The Cat’s Pajamas (Kočičí pyžamo, 2004)

Přidal: Premek |

Srpen 8, 2016

Ray Bradbury. Četba povídek ze stejnojmenné knihy.

Čte Michael Russotto.

Vydalo vydavatelství Harper Perennial 26. 7. 2005 (celkem 5 hod. 48 min.).

Obsah:

01) Introduction: Alive and Kicking and Writing (Úvod: čile k světu a psaní)
02) Chrysalis (Kukla)
03) The Island (Ostrov)
04) Sometime Before Dawn (Chvíli před svítáním)
05) Hail to the Chief (Sláva náčelníkovi)
06) We’ll Just Act Natural (Budeme se chovat normálně)
07) Olé, Orozco! Siqueiros, sí! (Olé, Orozco! Siqueiros, sí!)
08) The House (Dům)
09) The John Wilkes Booth/Warner Brothers/MGM/NBC Funeral Train (Pohřební vlak Johna Wilkese Boothe/Warner Brothers/MGM/NBC Pohřební vlak)
10) A Careful Man Dies (Smrt opatrného muže, také Smrt opatrného)
11) The Cat’s Pajamas (Kočičí pyžamo)
12) Triangle (Trojúhelník)
13) The Mafioso Cement-Mixing Machine (Mafiánská míchačka na beton, také Míchačka na beton)
14) The Ghosts (Duchové)
15) Where’s My Hat, What’s My Hurry? (Kde mám klobouk, proč ten spěch?)
16) The Transformation (Proměna)
17) Sixty-Six (66)
18) A Matter of Taste (Věc vkusu)
19) I Get the Blues When it Rains (A Remembrance) (Jde na mne blues, když prší (vzpomínka))
20) All My Enemies are Dead (Všichni mojí nepřátele jsou mrtví)
21) The Completist (Kompletista)
22) The R.B., G.K.C., and G.B.S. Forever Orient Express (Epilog: R. B., G. K. C a G. B. S. v Orient Expresu věčnosti)

Pozn.: From the winner of the National Book Foundations‘ 2000 Medal for Distinguished Contribution to American Letters comes a „sweet, funny . . . thought–provoking“ (Milwaukee Journal Sentinel) collection of short stories.

As in his most recent major fiction collections, One More for the Road (1999) and Driving Blind (1997), Ray Bradbury has once again pulled together a stellar group of stories sure to delight readers of all ages. In The Cat’s Pyjamas we are treated to a treasure trove of Bradbury gems old and new –– eerie and strange, nostalgic and bittersweet, searching and speculative –– all but two of which have never been published before. The Cat’s Pyjamas is a joyous celebration of the lifelong work of a literary legend.

The Cat’s Pajamas: Stories (2004) is a collection of short stories by Ray Bradbury. Its name of its title story comes from a phrase in English meaning „superlative“. Another collection by the same name was published in the same year by fellow science-fiction author James Morrow.

„Introduction: Alive and Kicking and Writing“ (2004)
„Chrysalis“ (1947)
A black boy is visiting one of his relatives in a beachside town for the summer. He befriends a white boy. They spend lots of time together in the sun, and the white boy grows darker. At the end of the summer the white boy’s skin is darker than the black boy’s skin. The black boy is very happy at this, until he peels the tan skin off of the white boy.
„The Island“ (1952)
A paranoid family lives on the outskirts of a town. One night, they hear a person enter the house. They are all in separate rooms, and are too scared to collect in one room. The narrator hears a gunshot in each room where one of her family members is hiding. She hears the intruder try her door, and she dives out the window. A later investigation shows that the intruder walked calmly in and out of the house. The narrator is the only survivor.
„Sometime Before Dawn“ (1950)
At a boarding house somewhere in the midwest, two travelers stop and rent a room. They are not like all the other people there. Their clothes are futuristic. The narrator describes them as sad, and recalls hearing them crying in the night. The reader is led to believe that they are from the future, and that they are fleeing a bad president.
„Hail to the Chief“ (2004)
The United States is gambled away by senators to a Native American tribe. The president rushes to the chief to try to bargain for the whole country back, and wins, but with one cost.
„We’ll Just Act Natural“ (1949)
A black woman and her mother are waiting for a grown white man who was raised in part by the old black woman. She insists that he will come, while her daughter is pessimistic about it. They watch the train he was supposed to come in on arrive. After a while the younger black woman leaves because she assumes that he won’t show. The older woman waits until the train leaves the station. She then meets up with her daughter and lies about how she had a great time with him.
„Ole, Orozco! Siqueiros, Si!“ (2004)
An art connoisseur is taken to a funeral for an artist. He is driven past some graffiti on the way there. During the service, he realizes that the artist was a graffiti artist and that the images displayed in the church are pictures of his graffiti. He then goes back with his friend to the original graffiti. He is convinced to help whitewash the originals so that it is never discovered that the art is graffiti.
„The House“ (1947)
Maggie and William, a married couple, decided to move into an old house. William loved the old house and started to clean up the house. On the other hand, Maggie was not as enthusiastic as William. Maggie was not used to such a dirty house, because for most of her life she lived luxuriously. Already, William had noticed that Maggie was not satisfied with the house and grew sad. William made a final decision and told Maggie that they weren’t going to stay in the house. Then Bess, William’s friend, comes for a visit and falls in love with the house. Maggie knew that William really loved the house and noticed how happy he was when he saw that he was not the only one who loved the old house. Finally, Maggie started to clean the house and thought that if William was happy here so should she. This short story is about a couple whose relationship is challenged by an old house.
„The John Wilkes Booth/Warner Brothers/MGM/NBC Funeral Train“ (2003)
„A Careful Man Dies“ (1946)
You sleep only four hours a night. You go to bed at eleven and get up at three and everything is clear as crystal. You begin your day then, have your coffee, read a book for an hour, listen to the faint, far, unreal talk and music of the predawn stations and perhaps go out for a walk, always being certain to have your special police permit with you. You have been picked up before for late and unusual hours and it got to be a nuisance, so you finally got yourself a special permit. Now you can walk and whistle where you wish, hands in your pockets, heels striking the pavement in a slow, easy tempo. This has been going on since you were sixteen years old. You’re now twenty-five, and four hours a night is still enough sleep.
„The Cat’s Pajamas“ (2003)
„Triangle“ (1951)
In a small town, a pair of aging sisters live together. Every day they pass a store where the third protagonist lives. One of them has a crush on him, and the other can’t stand him. One day he comes over to talk to the sister with a crush on him. He asks her if he has any chance of having her sister’s hand in marriage. She replies that he doesn’t, but that she loves him. He tells her that he can’t stand her, but loves her sister. So there is a love triangle that remains unsolved. Time passes them by.
„The Mafioso Cement-Mixing Machine“ (2003)
A man decides to go back in time to save Scott Fitzgerald from himself. He wants Fitzgerald to finish writing The Last Tycoon. He plans to carry medicine through time, bribe some people, threaten others. The overall intent is to let Fitzgerald finish his masterpiece. The man goes back in time. After a while, the friend he let in on the secret goes to a bookstore and buys the completed Last Tycoon.
„The Ghosts“ (1952)
Three girls think that some teenagers who have sex in their lawn are ghosts. They see their outlines in the grass in the morning. Their father does not like the intrusion and threatens to go out and shoot them. He moves poison ivy so that it is where the teenagers lie at night. The girls are distressed that the ghosts have stopped coming. They move the ivy back, and when the ghosts come the next time, one of them goes out. She finds out that there are no ghosts, but the girls think that the ivy permanently scared away the ghosts and that the people only came after they removed the poison ivy.
„Where’s my Hat, What’s my Hurry?“ (2003)
A man is leaving his wife because of all the times they were in Paris, they never had sex. He is sad that they never did it in the city of love. He gets two tickets to Paris and finds someone to go with him. He then leaves with no regrets.
„The Transformation“ (1949)
A white man rapes a black woman. He is captured by several white men, unhappy with him for his transgressions. They take him to the carnival tattoo parlor. They then turn his skin all black. Then they leave him on his own to find his own way. They laugh about how ironic it would be if he ended up lynched.
„Sixty-six“ (2003)
A police officer finds five people murdered and strewn along a stretch of Route 66 dressed in clothing that he classifies as ‚dust bowl‘ era. As the investigation continues, he happens to see a picture of the five Okies in a magazine and discovers that they are just actors in period clothing. Riding his motorcycle into a dust storm back on the same stretch of Route 66, he finds a man who looks like he is from the Great Depression. The man admits to running over the people and wants to turn himself in, but the police officer says that he isn’t going to take him in. The police man thinks the people who were killed deserved to die, and it was fitting that an Okie killed them for epitomizing the suffering the Okies went through.
„A Matter of Taste“ (1952)
This is the only science fiction story in this collection. It is narrated by one of the spiders. A group of astronauts travels to a far away planet that is inhabited by a race of intelligent peaceable spiders. The captain gets a great scare the first day and is unable to represent the humans, so that responsibility falls to his underling. The humans learn that the spiders are very peaceable and smart. Despite this they leave, possibly destroying all the spiders because they cannot get over the human instinct of fear of spiders.
„I Get the Blues When it Rains (A Remembrance)“ (1980)
This is simply Ray Bradbury describing a night very special to him. He and a group of other writers got together and sang songs they all know. The magic of the night could never be recreated.
„All my Enemies are Dead“ (2003)
A man learns that his last enemy has died. He gives up living, and is ready to die. Then one of his friends and employees starts telling him about all the terrible things he did to him. He becomes his employer’s enemy, and in doing so, saves his life.
„The Completist“ (2004)
A very rich man spends his life collecting books and art. He has dinner with a couple. He greatly enjoys talking continuously about his collection, and its great expansiveness. At the end of dinner, he bitterly asks, „Why did my thirty-five year old son kill his wife, destroy his daughter and then hang himself?“
„Epilogue: The R.B., G.K.C., and G.B.S. Forever Orient Express“ (1997)