Celebration: A Novel

Zusatztext The Charlotte Observer ...a tribute to individuality and yes! to celebrating life. Informationen zum Autor Harry Crews is the author of twenty books and numerous articles and columns. He lives and works in Florida. Klappentext Now from the author the Washington Post Book World calls "the dark chronicler of human vanity and folly" comes Celebration. The newest black comedy from Harry Crews is a biting, brilliant commentary set in a Florida rest-home gulag where the over-sixty-five set checks its dignity, self-esteem, and social security numbers at the door.Forever and Forever is the aptly named retreat, populated by a motley crew of forgotten wives and ruined men who are waiting for death while working on their tans. The leader of this group is Stump, whose lost arm paid for Forever and Forever, and who believes the silent desperation that infuses the trailer park masks the fact that Forever and Forever is truly a small piece of hell on earth.This ironic silence is shattered by the entrance of a beautiful young bombshell. Too Much is her name, and that is exactly what she is. This walking bonfire awakens long dead appetites in the inhabitants of Forever and Forever, reminding them of what they once were and can be again -- alive. CHAPTER ONE When Johnson Meechum came up the three steps of his purple double-wide trailer and opened the front door, his wife, Mabel, was waiting for him, her thin hands clenched on her hips, her tinted hair standing from her scalp in a tiny blue cloud. He could look right through the hair to her freckled skull. He made a small adjustment of the .22-caliber target pistol stuck in the small of his back, behind his belt. He didn't even know why he wore it there. It was not as though she wasn't aware he took it with him when he went out in the morning. She knew everything about him. He knew everything about her. Everything. It was very nearly unbearable at times. He often wondered where all the surprises and lovely secrets had gone. He sometimes felt like he'd be willing to open a vein for one tiny surprise, for one inconsequential secret. It was terrible to know the most excruciatingly intimate details about her person. He even knew the stink she left in the bathroom was inexplicably tinged with the fragrance of almonds. He had no idea why, but it was. And it had taken him the first two years of marriage to discover that she was capable of leaving a foul odor of any kind anywhere. Nothing stank during those first two years of marriage. Now, after sixty years together, everything stank. Even her age, which she wore like a moldy overcoat, stank of mortality. And he supposed he wore the same stinking overcoat, but if he did, he did everything to resist it, by keeping himself washed down in cologne. Mabel wore nothing, not even face powder. She either had no pride left or had just totally given up on everything. Johnson didn't know, and he was ashamed to ask. But he could smell her fifteen feet away even if he had a bad head cold. That's why he had taken to sleeping on a blanket on the floor. He told her it was for his bad back, but it was really because of the ripe, almond-tainted effluvium that hovered everywhere about her and the sweat that she never seemed quite able to dig out of the creases and folds of her body. Consequently, she seemed to be covered with the coppery odor of impending death. The thing that frightened Johnson the most was that he knew he must have his own odor of putrefaction, which no amount of cologne would ever cover. For years now, he had feared the stink of death worse than he had feared death itself. It kept him in a state of grinding humiliation and caused him to do inexplicable things like shoot the swamp every morning with his .22-caliber target pistol. He went around her into the kitchen. She didn't seem to be blinking, or breathing either, for that matter. But she followed him into the kitc...

Dettagli sul prodotto

• Autori: Harry Crews
• Editore: Simon & Schuster UK
• Lingue: Inglese
• Formato: Tascabile
• Pubblicazione: 01.01.2008
• EAN: 9780684848105
• ISBN: 978-0-684-84810-5
• Pagine: 276
• Categoria: Narrativa > Romanzi