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Chargement... Why Not?: Fifteen Reasons to Livepar Ray Robertson
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Featured on The Hour with George Stroumboulopoulos. SHORTLISTED FOR THE $60,000 HILARY WESTON WRITERS' TRUST PRIZE FOR NONFICTION Longlisted for the $25,000 Charles Taylor Prize for Literary Non-Fiction. "Clear-eyed ... Robertson is no stranger to confronting unsavoury truths."--Steven Beattie, That Shakespearean Rag "Many of us sense that the world has too many moving parts and can become utterly defeated. Ray Robertson found a 'road back' in this splendid and intriguing book." --Jim Harrison Shortly after completing his sixth novel, Ray Robertson suffered a depression of suicidal intensity. Soon after his recover, he decided to try and answer two of the biggest questions we can ask. What makes humans happy? And what makes a life worth living? His answers aren't what you might expect from a mental illness memoir--but they're exactly what you'd expect from Ray Robertson. With the vitality of Nick Hornby and a brashness all his own, Robertson runs his hands over life, death, intoxication, and art. Unashamedly working-class and unabashedly literary, Why Not? is a rolling, rocking, anti-Sisyphean odyssey. Ray Robertson is the celebrated author of eight books and six novels, including What Happened Later, about Jack Kerouac's last years. He lives and writes in Toronto, Ontario. Aucune description trouvée dans une bibliothèque |
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Google Books — Chargement... GenresClassification décimale de Melvil (CDD)813.54Literature English (North America) American fiction 20th Century 1945-1999Classification de la Bibliothèque du CongrèsÉvaluationMoyenne:
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Shortly after completing his sixth novel, Robertson suffered a relapse of his obsessive-compulsive disorder and a serious depression. He recovered, thank heaven, and part of that recovery and its aftermath was his occupation with answering, to his own satisfaction, why someone should keep on living. This book is the result -- fifteen essays, each on something that merits one's next breath.
In Robertson's wonderfully cheeky, cranky, funny and learned style he writes of work, love, intoxication, art, the material world, individuality, humor, meaning, friendship (including canine), solitude, the critical mind, praise, duty, home and, yes, death.
It's true that I don't agree with him on all points -- so let's get this out of the way first -- but perhaps as a recovering alcoholic it is impossible for me to admire drunkenness as a reason to keep living. Quite the opposite, in fact, and his (and Andre Dubus') admiration of the incandescently plastered Richard Yates seems a bit off. It wasn't Yates' writing life that tortured him into an agonized death -- it was the booze. I feel both Robertson and Dubus gloss it. I get annoyed when people romanticize that sort of thing. And then, too, Robertson's rants against Canadian literary prizes and thus-favored writers seems a bit like sour grapes, which is a pity.
Those complaints aside -- and I would love to spend an evening arguing these points, while listening to some of Robertson's impressive record collection (yes, vinyl!) -- I enjoyed this book immensely. I loved being led through Robertson's vast storehouse of philosophical/literary quotes and allusions. He ranges from Seneca to Woolf to Edmund Wilson to John Berryman to Thoreau, to Camus to Flaubert to William Cowper to Susan Ertz . . . and more. I also admire his jazzy and often hilarious riffs on being proudly working class, politics, religion, lots of Nietzsche, marriage and dogs. The passages on friendship of the canine variety moved me deeply. I don't think I've read anything that captures my own experience so well. (Take THAT you fans of schmaltzy "Art of Running in the Rain" books.)
The book is thoughtful and thought-provoking. His reminder that "stolen days are always the best," and by implication ALL days are stolen days, matters. This is a moral writer as well as a clever one and they are rare these days. I wish I had had this book when I was suffering from own Dark Night of the Soul a few years back. I shall remember it for next time. ( )