• Пожаловаться

Joyce Oates: Sourland

Здесь есть возможность читать онлайн «Joyce Oates: Sourland» весь текст электронной книги совершенно бесплатно (целиком полную версию). В некоторых случаях присутствует краткое содержание. год выпуска: 2010, ISBN: 978-0-06-201072-8, издательство: HarperCollins, категория: Современная проза / Триллер / на английском языке. Описание произведения, (предисловие) а так же отзывы посетителей доступны на портале. Библиотека «Либ Кат» — LibCat.ru создана для любителей полистать хорошую книжку и предлагает широкий выбор жанров:

любовные романы фантастика и фэнтези приключения детективы и триллеры эротика документальные научные юмористические анекдоты о бизнесе проза детские сказки о религиии новинки православные старинные про компьютеры программирование на английском домоводство поэзия

Выбрав категорию по душе Вы сможете найти действительно стоящие книги и насладиться погружением в мир воображения, прочувствовать переживания героев или узнать для себя что-то новое, совершить внутреннее открытие. Подробная информация для ознакомления по текущему запросу представлена ниже:

Joyce Oates Sourland

Sourland: краткое содержание, описание и аннотация

Предлагаем к чтению аннотацию, описание, краткое содержание или предисловие (зависит от того, что написал сам автор книги «Sourland»). Если вы не нашли необходимую информацию о книге — напишите в комментариях, мы постараемся отыскать её.

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


Кто написал Sourland? Узнайте фамилию, как зовут автора книги и список всех его произведений по сериям.

Sourland — читать онлайн бесплатно полную книгу (весь текст) целиком

Ниже представлен текст книги, разбитый по страницам. Система сохранения места последней прочитанной страницы, позволяет с удобством читать онлайн бесплатно книгу «Sourland», без необходимости каждый раз заново искать на чём Вы остановились. Поставьте закладку, и сможете в любой момент перейти на страницу, на которой закончили чтение.

Шрифт:

Сбросить

Интервал:

Закладка:

Сделать

Through a constricting tunnel — as if she were looking through the wrong end of a telescope — Madeleine became aware of other people — other pedestrians cautiously approaching the dying man — workmen from the construction site — a young patrolman on the run — a second patrolman — there came then a deafening siren — sirens — emergency vehicles approached on a side-street peripheral to Madeleine’s vision — now there were figures bent over the fallen man — the fallen man was lifted onto a stretcher, carried away — until at last there was nothing to see but a pool of something brightly red like old-fashioned Technicolor glistening on the pavement in cold March sunshine. And the nightmare didn’t end. The police questioned all the witnesses they could find. They came for me, they took me to the police precinct. For forty minutes they kept me. I had to beg them, to let me use the women’s room — I couldn’t stop crying — I am not a hysterical person but I couldn’t stop crying — of course I wanted to help the police but I couldn’t seem to remember what anything had looked like — what the men had looked like — even the “skin color” of the man with the knife — even of the man who’d been stabbed. I told them that I thought the van driver had been dark-skinned — maybe — he was “young” — in his twenties possibly — or maybe older — but not much older — he was wearing a satin kind of jacket like a sports jacket like high school boys wear — I think that’s what I saw — I couldn’t remember the color of the jacket — maybe it was dark — dark purple? — a kind of shiny material — a cheap shiny material — maybe there was some sort of design on the back of the jacket — Oh I couldn’t even remember the color of the van — it was as if my eyes had gone blind — the colors of things had drained from them — I’d seen everything through a tunnel — I thought that the van driver with the knife was dark-skinned but not “black” exactly — but not white — I mean not “Caucasian” — because his hair was — wasn’t — his hair didn’t seem to be — “Negroid hair” — if that is a way of describing it. And how tall he was, how heavy, the police were asking, I had no idea, I wasn’t myself, I was very upset, trying to speak calmly and not hysterically, I have never been hysterical in my life. Because I wanted to help the police find the man with the knife. But I could not describe the van, either. I could not identify the van by its make, or by the year. Of course I could not remember anything of the license plate — I wasn’t sure that I’d even seen a license plate — or if I did, it was covered with dirt. The police kept asking me what the men had said to each other, what the pedestrian had said, they kept asking me to describe how he’d hit the fender of the van, and the van driver — the man with the knife — what had he said? — but I couldn’t hear — my car windows were up, tight — I couldn’t hear. They asked me how long the “altercation” had lasted before the pedestrian was stabbed and I said that the stabbing began right away — then I said maybe it had begun right away — I couldn’t be sure — I couldn’t be sure of anything — I was hesitant to give a statement — sign my name to a statement — it was as if part of my brain had been extinguished — trying to think of it now, I can’t — not clearly — I was trying to explain — apologize — I told them that I was sorry I couldn’t help them better, I hoped that other witnesses could help them better and finally they released me — they were disgusted with me, I think — I didn’t blame them — I was feeling weak and sick but all I wanted to do was get back to Princeton, didn’t even telephone anyone just returned to the Holland Tunnel thinking I would never use that tunnel again, never drive on West Street not ever again.


In that late winter of 1980 when Rhonda was four years old the story of the stabbing began to be told in the Karr household on Broadmead Road, Princeton, New Jersey. Many times the story was told and retold but never in the presence of the Karrs’ daughter who was too young and too sensitive for such a terrifying and ugly story and what was worse, a story that seemed to be missing an ending. Did the stabbed man die? — he must have died. Was the killer caught? — he must have been caught. Rhonda could not ask because Rhonda was supposed not to know what had happened, or almost happened, to Mommy on that day in Manhattan when she’d driven in alone as Daddy did not like Mommy to do. Nothing is more evident to a child of even ordinary curiosity and canniness than a family secret, a “taboo” subject — and Rhonda was not an ordinary child. There she stood barefoot in her nightie in the hall outside her parents’ bedroom where the door was shut against her daring to listen to her parents’ lowered, urgent voices inside; silently she came up behind her distraught-sounding mother as Madeleine sat on the edge of a chair in the kitchen speaking on the phone as so frequently Madeleine spoke on the phone with her wide circle of friends. The most horrible thing! A nightmare! It happened so quickly and there was nothing anyone could do and afterward… Glancing around to see Rhonda in the doorway, startled and murmuring Sorry! No more right now, my daughter is listening.

Futile to inquire what Mommy was talking about, Rhonda knew. What had happened that was so upsetting and so ugly that when Rhonda pouted wanting to know she was told Mommy wasn’t hurt, Mommy is all right — that’s all that matters.

And Not fit for the ears of a sweet little girl like you. No no!

Very soon after Mrs. Karr began to tell the story of the stabbing on a Manhattan street, Mr. Karr began to tell the story too. Except in Mr. Karr’s excitable voice the story of the stabbing was considerably altered for Rhonda’s father was not faltering or hesitant like Rhonda’s mother but a professor of American studies at the University, a man for whom speech was a sort of instrument, or weapon, to be boldly and not meekly brandished; and so when Mr. Karr appropriated his wife’s story it was in a zestful storytelling voice like a TV voice — in fact, Professor Gerald Karr was frequently seen on TV — PBS, Channel 13 in New York City — discussing political issues — bewhiskered, with glinting wire-rimmed glasses and a ruddy flushed face. Crude racial justice! Counter-lynching!

Not the horror of the incident was emphasized, in Mr. Karr’s telling, but the irony. For the victim, in Mr. Karr’s version of the stabbing, was a Caucasian male and the delivery-van assailant was a black male — or, variously, a person of color. Rhonda seemed to know that Caucasian meant white, though she had no idea why; she had not heard her mother identify Caucasian, person of color in her accounts of the stabbing for Mrs. Karr dwelt almost exclusively on her own feelings — her fear, her shock, her dismay and disgust — how eager she’d been to return home to Princeton — she’d said very little about either of the men as if she hadn’t seen them really but only just the stabbing It happened so fast — it was just so awful — that poor man bleeding like that! — and no one could help him. And the man with the knife just — drove away… But Mr. Karr who was Rhonda’s Daddy and an important professor at the University knew exactly what the story meant for the young black man with the knife — the young person of color — was clearly one of an exploited and disenfranchised class of urban ghetto dwellers rising up against his oppressors crudely striking as he could, class-vengeance, an instinctive “lynching,” the white victim is collateral damage in the undeclared and unacknowledged but ongoing class war. The fact that the delivery-van driver had stabbed — killed? — a pedestrian was unfortunate of course, Mr. Karr conceded — a tragedy of course — but who could blame the assailant who’d been provoked, challenged — hadn’t the pedestrian struck his vehicle and threatened him — shouted obscenities at him — a good defense attorney could argue a case for self-defense — the van driver was protecting himself from imminent harm, as anyone in his situation might do. For there is such a phenomenon as racial instinct, self-protectiveness. Kill that you will not be killed.

Читать дальше

Шрифт:

Сбросить

Интервал:

Закладка:

Сделать

Похожие книги на «Sourland»

Представляем Вашему вниманию похожие книги на «Sourland» списком для выбора. Мы отобрали схожую по названию и смыслу литературу в надежде предоставить читателям больше вариантов отыскать новые, интересные, ещё не прочитанные произведения.


Отзывы о книге «Sourland»

Обсуждение, отзывы о книге «Sourland» и просто собственные мнения читателей. Оставьте ваши комментарии, напишите, что Вы думаете о произведении, его смысле или главных героях. Укажите что конкретно понравилось, а что нет, и почему Вы так считаете.