine. Two thousanddollar jackpot. Kostner grinned foolishly. If you're gonna goout, go out like a champ.He thumbed the silver dollar into the coin slot and grabbedthe heavy, oiled handle. Shining cast aluminum and pressedsteel. Big black plastic ball, angled for arm-ease, pull it all dayand you won't get weary.Without a prayer in the universe, Kostner pulled .thehandle.She had been born in Tucson, mother full-blooded Chero-kee, father a bindlestiff on his way through. Mother had beenworking a truckers' stop, father had popped for spencer steakand sides. Mother had just gotten over a bad scene, indeter-minate origins, unsatisfactory culminations. Mother hadpopped for bed. And sides. Margaret Annie Jessie had comenine months later; black of hair, fair of face, and born intoa life of poverty. Twenty-three years later, a determinedproduct of Miss Clairol and Berlitz, a dream-image formed byVogue and intimate association with the rat race, MargaretAnnie Jessie had become a contraction.Maggie.Long legs, trim and coltish; hips a trifle large, the kind thatpromote that specific thought in men, about getting their handsaround it; belly flat, isometrics; waist cut to the bone, a waistthat works in any style from dirndl to disco-slacks; no breastsall nipple, but no breast, like an expensive whore (the wayO'Hara pinned it)and no padding . . . forget the cans, baby,there's other, more important action; smooth, Michelangelo-sculpted neck, a pillar, proud; and all that face.Outthrust chin, perhaps a tot too much belligerence, but ifyou'd walloped as many gropers, you too, sweetheart; nar-ro< mouth, petulant lower lip, nice to chew on, a lower lip asthough filled with honey, bursting, ready for things to hap-pen; a nose that threw the right sort of shadow, flaringnostrils, the acceptable wordsaquiline, patrician, classic,(dlathat; cheekbones: as stark and promontory as a spit ofland after ten years of open ocean; cheekbones holding dark-ness like narrow shadows, sooty beneath the taut-fleshed bone-structure; amazing cheekbones, the whole face, really; simpleuptitted eyes, the touch of the Cherokee, eyes that looked outat you, as you looked in at them, like someone peering out ofthe keyhole as you peered in; actually, dirty eyes, they saidyou can get it.Blonde hair, a great deal of it, wound and rolled andsmoothed and flowing, in the old style, the pageboy thing menalways admire; no tight little cap of slicked plastic; no rattedand teased Anapurna of bizarre coiffure; no ironed-flat dis-cothique hair like number 3 flat noodles. Hair, the way aman wants it, so he can dig his hands in at the base of theneck and pull all that face very close.An operable woman, a working mechanism, a rigged andsudden machinery of softness and motivation.Twenty-three, and determined as hell never to abide in thatvale of poverty her mother had called purgatory for her en-tire life; snuffed out in a grease fire in the last trailer, some-where in Arizona, thank God no more pleas for a little moneyfrom babygirl Maggie hustling drinks in a Los Angeles toplessjoint. (There ought to be some remorse in there somewhere,for a Mommy gone where all the good grease-fire victims go.Look around, you'll find it.)Maggie.Genetic freak. Mammy's Cherokee uptilted eye-shape, andPolack quickscrewing Daddy WithoutaName's blue w inno-cence color.Blue-eyed Maggie, dyed blonde, alla that face, alla that leg,fifty bucks a night can get it and it sounds like it's having aclimax.Irish-innocent blue-eyed innocent French-legged innocentMaggie. Polack. Cherokee. Irish. All-woman and going on themarket for this month's rent on the stucco pad, eighty bucks'worth of groceries, a couple months' worth for a Mustang,three appointments with the specialist in Beverly Hills aboutthat shortness of breath after a night on the Bugalu.Maggie, Maggie, Maggie, pretty Maggie Moneyeyes, whocame from Tucson and trailers and rheumatic fever and asurge to live that was all kaleidoscope frenzy of clawingscrabbling no-nonsense. If it took laying on one's back andmaking sounds like a panther in the desert, then one did it,because nothing, but nothing, was as bad as being dirt-poor,itchy-skinned, soiled-underwear, scuff-toed, hairy and ashamedlousy with the no-gots. Nothing!Maggie. Hooker. Hustler. Grabber. Swinger. If there's abuck in it, there's rhythm and the onomatopoeia is MaggieMaggie Maggie.She who puts out. For a price, whatever that might be.Maggie was dating Nuncio. He was Sicilian. He had darkeyes and an alligator-grain wallet with slip-in pockets forcredit cards. He was a spender, a sport, a high-roller. Theywent to V egos.Maggie and the Sicilian. Her blue eyes and his slip-inpockets. But mostly her blue eyes.The spinning reels behind the three long glass windowsblu... [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]