I am often asked if I know Tyler Durden ... and who is this? A funny thing happened: knizhnik_review Unscheduled review. I am often asked if I know I am often asked if I know

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Unscheduled review.

"People often ask me if I know Billy Milligan?" With this little nod to the famous film by David Fincher, I want to start my review of Daniel Keyes's true-to-life novel The Mysterious Story of Billy Milligan. By the way, if anyone did not know, the Russian title of the novel is a quirk of over-brains-translators, apparently by analogy with The Mysterious Story of Benjamin Button. Either they call films in their own way, or books.
The original title of the novel is "The Minds of Billy Milligan".
Although in bookstores I saw a title more close to the original - "The Multiple Minds of Billy Milligan".

In the center of the story is a young American boy named Billy, who looks unprepossessing, although many women find him cute. But there is one peculiarity, Billy practically does not remember his life from the age of 8. It feels like something is stealing his memories and the time of his life, after which Milligan ends up in prisons, dragged around the courts and psychiatric hospitals. Something, or someone.

And there are as many as 24 of these "someone" in the head of the unfortunate guy. Moreover, there are men, women, children belonging to different nationalities, religions, professions and sexual orientations. After reading the annotation, I personally had a reasonable question: how, in general, could a person with such chaos in his head survive for many years? But, as it turns out, there is a clear hierarchy among the 24 "inner people". There are ten main personalities who are allowed to control Billy's body and life in turn, the rest are ranked undesirable and locked in the depths of the subconscious due to the presence of antisocial and criminal inclinations.

You ask - by whom? The fact is that one of Milligan's multiple personalities, an Englishman named Arthur, was able to realize her nature. Arthur (who resembles Sherlock from the BBC series in character), with the help of deduction, was able to identify and identify the rest of the personalities, among whom he determined the hierarchy. Another important subpersonality was a Serb named Reygen Vadaskovinich, the "keeper of rage" who is responsible for Milligan's physical protection and taking control of the body in life-threatening situations. There is also the main personality - Billy, a guy who became prone to suicide after realizing everything that is going on in his head. Naturally, no one gives him control of the body.

Ragen and Arthur held power for a long time and maintained relative order, but one day everything went wrong and Milligan's "family" faced the danger of imprisonment ...

So what is this book about? Many people think it is about a curious case of so-called dissociative personality disorder, colloquially known as multiple personality disorder. But my opinion is that this book is not only about mental disorder and the vicissitudes of the life of a mentally ill person. This book is about human cruelty, revealing all the worst qualities of human nature.

This, of course, is not about the main character, Billy Milligan, whom you openly regret by the end of the book, but about the people because of whom he became a psychopath and thanks to whom he experienced a lot of pain. But here I will stop, otherwise I’ll move on to direct spoilers.

Bottom line: if you like books and films about mentally ill people, interesting detective stories and sharp plot twists, read it.

P.S. In the photo, the hero of the novel, William Stanley Milligan.

TYLER GETS ME TO WORK AS A WAITER, and then Tyler puts a gun in my mouth and says that the first step to eternal life is to die. Tyler and I have been best friends for a long time. People often ask if I know Tyler Durden.

The barrel of a pistol is pressed against my throat.

We're not really going to die, Tyler says.

With my tongue, I can feel the muffler holes we drilled into the barrel of the pistol. The sound of a shot is produced by the noise of expanding gases - plus the popping of a faster-than-sound bullet. To make a silencer, you drill holes in the barrel of the weapon, a lot of holes. This allows the gases to escape gradually and the bullet's velocity decreases and becomes less than the speed of sound.

You drill the holes wrong and the gun rips your hand off.

It's not really death, Tyler says. We will become a legend. We will not grow old.

I move my tongue against my cheek and say, Tyler, you're talking about vampires.

All notes and highlights are by the translator.

The building we're currently standing on won't be here in ten minutes. You take 98 percent fuming nitric acid and add three times the amount of sulfuric acid. You do it in an ice bath. Then you add glycerin with a pipette - drop by drop. You get nitroglycerin.

I know this because Tyler knows it.

You mix nitroglycerin with sawdust and you get great plastic explosives. Many people soak cotton wool with nitroglycerin and add Epsom salts as sulfate. This works too. Some people use paraffin wax. Paraffin has never, never worked for me.

Tyler and I are standing on the roof of the Parker-Morris skyscraper. The gun is in my mouth. We hear the glass breaking. Look over the edge. It's cloudy today, even up here. This is the tallest building in the world, and up here the wind is always cold.

It's so quiet up here that you feel like one of those monkeys launched into space. You do your little job, you are trained. You pull the lever. You push the button. You don't understand any of this. And then you just die.

At a height of one hundred and ninety-one floors, you look over the edge of the roof and see on the street below a motley carpet of people standing and looking up. Broken glass in the window below us. A window pops out, and then an office closet falls out like a big black refrigerator. Directly below us, a six-drawer office cabinet flies parallel to the front of the building. It turns slowly in flight, gradually decreases. Then he falls into the crowd and disappears from sight.

One hundred and ninety-one floors below, the space monkeys from Project Injury's Riot Committee have gone loose and are destroying history itself.

As they say - you kill the one you love ... well, it works and vice versa.

When you have a gun in your mouth and the barrel sticks out between your teeth, you can only hum.

We have ten minutes left.

Another window shatters, and shards of glass flicker through the air like the wings of a flock of doves. Then inch by inch, a black wooden table emerges from the window, being pushed out by the Riot Committee members. Finally, the table tilts, slides and falls, spinning in flight, and finally disappears into the crowd.

The Parker-Morris building won't be here in nine minutes. You take the right amount of explosives and mine the supporting piles of whatever. You can bring down any building in the world. You have to properly compact the explosives with sandbags so that the blast wave is directed into the pile and not into the underground garage around.

You can't read that in a history textbook.

Three ways to make napalm. First, mix equal parts gasoline and frozen orange juice concentrate. Second, mix equally gasoline and Diet Coke. Third: dissolve cat litter in gasoline until it thickens.

Ask me how to make nerve gas. Or - how to mine a car.

Nine minutes.

The Parker-Morris Building, one hundred and ninety-one floors, will collapse slowly like a tree falling in a forest. You can bring down anything you want. It is strange to think that the place where we are now will be just a point in the sky.

Tyler and I are at the edge of the rooftop. The gun is in my mouth. I am amazed at how clean the barrel turned out to be.

We completely forgot about Tyler's whole murderous / suicidal scheme. We watch another closet slide off the edge of the building. In flight, the boxes open, and the updrafts and wind pick up and carry the stacks of white paper.

Eight minutes.

Then - smoke. Smoke comes from broken windows.

The destruction team will detonate the detonators in about eight minutes. The detonators will detonate the main charge, the piles will be crushed, and a series of photographs of the Parker-Morris skyscraper will be included in all history books.

Five consecutive photographs. Here is the building. The second frame is a building at an eighty-degree angle. Then - seventy degrees. The fourth frame shows the building at an angle of forty-five degrees. This is where the skeleton of the building moves and the building bends slightly. The last shot - one hundred and ninety-one floors collapses on the National Museum. Tyler's real goal.

This is our world, now it's ours, Tyler says. All these ancient people are already dead.

If I knew how everything would turn out, I would be more than happy to be dead myself, in Heaven.

Seven minutes.

On the roof of the Parker-Morris skyscraper with Tyler's pistol in his mouth. Desks and cabinets and computers fly into the crowd around the building. Smoke is pouring from the broken windows. Three blocks down the street, the demolition team looks at their watches. And I know that all this - the gun, the anarchy, the explosion - is actually happening because of Marla Singer.

Six minutes.

We have something like a triangle here. I need Tyler. Tyler needs Marla. And Marla needs me.

I don't need Marla. And Tyler doesn't need me. Is no longer needed.

This is not about love and care. It's about property and ownership.

Without Marla, Tyler wouldn't have anything.

Five minutes.

Maybe we'll become a legend, maybe not.

No, I say, wait.

Where would Christ be if no one wrote the Gospels?

Four minutes.

I move my tongue against my cheek and say: do you want to be a legend? Tyler, friend, I'll make you a legend.

I've been here since the beginning.

I remember everything.

In 1977, a certain Billy Milligan was arrested on suspicion of raping three women. Billy had previously been involved in armed robbery and rape, but was released early. The matter seemed simple and straightforward. But we don't write about such people =) Milligan was the first to be acquitted for the crimes committed because of the diagnosis of multiple personality disorder.

Billy Milligan's alter personalities appeared at the age of 3-4 (an unnamed boy, with whom he played, and Christine, who took care of his younger sister). The number of individuals increased at the age of 8-9 years, when little Billy was repeatedly raped and beaten by his stepfather Chalmer Milligan.

In total, Billy coexisted 24 personalities, each of whom had their own, sometimes unique, abilities and skills, some of which Bill had never learned. So some of Billy Milligan's personalities were gifted artists and musicians, each specializing in a different direction in painting / graphics or a musical instrument. One of the individuals spoke Serbian, which he had never studied.

10 of the 24 personalities were primary:

Billy- the original William Stanley Milligan, is a primary suicidal personality. Because of this, he was rarely allowed to control the mind. Every time he came to himself in an unfamiliar place, he tried to commit suicide, during these awakenings Billy was shocked, as he considered the last suicide attempt successful.

Arthur- sophisticated, educated Englishman. An expert in science and medicine, with a focus on hematology. Using logic and deduction, he found out that he was not alone in Milligan's body, and identified the rest of the individuals. Along with Ragen, he took responsibility for the general body - except for dangerous situations in which Ragen exercises control. Established rules of conduct for the rest of the "family members" - the personalities of Milligan.

Reigen Vadaskovinich- Yugoslav, speaks with a Slavic accent, writes and speaks the Serbo-Croatian language. He is a "keeper of hatred". The communist, expert in weapons and ammunition, is in charge of fitness. Possesses extraordinary strength, thanks to the fact that Arthur taught him how to control the flow of adrenaline. Ragen's weak point is women and children; he does not hesitate to help them if they are in trouble, even to the point of stealing food and things for them. He directs basic actions in dangerous situations and, along with Arthur, can classify individuals as "unwanted").

Allen- 18 years old, swindler, manipulator, has excellent eloquence. Most often communicates with the outside world. Draws portraits, plays the drums. The only right-hander and the only one who smokes cigarettes.

Tommy- "keeper of salvation". In his own words, he is often confused with Allen. I independently figured out the principles of operation of electrical and mechanical devices, locks. He learned to control muscles and joints, to get rid of handcuffs. Plays the saxophone, paints landscapes.

Danny- a frightened 14-year-old boy, afraid of people, especially men. He draws only still lifes, because he is afraid of the earth in any form - Chalmer (Billy's stepfather) once made him dig a grave and buried it in it, leaving only a hole for breathing.

David- 8 years old, "keeper of pain". It takes consciousness to take the pain of others.

Christine- 3-year-old Englishwoman, one of the first Billy personalities to emerge and the first to know about the existence of someone else. She stood in the corner at school and at home, if "Billy" misled, because, unlike other personalities, she did it calmly. She is dyslexic, but Arthur teaches her to read and write. Ragen has a special affection for her. The favorite of the "family".

Christopher- Brother Christine, 13 years old, plays the harmonica.

Adalana- 19 year old active lesbian. Has the ability to occupy the body at will. Cooking, putting things in order in the "family", writing poetry. Occupies the body in situations when it comes to being a "gentleman", gentle with women. It was she who was engaged in rape.

Another 13 Arthur classified as undesirable for certain misconduct:

Phil- Brooklyn with a pronounced accent. A criminal element, engaged in drug trafficking, participated in armed robberies of homosexual couples, waiting for victims in parking lots along the highway.

Kevin- Phil's friend, developed a plan to rob a pharmacy, and then stole the loot from his comrades in the business. Later, during his stay at a high-security clinic in Lima, in gratitude for the uprising against the orderlies who beat the patients of the clinic, Arthur struck Kevin off the list of unwanted.

Walter- Australian, hunting lover. He was allowed to the body when his ability to find the right direction was required. Arthur classified it as undesirable for "barbarism" - the murder of a crow in the forest.

April- a black-haired, dark-eyed, slender girl with a Boston accent. Was obsessed with the idea of ​​killing Billy's stepfather. Declared unwanted after convincing Reigen to kill Chalmer. Arthur, calling Christine, was able to persuade Ragen not to commit murder.

Samuel- a religious Jew. Was deemed undesirable by Arthur for selling Allen's painting. The only religious person.

Mark- "Workhorse". He is often referred to as a zombie because he does nothing if not told and stares at the wall when everyone gets bored;

Lee- a joker and a wit. For the first time he began to control the body in a Lebanese prison and then was declared undesirable for the fact that his pranks went too far and threatened the "family". After that, he disappeared from consciousness completely.

Steve- a parodist, was called in prison after Lee's expulsion, because he knew how to make people laugh. Infuriated Ragen by parodying his accent and Arthur by speaking in Cockney. He was caught mocking the prison warden, with the result that Milligan was placed in an isolation ward.

Jason- "pressure valve". Used as a child to release tension, but this constantly led to difficult situations.

Bobby- an inactive dreamer. He dreamed of adventure, saw himself as an actor, traveler, hero, but did not want to do anything concrete for this. He went on a hunger strike, for which he was ranked as "undesirable" - in prison conditions he needed good physical condition.

Sean- a deaf boy with a developmental delay. He occupied consciousness in childhood, when Billy was punished and shouted at him. Due to his deafness, he often buzzed, listening to the sounds echoing in his head. It was classified as undesirable, since it was not necessary in adulthood.

Martin is a snob and braggart from New York. Arthur classified it as undesirable due to the lack of a desire for self-improvement.

Timothy- worked in a shop as a flower merchant until he ran into a gay man who was flirting with him. After that, he entered his own world.

For gluing all personalities into one, another one appeared - Teacher... He knew everything about the other "boats of the seven" and their actions. It took more than one year to bring everyone together, at first they united the characters who were closest in temperament. Interestingly, as a result, the abilities of the resulting generalized personality were worse than the abilities of individual "family members".

In 1991, after 10 years of intensive treatment in various Ohio medical institutions, Billy Milligan was declared "whole" and released. In 1996 he lived in California, owned Stormy Life Productions, and had plans to direct a short film (which apparently never got released). The current place of residence and occupation of William Milligan are unknown, his former acquaintances have lost contact with him.

Who is too lazy to read, but there is half an hour of free time to watch the pretentious program from the Russia TV channel, you are welcome:

I am often asked if I know Tyler Durden ... and who is this?

1. Tyler Durden is a character in Chuck Palahniuk's novel Fight Club and the film of the same name by David Fincher (played by Brad Pitt).

   Tyler Drden is a trader of soap that is made from human fat stolen from a liposuction clinic for the best effect. Previously, he worked as a projectionist in cinemas, where he pasted porn frames into family pictures between episodes, and as a waiter in a restaurant, where he mercilessly mocked visitors by peeing in soup and defecating in mushroom puree. They live in an abandoned house, which is intended for demolition, where rusty water flows from the tap, and when it rains, all the electricity has to be turned off, the house is full of old magazines and books. Tyler is a nihilist and anarcho-primitivist, the exact opposite of the second protagonist of the narrator, whom he met on the plane. He is his imagination, a consequence of schizophrenia. Together they organized the Fight Club, where people come and beat each other for fun, but later Tyler reorganized the club into a terrorist group (project rout).

2. hahahahahah xd here you are the brakes)
3. you do not understand the humor)
4. character from the movie Fight Club.
5. I am not asked, I am a blonde, maybe because ...