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Cargando... Lord of Misrule (Vintage Contemporaries) (edición 2011)por Jaimy Gordon
Información de la obraLord of Misrule por Jaimy Gordon
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Inscríbete en LibraryThing para averiguar si este libro te gustará. Actualmente no hay Conversaciones sobre este libro. Here's what I wrote in 2013 about this read: "Nice! Non-primetime racetrack in West Virginia attracts a variety of folks and low-end horses, and a bit of the underworld. One phrase from a critic states it well: novel captures the dynamic of the "backstretch society". Oh, and now I finally understand a little about Claiming races. What the author herself the inspiration for the young innocent female character??" Quotations in the comments section are my exact kindle highlights. ( ) My brother-in-law is a racetrack jockey. My sister-in-law exercised racehorses before leaving the track to teach. I worked as a bi-lingual clinical social worker on the backstretch of the Chicago-area racetracks for 25 years. I serviced horsemen and horsewomen ranging from trainers, assistant trainers to undocumented hotwalkers and grooms. Exercise riders and agents included those I served. I found Jaimy Gordon's novel, based on her one summer working on a racetrack as teenage groom decades previously, patronizing and insulting. Those from the track I know who read her novel concur. The folks who populated her novel came across like carny side-show novelties. Those of us who worked on the track for decades are not novelties. If ever there was such a thing as cultural appropriation by an author who extracted fame and money and awards (unbelieveably, the National Book Award given to this novel) from a subculture she had almost no meaningful contact with, we have it here. The fact that the National Book Award was given to a novel both mediocre and patronzing belies the reality that too often a talent for self-promotion transcends any talent to honestly reflect reality. In war, we have called it, "Stolen Valor," claiming an undeserved heroism. The many brave and hardworking horsemen and horsewomen wherever they work in the hierarchy of the backstretch racetrack deserve far better than this condescending appropriation of their lives. Why do authors have to be all mystical? That's one reason I read genre fiction. It generally is pretty straight forward and you don't get paragraphs like this one Her hands felt their way blindly along the ridges and canyons and defiles of the spine, the firm root-spread hillocks of the withers. She rolled her bony knuckles all along the fallen tree of scar tissue at the crest of the back, prying up its branches, loosening its teeth All she's doing here is rubbing his withers. Just tell me what happens and stop with the poetry, especially if you can't do it well. Plus the whole thing is sort of written in vernacular. Even when they weren't talking. Often I read the reviews of a novel by others to help me understand what I think of novel. Not so much to put words in my mouth but rather to help me clarify my thoughts. It didn't really work in this case. I am still struggling to understand why I did not like this more. The slang used throughout the novel was definitely challenging, but I often like that type of challenge and didn't find it otherwise in this case. It also helped create a sense of authenticity about the world around the racetrack. The characters were quirky, which made them interesting, but I think that was part of the problem: they were so quirky they felt like caricatures of the real thing. I do know that I had no real feeling for any of the characters, except Medicine Ed, neither attraction or repulsion. The world of the racetrack felt real enough, in all of its slime and ugliness, and yet uninteresting. I credit the author with creating something unique, it just was not something in which I found much enjoyment.
The narrative voice constantly shifts, the language challenges, the action is minimal and meanders. It’s not an easy read, but Gordon’s writing will grab and pull you in. Horse racing has rarely inspired serious fiction. Novels about the sport are usually formulaic (e.g., Dick Francis mysteries) or filled with cliches (e.g., the triumph of an underdog). So it was a shock when "Lord of Misrule," a new novel set at a bottom-level West Virginia racetrack in the early 1970s, was named one of the five finalists for the National Book Award for fiction, a prize that has been won by literary giants such as William Faulkner, John Updike and Saul Bellow. There are no triumph-of-the-underdog moments in author Jaimy Gordon's book. Her mythical Indian Mound Downs is populated by infirm, battle-scarred old horses and the owners, grooms and trainers who try to eke out a living with them. Some of the characters are noble, in their way, some deranged, some capable of murder and rape, but few of them harbor dreams much grander than winning a cheap race, collecting a small purse and perhaps cashing a bet. PremiosDistincionesListas de sobresalientes
At the rock-bottom end of the sport of kings sits the ruthless and often violent world of cheap horse racing, where trainers and jockeys, grooms and hotwalkers, loan sharks and touts all struggle to take an edge, or prove their luck, or just survive. Equal parts Nathanael West, Damon Runyon and Eudora Welty, Lord of Misrule follows five characters, scarred and lonely dreamers in the American grain, through a year and four races at Indian Mount Downs, downriver from Wheeling, West Virginia-- from dust jacket. No se han encontrado descripciones de biblioteca. |
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Google Books — Cargando... GénerosSistema Decimal Melvil (DDC)813.54Literature English (North America) American fiction 20th Century 1945-1999Clasificación de la Biblioteca del CongresoValoraciónPromedio:
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