The Practical Heart - Four Novellas

Zusatztext “Gurganus is an old-fashioned yarn spinner. . . . [ The Practical Heart ] reanimates all those familiar truths about art’s power to transform and redeem.” – The New York Times “As intriguing as it is deadly funny. . . . An entertaining! disturbing! and inspiring book . . . [from] one of our greatest living raconteurs.” – The Atlantic Monthly “Gurganus’s commitment to the importance of suffering and the power of art to redeem it! so like Henry James’! blows through [these stories] like a cold wind of truth.” – Newsday “There is no other American writer working from his recipe! and nobody dishing it out with such full-throated gusto.” – The Washington Post Informationen zum Autor Allan Gurganus Klappentext In his fictional Falls, North Carolina-a watchful zone of stifling mores-Allan Gurganus's fond and comical characters risk everything to protect their improbable hopes from prejudice, poverty, betrayal. Seeking warmth and true connection, they shield themselves and loved ones while creating a rarely-glimpsed world of valor, minor grandeur, side-street heroics. Muriel Fraser, a poor Scottish-born spinster, is the subject of a John Singer Sargent portrait in the imagination of her devoted grand-nephew. Tad Worth, a young man dying of AIDS, finds ways to restore vitality to old friends and 18th-century houses. Overnight, one pillar of the community, accused of child molesting, becomes the village pariah. And Clyde Delman, ugliest if kindest man in Falls, finds the love of his eight-year-old son jeopardized when troubling family secrets arise. In each of these splendid complex tales, Allan Gurganus wrings truths-sometimes bruising, ofttimes warming-from human hearts as immense as they are local. Leseprobe from the novella "The Practical Heart" THE IMPRACTICAL TRUTH Fact is is is Fable. —james merrill I. Passport I did have a Great-aunt Muriel. Also true how one misguided streetcar stranded her whole family for life. By 1890, Muriel’s dashing father, author of the out-of-print Lotus Images in World Literature: A Reflection, debarred from university library privileges, fired from being “Raffles” of The Racing News, impatient at teaching holy English to mere Asia Minor foreigners, was forced at last to undertake full-frontal “trade.” In a literary irony no sane writer would go near, he ended his career selling tablecloths and matching napkins at Marshall Field and Co., the very items from the same store that had accessorized his wife’s tragedy. With his groomed white beard and Longfellow grandeur, the man was put to use as a nine-to-five visual aid for women hoping to make their tables appear respectable as he. Ladies naturally gravitated toward a gent almost distinguished-looking enough to pose as some Scottish professor who’d published four books, who’d inherited a nineteen-room freehold house worthy of a name. Donald Fraser appeared, in fact, someone distinguished enough to have lost everything, and survived. Maybe that—and not a family Sargent—becomes the lasting, ultimate Distinction? To have forfeited all your class trappings, but to remain somewhat standing. Here’s hoping that counts. It might be my own unlucky family’s single chance at amounting to anything, at getting on record. And might that matter? I have no choice, given our history, our story, but to believe it does. —Odd that “History wished” should be so much easier to tell than “History merely if bravely lived.” In your own life, don’t you find that? For Donald Fraser’s sixtieth birthday, daughters gave him a pair of lively English water spaniels. Dogs soon accompanied him everywhere except Field’s “Fancy Linen Goods.” The esteemed Professor, long deprived of his property, his classroom audience, finally stopped saying, “No one ever list-ens to me.” Now his dogs did. He named them Sonny and Sadie. ...

Dettagli sul prodotto

• Autori: Allan Gurganus
• Editore: Vintage USA
• Lingue: Inglese
• Formato: Tascabile
• Pubblicazione: 27.08.2002
• EAN: 9780375727634
• ISBN: 978-0-375-72763-4
• Pagine: 336
• Dimensioni: 132 mm x 203 mm x 18 mm
• Serie: Vintage Contemporaries; Vintage Contemporaries
• Categoria: Narrativa > Romanzi