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Joyce Oates: Sourland

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Joyce Oates Sourland

Sourland: краткое содержание, описание и аннотация

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Oates's latest collection explores certain favorite Oatesian themes, primary among them violence, loss, and privilege. Three of the stories feature white, upper-class, educated widows whose sheltered married lives have left them unprepared for life alone. In «Pumpkin-Head» and «Sourland», the widows-Hadley in the first story, Sophie in the second-encounter a class of Oatesian male: predatory, needy lurkers just out of prosperity's reach. In the first story, our lurker is Anton Kruppe, a Central European immigrant and vague acquaintance of Hadley whose frustrations boil over in a disastrous way. In the second story, Sophie is contacted by Jeremiah, an old friend of her late husband, and eventually visits him in middle-of-nowhere northern Minnesota, where she discovers, too late, his true intentions. The third widow story, «Probate», concerns Adrienne Myer's surreal visit to the courthouse to register her late husband's will, but Oates has other plans for Adrienne, who is soon lost in a warped bureaucratic funhouse worthy of Kafka. Oates's fiction has the curious, morbid draw of a flaming car wreck. It's a testament to Oates's talent that she can nearly always force the reader to look.

Joyce Oates: другие книги автора


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Hadley’s face flushed with the heat of indignation. This was insulting — it had to be deliberate — Anton Kruppe who’d lived in the United States for much of his life knew very well the history of the Iraq War, how Americans were misled, deceived by the Republican leadership. Of course he knew. She opened her mouth to protest bitterly then thought better of it.

Surreptitiously she glanced at her wristwatch. Only 6:48 P.M.! Her guest had been inside the house less than a half hour but the strain of his visit was such, it seemed much longer.

Still Anton was prowling about, staring. Artifacts from trips Hadley and her husband had taken, over the years — Indonesian pottery, African masks, urns, wall hangings, Chinese wall scrolls and watercolors, beautifully carved wooden figures from Bali. A wall of brightly colored “primitive” paintings from Mexico, Costa Rica, Guatemala. Yet more, the books on Hadley’s shelves seemed to intrigue Anton, as if these hundreds of titles acquired years ago, if not decades ago, mostly by Hadley’s husband who’d earned both a Ph.D. in European history and a law degree from Columbia University, possessed an immediate, singular significance and were not rather relics of a lost and irretrievable private past.

“You have read all these, Hedley — yes?”

Hadley laughed, embarrassed. No, she had not.

“Then — someone else? All these?”

Hadley laughed again, uncertain. Was Anton Kruppe mocking her? She felt a slight repugnance for the man, who peered at her, as at her art-objects and bookshelves, with an almost hostile intensity; yet she could not help it, so American was her nature, so female, she was anxious that he should like her, and admire her — if that could be settled, she would send him away, in triumph.

Remembering the foreign-born children at her schools. In middle school they had seemed pitiful, objects of sympathy, charity, and condescension, if not derision; in high school, overnight it seemed they’d become A-students, star athletes. A drivenness to them, the complacent Americans had mistaken initially as weakness.

In soiled wool socks Anton continued to prowl about. Hadley had not invited him to explore her house — had she? His manner was more childlike than aggressive. Hadley supposed that Anton’s own living quarters in university-owned housing were minimal, cramped. A row of subsidized faculty housing along the river…“Ah! This is — ‘solar-room’?” They were in a glass-walled room at the rear of the stone house, that had been added to the house by Hadley and her husband; the “solarium,” intended to be sun-warmed, was furnished with white wicker furniture, chintz pillows and a white wrought-iron table and chairs as in an outdoor setting. But now the room was darkened and shadowed and the bright festive chintz colors were undistinguishable. Only through the vertical glass panels shone a faint crescent moon, entangled in the tops of tall pines. Anton was admiring yet faintly sneering, taunting:

“Such a beautiful house — it is old, is it? — so big, for one person. You are so very lucky, Hedley. You know this, yes?”

Lucky! Hadley smiled, confused. She tried to see this.

“Yes, I think so. I mean — yes.”

“So many houses in this ‘village’ as it is called — they are so big. For so few people. On each acre of land, it may be one person — the demographics would show. Yes?”

Hadley wasn’t sure what Anton Kruppe was saying. A brash sort of merriment shone in his eyes, widened behind the smudged lenses of his wire-rimmed schoolboy glasses.

He asked Hadley how long she’d lived in the house and when she told him since 1988, when she and her husband had moved here, he’d continued smiling, a pained fixed smile, but did not ask about her husband. He must know, then. Someone at the co-op has told him.

Bluntly Anton said, “Yes, it is ‘luck’ — America is the land of ‘opportunity’ — all that is deserved, is not always granted.”

“But it wasn’t ‘luck’ — my husband worked. What we have, he’d earned.”

“And you, Hedley? You have ‘earned’ — also?”

“I–I — I don’t take anything for granted. Not any longer.”

What sort of reply this was, a stammered resentful rush of words, Hadley had no clear idea. She was uneasy, Anton peered at her closely. It was as if the molecular biologist was trying to determine the meaning of her words by staring at her. A kind of perverse echolocation — was that the word? — the radar-way of bats tossing high-pitched beeps of sound at one another. Except Anton was staring, his desire for the rich American woman came to him through the eyes…Hadley saw that the pumpkin seed — unless it was a second seed, or a bit of pumpkin-gristle — glistened in his wiry hair, that looked as if it needed shampooing and would be coarse to the touch. Except she could not risk the intimacy, she felt a reckless impulse to pluck it out.

He would misunderstand. He is such a fool, he would misinterpret.

But if I wanted a lover. A lover for whom I felt no love.

As if Anton had heard these words, his mood changed suddenly. His smile became startled, pained — he was a man for whom pained smiles would have to do. Asking Hadley if there were more repairs for “Mister Fix-It” in her house and Hadley said quickly, “No. No more.”

“Your basement — furnace — that, I could check. I am trained — you smile, Hedley, but it is so. To support myself in school — ”

Hadley was sure she wasn’t smiling. More firmly she thanked Anton and told him she had to leave soon — “I’m meeting friends for dinner in town.”

Clearly this was a lie. Hadley could lie only flatly, brazenly. Her voice quavered, she felt his eyes fixed upon her.

Anton took a step closer. “I would come back another day, if needed. I would be happy to do this, Hedley. You know this — I am your friend Anton — yes?”

“No. I mean — yes. Some other time, maybe.”

Hadley meant to lead her awkward guest back out into the living room, into the lighted gallery and foyer near the front door. He followed in her wake muttering to himself — unless he was talking to Hadley, and meant her to hear — to laugh — for it seemed that Anton was laughing, under his breath. His mood was mercurial — as if he’d been hurt, in the midst of having been roused to indignation. He’d drained his second glass of wine and his movements had become jerky, uncoordinated like those of a partially come-to-life scarecrow.

It was then that Anton began to confide in Hadley, in a lowered and agitated voice: the head of his laboratory at the Institute had cheated him — he’d taken discoveries of Anton Kruppe to claim for his own — he’d published a paper in which Anton was cited merely in a list of graduate assistants — and now, when Anton protested, he was exiling Anton from the lab — he refused to speak to Anton at the Institute and had banished him and so Anton had gone to the university president — demanding to be allowed to speak to the president but of course he’d been turned away — came back next morning hoping to speak with the president and when he was told no, demanding then to speak with the provost — and the university attorney — their offices were near-together in the administration building — all of them were in conspiracy together, with the head of the Institute and the head of Anton’s laboratory — he knew this! — of course, he was not such a fool, to not know this — he’d become excited and someone called security — campus police arrived and led Anton away protesting — they had threatened to turn him over to township police — to be arrested for “trespassing” — “threatening bodily harm” — Anton had been terrified he’d be deported by Homeland Security — he had not yet an American citizenship —

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