Индусы зажигают
Aug. 14th, 2004 04:59 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
dolboedДля проведения казни из отставки пришлось вызвать 84-летнего палача в третьем поколении Ната Маллика с сыном и внуком. В последний раз Маллик выполнил свою работу в 1991 году, повесив двух мужчин, осужденных за убийство семьи из четырех человек.
http://gazeta.ru/2004/08/14/oa_130062.shtml
Интересная профессия у сына и внука: раз в 13 лет помогать древнему деду кого-нибудь вешать за гонорар в $435.
http://gazeta.ru/2004/08/14/oa_130062.shtml
Интересная профессия у сына и внука: раз в 13 лет помогать древнему деду кого-нибудь вешать за гонорар в $435.
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no subject
Date: 2004-08-14 06:03 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2004-08-14 09:12 am (UTC)Found in The Economist (a while ago)
Date: 2004-08-14 09:47 am (UTC)The Master Executioner.
By Loren D. Estleman.
Forge; 270 pages; $23.95.
HAUNTINGLY poignant despite its reserved protagonist and morbid
subject matter, "The Master Executioner" follows Oscar Stone, a
professional hangman, as he dispenses justice to axe murderers and
army deserters-miscreants and ne'er-do-wells with something missing
"who should be no more despised for this misfortune than a man with
one leg or an infant with its heart on the wrong side. It was Stone's
job, once the man was judged and sentenced, to remove him as an
inconvenience to both society and himself." In his 18th western novel,
Loren Estleman plumbs the question of what might attract a thoughtful
carpenter fresh from the horrors of the American civil war to such a
grisly occupation.
And at a cost, for Stone's calling drives his lovely young wife to
flee in revulsion. But Stone is driven to exploit a gift that marries
professionalism with mercy. A botched hanging that fails to snap the
neck cleanly is cruel and unusual punishment indeed: too short a drop
can strangle the prisoner; too long, take his head off.
The reader samples both grim fates in detail, for Mr Estleman has done
impeccable homework on the finer points of what Stone would regard as
a lost art. Indeed, Stone's idea of real barbarity is the newfangled
electric chair, which singes the flesh, shoots flames out the ears,
and loosens the bowels to create "an indescribable stench". More,
"there was no more science in the thing than scalding a hog. Any fool
could throw a switch."
Mr Estleman's prose is pithy, his dialogue tangy ("A man needs a wife,
and if he don't have that he needs work. God invented liquor for men
that didn't have either"). Even walk-ons, many of whom walk right off,
thanks to Stone's ministrations, engender a distinctive pathos, though
often guilty of harrowing crimes. Mr Estleman skilfully shows that
"genre" books are no more implicitly formulaic than literary novels,
which follow rough rules as well. "The Master Executioner" is no
didactic tract on the death penalty, yet it implicitly questions
whether the arrival of civilisation in the American west reduced
violence or just made it more orderly. On an intimate personal level,
Mr Estleman movingly conveys the brutalising effects of killing for
the law, even when you are terribly good at it.
Et in Arcadia ego
Date: 2004-08-14 10:21 am (UTC)Идиллическая страна. Аркадия...
no subject
Date: 2004-08-14 11:10 am (UTC)Клебанова младшая
Date: 2004-08-14 11:33 am (UTC)Вы куда пропали?...
Я Вас жду, жду ...
У меня между прочим курсовая горит ...
Мне без Вас никак ...
Клебанова мл.
no subject
Date: 2004-08-15 07:02 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2004-08-16 12:46 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2004-08-17 02:16 am (UTC)