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Zusatztext 45752572 Informationen zum Autor David Rakoff was the New York Times bestselling author of the books Fraud , Don't Get Too Comfortable , and Half Empty . A two-time recipient of the Lambda Literary Award and winner of the Thurber Prize for American Humor, he was a regular contributor to This American Life . He died in August 2012 at the age of forty-seven, shortly after finishing this book. Klappentext From the incomparable David Rakoff! a poignant! beautiful! witty! and wise novel in verse whose scope spans the twentieth century Through his books and his radio essays for NPR's This American Life! David Rakoff has built a deserved reputation as one of the finest and funniest essayists of our time. Written with humor! sympathy! and tenderness! this intricately woven novel proves him to be the master of an altogether different art form. LOVE! DISHONOR! MARRY! DIE! CHERISH! PERISH leaps cities and decades as Rakoff sings the song of an America whose freedoms can be intoxicating! or brutal. The characters' lives are linked to each other by acts of generosity or cruelty. A daughter of Irish slaughterhouse workers in early-twentieth-century Chicago faces a desperate choice; a hobo offers an unexpected refuge on the rails during the Great Depression; a vivacious aunt provides her clever nephew a path out of the crushed dream of postwar Southern California; an office girl endures the casually vicious sexism of 1950s Manhattan; the young man from Southern California revels in the electrifying sexual and artistic openness of 1960s San Francisco! then later tends to dying friends and lovers as the AIDS pandemic devastates the community he cherishes; a love triangle reveals the empty materialism of the Reagan years; a marriage crumbles under the distinction between self-actualization and humanity; as the new century opens! a man who has lost his way finds a measure of peace in a photograph he discovers in an old box-an image of pure and simple joy that unites the themes of this brilliantly conceived work. Rakoff's insistence on beauty and the necessity of kindness in a selfish world raises the novel far above mere satire. A critic once called Rakoff "magnificent!" a word that perfectly describes this wonderful novel in verse. Helen harbors the hope that the passing five years Have made folks forget both the vomit and tears And throwing of glassware and drunken oration, That half-hour tirade of recrimination Where, feeling misused, she had got pretty plastered, And named His name publicly, called him a bastard. The details are fuzzy, though others have told her She insulted this one and cried on that shoulder, Then lurched ’round the ballroom, all pitching and weaving And ended the night in the ladies’ lounge, heaving. How had it begun, before things all turned rotten? She can pinpoint the day, she has never forgotten How he came to her desk and leaned over her chair To look at some papers, and then smelled her hair. “Gardenias,” he’d said, his voice sultry and lazy And hot on her ear, Helen felt she’d gone crazy. “A fragrance so heady it borders on sickly,” He’d purred at her neck and then just as quickly Was back to all business, demanding she call Some client, as if he’d said nothing at all. She was certainly never an expert at men, But an inkling was twinkling, especially when The next day he all but confirmed Helen’s hunch. When he leaned from his office and asked her to lunch. Their talk was all awkward and formal to start He said that he found her efficient and smart. She thanked him, then stopped, she was quite at a loss. She’d never before really talked to her boss. They each had martinis, which helped turn things mellow, He asked where she lived, and if she had a fellow. He reached fo...
