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Cargando... Second Hand (edición 2001)por Michael Zadoorian
Información de la obraSecond Hand por Michael Zadoorian
Books Read in 2016 (953) Cargando...
Inscríbete en LibraryThing para averiguar si este libro te gustará. Actualmente no hay Conversaciones sobre este libro. Un roman à la première personne, divisé en micro chapitres. Une écriture ciselée. Chiffo, brocanteur de son état, est un inadapté social qui semble n'avoir aucun but dans la vie. On est loin du rêve américain. Suite au décès de sa mère, il découvre dans la maison familiale un carton qui remet en question l'image qu'il avait de son père. Au même moment, il rencontre Thérésa, une jeune femme semi dépressive, que son job à la SPA détruit à petit feu (ses journées consistant principalement à euthanasier les animaux laissés au refuge). Je n'ai pas vraiment accroché aux personnages (je me demande encore comment Chiffo parvient à tenir à flot sa boutique au vu de la maigre fréquentation de son commerce, des horaires parfois aléatoires etc.) mais j'ai apprécié les descriptions et l'immersion dans la ville de Détroit. Second Hand offers small unearthed memories of mostly forgotten objects: plastic black Tonettes blasting the serenity of 1950s 4th grade classrooms! The life of an introspective reclusive Junk store owner is gently revealed and the first third of the book promises a good journey. Then Theresa enters Richard's life and here comes the deadly masochistic animal cruelty: why doesn't she advocate for a No Kill Shelter? Why must SHE do the killing? And it spirals down from there with most readers hating her and unable to figure why even a guy who perceives himself as a loser sexually inept recluse would choose such a pathetic and cruel person. We don't care about her and wonder that he does. Richard should instead be hanging out with a guy like Michael in THE CALLING MASTER - enjoying bars, coffee shops, restaurants, concerts, university courses...whatever it would take to end their dateless depressive existences. There are many funny, original, and truly memorable lines like "The Thelonious Monk of...." or "...this phalanx of dour geezers." It would have been mighty welcome if he had continued this approach of the cautionary tale of a junk store owner, collecting, seeing, selling...rating plummeted from a 5 to a 2 with his inability to recognize the selfish truths of The Girlfriend. As someone who was born in Detroit, grew up in the city's suburbs, and had many relatives who lived closer to downtown, reading Michael Zadoorian's work is always a bit like going home, or going back in time. I know that he will mention places and events that resonate with me, and this book is no exception. The protagonist of Second Hand is a somewhat reclusive, socially awkward thirty-ish guy, Richard, who owns Satori Junk in downtown Detroit. He pretty much spends the first half of his days going to estate and garage sales and the occasional Salvation Army store, looking for something for his store--not actual junk, in his eyes, and not the kind of "score" that others might be looking for, but something that might be better described as kitsch or hipster-junk. The rest of his time, Richard is at his store. There he meets Theresa, an oddly attractive girl who works at a local animal shelter. Their relationship evolves during the course of the book, from "just sex" to friendship to "I hate you" to love, maybe? Richard also has a strained relationship with his bourgeois sister, Linda, and her cheating, aging jock husband, Stu. When their mother dies, Linda makes an agreement with Richard: she will take anything that might be sold for a good price, and he can take anything that might be labelled junk before she holds an estate sale and sells the house. In sorting through decades of boxes, Richard makes some surprising discoveries about his parents and philosophizes about how objects can really be memories. Overall, I liked Second Hand, but not as much as Zadoorian's short story collection, The Lost Tiki Palaces of Detroit, or his novel The Leisure Seekers. For one thing, I just didn't like the character of Theresa, who was moody, self-centered, and psychologically damaged; I wanted Richard to do better than that. For another, the long lists of all the supposedly wonderful junk Richard finds got tedious and started to feel like little more than a gimmick. Zadoorian draws much from his own life. For example, like Richard, he found photographs taken by his father that opened up a whole new side of the man he thought he knew. I don't know if he's into junk, too, or if he ended up with a woman like Theresa, but he does have a keen eye on the city and the surrounding suburbs. Warning: If you are sensitive to animal abuse and death, you'd be best to avoid this one as you'll find Theresa's descriptions of her work very disturbing. Giustamente Second Hand (sott. una storia d'amore) ha avuto una diffusione massiccia. Perche' è tenero, crudele, profondo, geniale, ironico, ricco, visionario, intelligente. La parte piu' debole è forse quella della 'storia d'amore', dove Z. inventa meno e narra di sentimenti ed azioni abbastanza prevedibili - che illustrano la mediocrità del protagonista e in alcuni punti la sua emotività infantile - dove diventa oltretutto facile riconoscersi. Impareggiabili invece le descrizioni del mondo dei junker, di alcune scatole piene di cianfrusaglie, della storia parentale (che rimanda alle passioni nascoste e perdute di molti esseri umani), dei ricoveri per animali, di quello che c'e' dietro al recupero degli oggetti della nostra giovinezza. sin reseñas | añadir una reseña
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At last, the novel for everyone who has ever loved something secondhand--the High Fidelity of garage sales, the On the Road of thrift shopping, The Moviegoer of the flea market. Richard owns a secondhand store ("Satori Junk") just outside Detroit. He's the kind of guy for whom not much happens, until it happens all at once: His mother dies. He rummages his parents' basement for good junk and finds (alongside "every purse my mother has ever owned since the Fifties") a box of photos that changes his view of everything. He falls apart over his mother's notes on his favorite meal in an old cookbook. He meets Theresa, a fellow hipster, a thrift-attired junk goddess who shares his feeling for castaways, and he falls for her--hard. Along the way he acquires some junk wisdom about love and loss. Richard's inimitable, hilarious, philosophical, self-deprecating, yearning voice, and his sharp and loving eye for common foibles and unexpected virtues make for a comic novel crammed full of surprise and pleasure. Second Hand is peppered with insight as unpretentious and satisfying as the unexpected garage sale find. Junk, Richard tells us, "has taught me that to find new use for an object discarded is an act of glistening purity. I have learned that a camera case makes a damn fine purse or that 40 copies of 'Herb Alpert & the Tijuana Brass's Whipped Cream and Other Delights' may be used to cover a wall of a bedroom. . . . Junk has taught me that all will come to junk eventually, and much sooner than you think." 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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non so come e non so perché.
erano cartoline provenienti un po’ da tutta italia (e anche qualcuna dall’estero) che ha raccolto a centinaia e conservato in una valigetta rigida che molti anni dopo ho aperto non so quante volte… e ogni volta, già dall’odore, era come entrare in un altro mondo.
ma le mie preferite non erano quelle belle… erano quelle dove c’era scritta tanta roba, quelle che dovevi anche metterti lì e cercare di interpretare la calligrafia…
me ne ricordo una in particolare: non ho idea da dove provenisse, perché quello che più colpiva, immancabilmente, era una volta che l’avevi voltata… una scrittura minuscola e fitta fitta, che in pratica era una lettera!
non c’era scritto niente di particolare, mi pare… era solo una descrizione dettagliata di come procedeva la vacanza di quella persona, una donna mi pare (figlia o sorella? …viaggio di nozze o studio?), indirizzata probabilmente ai genitori… o al fratello e consorte (o sorella e consorte?).
non riuscivo a non pormi quelle domande che non avrebbero mai avuto risposta, visto che nemmeno mia madre si ricordava chi fosse il destinatario, e mi sentivo anche un po’ onorata (indegnamente) di tenere in mano la palese prova del fortissimo legame affettivo fra quelle persone che non conoscevo.
e mi chiedevo anche: ma com’è che una cosa del genere la lasci andare così? …che un giorno ti bussa alla porta una ragazzina, figlia dei vicini, e ti chiede delle vecchie cartoline per la sua collezione.. e tu le lasci fra le mani una prova del genere, una prova d’amore?!
ma forse no è così.
forse quella persona - me lo immagino un signore un po’ anziano e saggio – non aveva bisogno di conservare la prova dell’amore di sua figlia, che quella ce l’aveva nel cuore… ma era a conoscenza del potere evocativo delle cose e, in qualche modo, sapeva anche che quella cartolina era in buone mani e gli sarebbe sopravvissuta anni e anni dopo.
zadoorian spiega così la sua visione junk della vita:
“...sono convinto che quando possiedi qualcosa che è appartenuto a un’altra persona, stabilisci un contatto segreto con lei, con il suo passato. È un modo per toccare una persona senza incasinarsi con i sentimenti.”
ecco.
poi capita a volte che non è così. ( )