Life in the West. Brian Aldiss

Чтение книги онлайн.

      Dedication

      Life in the West is dedicated to other

       Distinguished Persons

       Chen, David, Iris, Maysie, and Michael

       by no means forgetting Felix, Elena, Derek, and Janet

       to show them what one of their number was up to

       before we sampled life in the East

       and walked the Great Wall together

      Contents

       Cover

      Life in the West

      Title Page

      Dedication

      Epigraph

      Introduction

      Prelude

      1 The International Congress

      2 Flattery and Higher Foolishness

      3 A View from the Beach

      4 Conversation with ‘Drina’s’

      5 She’s Only a Sex Symbol

      6 Putting our Socialist Friends to Rights

      7 Land Full of Strange Gods

      8 Sublimated Coin Warfare

      9 How to Get to Ostrow Lomelsky

      10 Slatko

      11 ‘The Strong Act as They Have Power to Act’

      12 Tribal Customs

      13 Illegal Currency Charges

      14 An Ideological Decision

      Acknowledgments

      THE SQUIRE QUARTET

      Copyright

      About the Publisher

      Epigraph

      I walked beside a sea aflame,

      An animal of land. The fire

      Of stars knocked at my earthbound frame:

      East of grapples West, man maid, hope Fate;

      All oppositions emanate

      From constellations of desire.

      Burning below hair, flesh, and teeth,

      An image of the Bright Ones lies,

      A lantern hid in bone. Beneath

      That vision, teeth and hair begin

      Again; wolf grins to wolfish grin

      As smile I in my lover’s eyes.

      Too soon that love with false-bright hair

      Is dead: the house stands silent. I

      Fare forth across the world’s despair,

      Its muteness, oratory, and banners,

      To seek not truth but modern manners.

      The head must win what heart let die.

      Introduction

      When I began to write the Squire Quartet my intention was to portray something of the world I was living in, from the 1980s onwards. I found most of that world exciting – enticing to experience and to record.

      This, the first volume of the Squire Quartet, brisk and chatty, was published on March 6th 1980 – as a loving card from my wife, still tucked into her copy of the book, reminds me. We were living on a quiet North Oxford street and our younger children were seriously into education. We were always moving house, depending on our fortunes.

      I had been attending a conference in Palermo – a conference with a strong Communist flavour, not particularly enjoyable. It was over. I was standing on the dockside, looking north over the sea. A story began to build up in my mind: the conference; the players from various countries, where the economic blocs seemed irreconcilable; and at the same time, a man’s – Sir Thomas C. Squire’s – difficulties at home.

      Once I returned to our house in Charlbury Road, I launched into the novel. My mother died during that period; a melancholy event recorded when Squire’s mother dies just before Christmas. You have to go on, whatever happens. Maybe the army taught me that. Or maybe I had known it even as a small boy. Anyhow, Squire also has to press on. Trouble in Yugoslavia, where he is almost killed. Separation from Teresa, his wife. More human experience, more meditation. More striving to penetrate the thickets.

      The novel opens with Squire in Ermalpa, Sicily, for a conference on the popular arts, dubbed ‘the arts of no refinement’. He claims that the pop art of one generation becomes the classic of the next: ‘Homer was, in his day, the Bronze Age equivalent of the TV soap opera.’ Squire is for the new, insisting we rise up to change.

      Later, back at his Norfolk house, Pippet Hall, Squire is filming and being filmed. The traditional pretty girl in a swimsuit is with СКАЧАТЬ