racconti bellissimi, li hanno commentati egregiamente in tanti, non ho parole nuove per lodarli come meritano. So che probabilmente sto commettendo un’ingiustizia: ci ho provato, giuro che ci ho provato a dare le cinque stelle a questo libro, ma non ci riesco, è più forte di me.

Revolutionary Road, The Easter Parade, Eleven Kinds of Loneliness Revolutionary Road, The Easter Parade, Eleven Kinds of Loneliness

Builders A financially troubled aspiring young writer gets hired as a ghostwriter by a New York taxi driver. Interesting. A solid story and comment on life but not the best story to end on. O tema é cativante e sempre atual, independentemente dos cenários de fundo e da época em que se viva. Home – Part 2: The Telling Question – His wife senses something is terribly wrong. Finally, looking him in the eyes, she says: “Tell me the truth. Is it the job? Is it about – what you were afraid of last week? The faint lines in her face seemed to have deepen. She suddenly looked severe and much older. Contemporary reaction to Revolutionary Roadwas overwhelmingly positive–raves for Yates’s eye and ear. The few qualms reviewers had reveal more about the uniqueness of Yates’s work than the praise. Some wondered how an author could seem to be sympathetic to his characters at first and then sentence them to such torments, and whether this wasn’t unintentional or unfair, some sort of artistic flaw. Others questioned his use of weak characters to test larger philosophical and social issues, implying that the book’s criticism of the culture was dependent on how heroic Frank and April are (conveniently ignoring the fact that most Americans–and decidedly most of the book’s readers–are probably closer to Frank and April than to any typical fictional hero). But overall the reception was gushy. America had a new major writer. Despite this, in A Good Schoolthe residents of Dorset Academy, like William Grove, find a way to learn their lessons on their own, and to rely on themselves. By the close of the novel–the matching half of the present day first person frame–the characters actually have matured. But all of that, William Grove reminds us, is in the past, and all gone, as is his chance to thank his father and seek his love.

eBook Details

Primo racconto: la storia di un ragazzino e della sua integrazione nella nuova scuola. L’insegnante cerca di favorirlo e lui anziché riconoscenza matura odio nei suoi confronti

Eleven Kinds of Revolutionary Road, The Easter Parade, Eleven Kinds of

Lasciar andare le cose per il loro verso e prenderle come veniva il più serenamente possibile era stato in un certo senso, il criterio costante della sua vita. Impossibile negare che il ruolo di chi sa perdere con disinvoltura avesse sempre avuto su di lui uno strano fascino. He greatly loved my sister–I think that must have been the main reason for his generosity to us–but he and I, after I was eleven or so, seemed always bewildered by each other. There seemed to be an unspoken agreement between us that, in the dividing process of the divorce, I had been given over to my mother.

About this book

The novel’s opening scenes show April starring in a local production of “The Petrified Forest.” She plays Gabrielle (Bette Davis in the film version), a waitress at a cafe in the middle of the desert, an amateur artist who moons over Villon and daydreams of going to Paris. Gabrielle is both a romantic and a sentimental fool, and her falling for the big talk of Leslie Howard’s sham romantic puts him in the position of taking a bullet from Bogie’s real villain, Duke Mantee. Not to worry. The same could have been said of Fitzgerald before his resurrection or Faulkner when his greatest work was out of print. Like them, Yates is not only a fine writer, but his fiction represents an important aspect of the American experience: the confusion of the post-war boom. No one portrays the Age of Anxiety as well or as deeply as Yates, or the logical fallout of American individualism, the impossibly high hopes of the ’40s and ’50s curdling, turning bitter. And like his idols Hemingway and Fitzgerald–especially Fitzgerald–Yates lived a life that provides a mirror for the work, an easy handle for a public that likes personalities more than books. They don’t. As the opening line promises, their lives are unhappy, their promise chronically unfulfilled. Love turns out to be harder than it is in the movies. Emily, who has romantic dreams and matching anxieties, gives her virginity to a soldier in a squalid, anonymous coupling in Central Park. Sarah, the prettier of the two, marries, but her husband beats her. Emily loves a series of weak men who treat her poorly and winds up alone and bitter, a drinker like her mother. Yates è un maestro nel fotografarli con racconti brevi ed efficaci, nel mettere a nudo con pochi tratti il nodo irrisolto della loro esistenza. Le sue parole non avevano nessuna importanza (per un attimo sembrò che non avessero mai avuto importanza), ma sulla faccia di Carson Ken vide dipinta l’espressione, stranamente familiare, del suo stesso animo, la medesima espressione che lui, Platt Culo di Lardo, aveva mostrato tutta la vita agli altri: lo sguardo di un essere tormentato, vulnerabile, incapace d’indipendenza, desideroso di sorridere, uno sguardo che diceva: «Non lasciatemi solo, per favore».