Read Online Codename Prague by D. Harlan Wilson - Free Book Online
Authors: D. Harlan Wilson
Tags: Fiction, General, Science-Fiction, Action & Adventure, Assassins, Dystopias, Prague (Czech Republic), Androids, Cyberpunk Culture
Ads: Link
sets on humanity, people will glance over their shoulders on the long walk to oblivion and say, ‘Teufelsdröckh!’ Nothing can stop me. The future is now. The future is me . I am going to splice together the personages of Adolph Hitler and John Keats!”
He leapt out of his seat as he cried out.
The singles behind him shouted obscenities, complaining that his love handles were blocking their view. He sat back down.
The woman said, “My name’s Delilah Jive,” as if Dr Teufelsdröckh had just sat down next to her for the first time. He ignored the introduction. He had slipped into a dimension of sheer subjectivity and egoism. All he could hear, all he could speak was the Dialogue of the Self. “One might ask why I elect these figures. Allow me a small degree of persiflage. The choice of Hitler seems obvious enough: despite a healthy assortment of raw, evil-spirited shortcomings, the Führer was a genius. He merely lacked the capacity to flourish as an artiste . He wanted to be a painter, you see. But he wasn’t very good at painting, and everybody told him so. Sublimation resulted. He redirected the flows of his desire into politics, a realm in which he excelled, albeit through a proverbial glass darkly. Hence the transformation of a Fuck All You Bastards sentiment into an art form, namely in the shape of genocide, world domination, public speaking, and funny-looking modes of walking forward en masse , i.e., the goose-step. Moral: don’t asphyxiate a would-be creative mind, however competent or inadequate. At any rate, John Keats is a less likely candidate, perhaps. He died before his time at the age of twenty-five in 1821. Tuberculosis, of course. His artistry emerged in the form of poems. Epics the likes of ‘Hyperion,’ ‘Endymion’ and ‘The Eve of St Agnes’ are the most widely regarded crowdpleasers, as are the various odes, namely ‘Grecian Urn,’ ‘Nightingale,’ ‘Psyche’ and ‘Melancholy.’ Personally I prefer the boy’s shorter pieces ‘La Belle Dame sans Merci’ and ‘I stood tip-toe upon a little hill,’ but I have a relatively short attention span, and that’s my problem. What intrigues me most about Keats is his theory of negative capability, which essentially posits that a man can take comfort in human uncertainties and the inaccessible nature of reality if only that man puts his mind to it. In this fashion, then, Keats deploys a potentially crippling pessimism as a springboard for a terrifically powerful optimism that echoes across hills and valleys. Here’s the rub: unlike Hitler, Keats was a successful artiste . He had many contemporary critics, but today his work is perceived as among the finest in the corpus of British literature. I believe John Keats will provide me with the imaginative and stylistic mettle I need to create an Adolph Hitler of epidemic proportions. I will, in short, inject Hitler with Keats and thus render him the artiste he never was and always wanted to be. And, of course, I will sprinkle a pinch of daikaiju on the finished product. Through the vehicle of this Portrait of an Artiste as a Young Man, I will distinguish myself as an artiste myself. The ultimate artiste . An artist e for the end of the world! End exposition.”
War broke out. Scikungfi masters invaded the tent like a flock of vampire bats, attacking circus performers and circus-goers with equal intensity, flying back and forth as if on wires, ripping off body parts, swinging and twirling staffs and nunchucks and electric eels and hurling endless splash weapons that mangled their targets irreconcilably. Whips cracked. Jungle cats roared. An out-of-place flapper sang earsplitting doo-wop…Stench of manure. Hay bales on fire…Genetically enhanced porcupines fired mushroom clouds of poisonous quills that made people explode. Jugglers threw torches at hot dog salesmen. Tightrope walkers hung themselves with bungee nooses. An electric mastodon with a preprogrammed prejudice against birdwatchers
He leapt out of his seat as he cried out.
The singles behind him shouted obscenities, complaining that his love handles were blocking their view. He sat back down.
The woman said, “My name’s Delilah Jive,” as if Dr Teufelsdröckh had just sat down next to her for the first time. He ignored the introduction. He had slipped into a dimension of sheer subjectivity and egoism. All he could hear, all he could speak was the Dialogue of the Self. “One might ask why I elect these figures. Allow me a small degree of persiflage. The choice of Hitler seems obvious enough: despite a healthy assortment of raw, evil-spirited shortcomings, the Führer was a genius. He merely lacked the capacity to flourish as an artiste . He wanted to be a painter, you see. But he wasn’t very good at painting, and everybody told him so. Sublimation resulted. He redirected the flows of his desire into politics, a realm in which he excelled, albeit through a proverbial glass darkly. Hence the transformation of a Fuck All You Bastards sentiment into an art form, namely in the shape of genocide, world domination, public speaking, and funny-looking modes of walking forward en masse , i.e., the goose-step. Moral: don’t asphyxiate a would-be creative mind, however competent or inadequate. At any rate, John Keats is a less likely candidate, perhaps. He died before his time at the age of twenty-five in 1821. Tuberculosis, of course. His artistry emerged in the form of poems. Epics the likes of ‘Hyperion,’ ‘Endymion’ and ‘The Eve of St Agnes’ are the most widely regarded crowdpleasers, as are the various odes, namely ‘Grecian Urn,’ ‘Nightingale,’ ‘Psyche’ and ‘Melancholy.’ Personally I prefer the boy’s shorter pieces ‘La Belle Dame sans Merci’ and ‘I stood tip-toe upon a little hill,’ but I have a relatively short attention span, and that’s my problem. What intrigues me most about Keats is his theory of negative capability, which essentially posits that a man can take comfort in human uncertainties and the inaccessible nature of reality if only that man puts his mind to it. In this fashion, then, Keats deploys a potentially crippling pessimism as a springboard for a terrifically powerful optimism that echoes across hills and valleys. Here’s the rub: unlike Hitler, Keats was a successful artiste . He had many contemporary critics, but today his work is perceived as among the finest in the corpus of British literature. I believe John Keats will provide me with the imaginative and stylistic mettle I need to create an Adolph Hitler of epidemic proportions. I will, in short, inject Hitler with Keats and thus render him the artiste he never was and always wanted to be. And, of course, I will sprinkle a pinch of daikaiju on the finished product. Through the vehicle of this Portrait of an Artiste as a Young Man, I will distinguish myself as an artiste myself. The ultimate artiste . An artist e for the end of the world! End exposition.”
War broke out. Scikungfi masters invaded the tent like a flock of vampire bats, attacking circus performers and circus-goers with equal intensity, flying back and forth as if on wires, ripping off body parts, swinging and twirling staffs and nunchucks and electric eels and hurling endless splash weapons that mangled their targets irreconcilably. Whips cracked. Jungle cats roared. An out-of-place flapper sang earsplitting doo-wop…Stench of manure. Hay bales on fire…Genetically enhanced porcupines fired mushroom clouds of poisonous quills that made people explode. Jugglers threw torches at hot dog salesmen. Tightrope walkers hung themselves with bungee nooses. An electric mastodon with a preprogrammed prejudice against birdwatchers
Similar Books
