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Chargement... Now Is the Hour (2007)par Tom Spanbauer
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Inscrivez-vous à LibraryThing pour découvrir si vous aimerez ce livre Actuellement, il n'y a pas de discussions au sujet de ce livre. Nup, didn't get it. Maybe I'll try again one day, but I think I'll read something else by Tom Spanbauer and see if I can relate more to that. Rigby John Klusener is seventeen years old and in 1967 (the same year that I graduated from High School) he is leaving his home and family in Pocatello, Idaho, and is hitching a ride with his thumb out and a flower behind his ear, headed for San Francisco. His background story is the core of this well-wrought novel. Rigby John Klusener grows up obeying his repressed, work-weary parents on the family farm in Pocatello, Idaho, like a good Catholic boy should, but it doesn't seem to help. His depressing father barely acknowledges him. And his mother alternates between enjoying Rigby's upbeat demeanor—he dresses up with his older sister—and assuring him that he's going to hell. At school, things aren't much better: he is regularly beaten up, and the word "queer" is sneered at him long before he understands what it means. When puberty arrives, bringing with it chronic tumescence, life becomes even more difficult: His mother catches him in a private moment of "self abuse" and drives Rigby down the highway at 80 miles per hour to confession. Rigby's father, a raging bigot, threatens him with his belt if he befriends anyone outside of their church. Billie Cody, a large-breasted sophomore with a gimlet eye for false piety, walks into this desolation. They smoke marijuana, listen to the radio in the car, kiss briefly, but mostly they talk about literature, hypocrisy, and the future. Everyone assumes Rigby is the father when Billie finds sexual fulfillment elsewhere and becomes pregnant. Rigby's mother stalks her defiant son with a broom handle, Billie's drunken father wants Rigby's hide, and he faces his former bully on prom night. Only George Serano, a notorious local brimming with his Indian tribe's spiritual wisdom and a fiery passion, can help Rigby find his personal path out of town. The year is 1967, and Rigby John Klusener, seventeen years old and finally leaving his home and family in Pocatello, Idaho, is on the highway with his thumb out and a flower behind his ear, headed for San Francisco. Now Is the Hour is the wondrous story of how Rigby John got to this point. It traces his gradual emancipation from the repressions of a strictly religious farming family and from the small-minded, bigoted community in which he has grown up during a time of explosive cultural change. Transforming this familiar journey from American Graffiti to On the Road into something rich and strange and hilarious is the persona of Rigby John himself. Intimately in touch with his fears, hesitantly awakening to his own sexuality, and palpably open to life's mysteries, Rigby John is a protagonist whom readers will fall in love with, root for, and be moved by. Now Is the Hour is a powerful, vastly entertaining story of self-awakening, of the complex bonds of family, and ultimately of America during a period of tremendous upheaval. Há uma forte tradição na literatura anglo-americana dos romances de coming-of-age, aqueles que relatam a transição da adolescência para a idade adulta. Claro que à literatura interessam sobretudo as transições mais complicadas, mais forçadas, pois são essas que constituem um desafio, que levantam questões e problemas. Enfim, que merecem o olhar sempre perscrutador mas ao mesmo tempo apaziguador da arte, por ser nelas que de algum modo se plasma o essencial do que é ser humano. Agora ou Nunca, um romance de Tom Spanbauer, inscreve-se nessa tradição, indo buscar porém contributos a outros géneros (ou sub-géneros) mais ou menos fixados da literatura de língua inglesa, particularmente a norte-americana: os romances de coming out, que são aqueles que testemunham o processo de assumir, perante si e perante os outros, a condição homossexual, e sobretudo os romances on-the-road, que relatam as experiências de deambulação pela paisagem física e humana americana, de que o paradigma é o romance de Jack Kerouac. O romance de Tom Spanbauer (onde se adivinha uma carga autobiográfica assinalável, mas atenção que especulo) segue a história de Rigby John Klusener, que apanha no preciso momento em que, aos dezassete anos de idade, decide abandonar a casa paterna para ir à boleia para São Francisco, usando, como na canção, e literalmente, 'some flower in your hair'. No caso, um malmequer. E isto depois de, num triste episódio de bulling escolar, já ter sido obrigado a usar uma tulipa espetada no rabo! Rigby John é filho de um casal de católicos extremistas, vive (e trabalha) numa quinta no sul do estado rural do Idaho (o livro poderia perfeitamente chamar-se my own private Idaho, como o filme de Van Sant), e o livro é um longo flashback da sua vida curta, sobretudo dos dois últimos anos e dos acontecimentos que o levaram a escolher a auto-estrada de caminho para a Califórnia. Duas ou três coisas tornam este romance irresistível, daqueles que se lêem sempre com emoção e ternura. Primeiro a própria figura do protagonista. O livro está escrito na primeira pessoa, e isso permite-nos acompanhar sempre em close up a mente e a emoção de Rigby John, e somos sempre testemunhas, por vezes tão atónitas como ele próprio, da sua estranha e conturbada, mas sempre humorada, relação com a família, com os amigos, e sobretudo com a vida e consigo próprio. Outra coisa fascinante é a forte ligação do protagonista e da sua história com a própria essência da paisagem e da mitologia norte-americana. Ao longo do livro sentimos a força do vento, da chuva, do sol e da poeira, sentimos o apelo da great wide open, e sentimos (um dos aspectos mais interessantes do livro) como a América branca cristã e detentora dos meios de produção, vive no terror da sensualidade e da liberdade de todas as Américas indígenas, que subsistem indefectíveis como rolos de palha rolando ao vento pela paisagem árida.
Prix et récompensesDistinctions
Now Is the Hour is the first major novel by Tom Spanbauer since The Man Who Fell in Love with the Moon in 1991. That novel became a cult classic; this one is destined to do the same.The year is 1967 and Rigby John Klusener, seventeen years old and finally leaving his home and family in Pocatello, Idaho, is on the highway with his thumb out and a flower behind his ear, headed for San Francisco. Now Is the Hour is the story of how Rigby John got to this point. It traces his gradual emancipation from the repressions of a strictly religious farming family and from the small-minded, bigoted community in which he has grown up in a time of explosive cultural change. Transforming this familiar journey from American Graffiti to On the Road into something rich and strange and hilarious is the persona of Rigby John himself. Intimately in touch with his fears, hesitantly awaking to his own sexuality, and palpably open to life's mysteries, Rigby John is utterly real and totally unforgettable.Now Is the Hour is a triumphant return by one of America's finest novelists. Aucune description trouvée dans une bibliothèque |
Discussion en coursAucunCouvertures populaires
Google Books — Chargement... GenresClassification décimale de Melvil (CDD)813.6Literature English (North America) American fiction 21st CenturyClassification de la Bibliothèque du CongrèsÉvaluationMoyenne:
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