Bogeywoman

Zusatztext "Wildly inventive. . . . Crackles with exuberance and wit and Gordon's most jaw-dropping gift--language."-- Judith Dunford! The Los Angeles Times    “Words sizzle and crackle and burst into life on the page. Once again! Jaimy Gordon dazzles." —Joanna Scott! author of Follow Me "Jaimy Gordon is an extraordinary writer."-- Review of Contemporary Fiction   “Funny! heartbreaking! perfectly described.” —Elizabeth McCracken! author of The Giant's House Informationen zum Autor Jaimy Gordon’s Lord of Misrule won the National Book Award in 2010, and was also a finalist for the Pen/Faulkner Award. Bogeywoman , her third novel, was on the Los Angeles Times list of Best Books for 2000. Her second novel, She Drove Without Stopping, brought her an Academy Award for her fiction from the American Academy of Arts and Letters. She has been a fellow of the Fine Arts Work Center, Provincetown, and the Bunting (now Radcliffe) Institute at Harvard. She teaches at Western Michigan University in Kalamazoo and in the Prague Summer Program for Writers. Klappentext A republication of the famed novel by Jaimy Gordon. 1 Tough Paradise for Girls HOW LOVE GOT ME OUT OF THE BUGHOUSE I’m the Bogeywoman. Maybe I belonged in the bughouse. Anyway it was Doctor Zuk who got me out, and then the fuddy dreambox mechanics kicked her out right behind me. But first she saved me, and that’s when I lost her— if I ever had her—unless I am her. Am I Zuk? HOW LOVE GOT ME INTO THE BUGHOUSE I mean how I ended up at the age of sixteen in the loonie bin, when I wasn’t even buggy. It happened at Camp Chunkagunk, Tough Paradise for Girls . At camp I was always the Bogeywoman, but the true meaning of Bogeywoman only came to me in my sixteenth year, and that’s how I landed in the bughouse. It was a good camp that Merlin found for me and Margaret, a rare camp, a tough camp, but what normal girl goes to camp for nine summers? (Margaret had had it in four.) I was out beyond the White Caps’ rope, doing the dead man’s float, stringbean style. Dangling straight down, I mean. So I was staring not at the sky but at a certain girl also doing the dead man’s float— my Lake Twinny, Yvette Deaux was her name, one of those tall, broad-shouldered French girls from up around Sourhunk Lake, with a small head like an ostrich, handsome, strong, kinda dumb, I didn’t even like her much. I was seeing how her thighs were filaments of neon-green electricity under the lake, and all at once I got the idea I wanted to slide my hand between them. From that moment I saw everything in a different light, murky, as through a dark lake. From then on I was a ? Unbeknownst To Everybody, and that was the meaning of Bogeywoman. At Camp Chunkagunk I had been the Bogeywoman ever since I dropped a black snake, during Quiet Hour, through the roof of the counselors’ cabin. I’m the Bogeywoman I rumbled in the chimney hole. I was just a Chipmunk then, age seven. And they had come rushing out into the dappled light, uttering pleased shrieks. See up there! on the roof! It’s that Ursie, Ursie Koderer. And I did not disappoint. I was their toy bad guy, their boygirl, their bogeygirl, no front teeth, smudge on the edge of every camp snapshot, always tearing around under a cracked, white-hot roof of blond hair. I was the Bogeywoman from that day on, even to the Big Bears. (Big Bears wore their bathing suits strapless— their smooth-muscled shoulders gleamed, their slim rib cages held up their heads like bud vases over those shiny “latex” bathing suits we all wore, one-piece and boned like girdles, the opaline grosgrain plate of them cut mysteriously straight across the upper thigh, the knoll of coochie hidden under that ledge, in deep shadow.) Then at sixteen I found out my love of Camp Chunkagunk...

Product details

• Authors: Jaimy Gordon
• Publisher: Vintage USA
• Languages: English
• Product format: Paperback / Softback
• Released: 30.09.2011
• EAN: 9780307946898
• ISBN: 978-0-307-94689-8
• No. of pages: 304
• Dimensions: 131 mm x 203 mm x 16 mm
• Series: VINTAGE BOOKS; Vintage Contemporaries; Vintage Contemporaries
• Subject: Fiction > Narrative literature