Norman Rush
Forfatter af Mating
Om forfatteren
Værker af Norman Rush
The Victim 1 eksemplar
Witmannen 1 eksemplar
Associated Works
Object Lessons: The Paris Review Presents the Art of the Short Story (2012) — Introduktion; Bidragyder — 221 eksemplarer
Satte nøgleord på
Almen Viden
- Fødselsdato
- 1933-10-24
- Køn
- male
- Nationalitet
- USA
- Bopæl
- Rockland County, New York, USA
- Uddannelse
- Swarthmore College (1956)
Medlemmer
Anmeldelser
Mating: A Novel af Norman Rush
Obviously very good. But I just didn't want to spend more time with the narrator.
This was one of the most boring books I have read in a long time. The back of it made me think of The Quarry by Iain Banks or The Big Chill. Instead it took those story lines, getting together old friends for a death as in The Big Chill, or pending death as in the Quarry, but populated the story with one dimensional characters that were so boring and pretentious, that only an academic or a NYT book reviewer could slog through it. For anyone else, don't bother.
Liked a lot. Strange story, amazing word selection. (Had to look up many many dozens of words - all well used.) Long but it went quickly.
“I wore myself out collecting enough wood for a ring fire, got us all set up inside it, went into my tent, and closed my eyes, and immediately there were lions in the neighborhood. There may have been only one. I heard a roar like no other sound on earth. I felt it in my atoms. This is my reward for taking precautions, was my first thought. I made myself emerge. I peered around. My [donkeys] were standing pressed together and shaking pathetically. I looked for glints from lion eyes out in the dark but saw nothing. In the morning I found it hard to eat. There was terror in me. I could die in this place, it was clear.”
The unnamed protagonist of Mating is an American thirty-something nutritional anthropologist living in Botswana in the 1980s. She has just determined that her doctoral thesis is going nowhere. She meets Nelson Denoon, the founder of Tsau, a secretive utopian community run by African women in a remote area of Botswana. Denoon intrigues her, and she wants to get to know him intimately, so she treks solo across the Kalahari Desert to reach Tsau, where she hopes to be welcomed.
“[H]e went into a sort of aria asking how Tsau could fail to be terrific, since it was the pyramidon at the top of all his prior failures, so called. He gave the entire sequence of truths learned, project to project, such as controlling the scale, working in the vernacular, cutting expatriate staff to near zero, locating yourself remotely enough to avoid premature disruption, balancing collective and individual incentives, basing your political economy on women instead of men…”
This novel is one of the most unusual I have read. It is a novel of ideas and philosophy. It explores intimacy, love, history, politics, economics, feminism, and justice. It is a little drawn out in the beginning, recounting several of the protagonist’s relationships in Gabarone, but once she starts her trek across the Kalahari, it is entirely engrossing. She is searching for the “ideal” romantic relationship. The narrative is filled with intellectual sparring and literary references. Topics include commune life, capitalism, socialism, Marxism, apartheid, and the geopolitics of southern Africa. As an added bonus, it is guaranteed to expand the reader’s vocabulary, even if it is already vast.
There is an intriguing psychological component, where questions arise as to the reason Nelson wants to remain in Tsau. This part gets into philosophy, such as that of the Tao Te Ching, and transformations caused by near-death experiences. Is the change real or fabricated?
This book takes time to read, not only due to its length, but also due to the need to absorb, or possibly look up, some of the regional references that will likely not be in many readers’ immediate scope of knowledge. A helpful glossary is included for the Afrikaans and Setswana terms, as well as descriptions of (real) local organizations. Rush has a dense writing style that respects a reader’s intelligence. I found it masterfully written and intellectually stimulating.
4.5
… (mere)
The unnamed protagonist of Mating is an American thirty-something nutritional anthropologist living in Botswana in the 1980s. She has just determined that her doctoral thesis is going nowhere. She meets Nelson Denoon, the founder of Tsau, a secretive utopian community run by African women in a remote area of Botswana. Denoon intrigues her, and she wants to get to know him intimately, so she treks solo across the Kalahari Desert to reach Tsau, where she hopes to be welcomed.
“[H]e went into a sort of aria asking how Tsau could fail to be terrific, since it was the pyramidon at the top of all his prior failures, so called. He gave the entire sequence of truths learned, project to project, such as controlling the scale, working in the vernacular, cutting expatriate staff to near zero, locating yourself remotely enough to avoid premature disruption, balancing collective and individual incentives, basing your political economy on women instead of men…”
This novel is one of the most unusual I have read. It is a novel of ideas and philosophy. It explores intimacy, love, history, politics, economics, feminism, and justice. It is a little drawn out in the beginning, recounting several of the protagonist’s relationships in Gabarone, but once she starts her trek across the Kalahari, it is entirely engrossing. She is searching for the “ideal” romantic relationship. The narrative is filled with intellectual sparring and literary references. Topics include commune life, capitalism, socialism, Marxism, apartheid, and the geopolitics of southern Africa. As an added bonus, it is guaranteed to expand the reader’s vocabulary, even if it is already vast.
There is an intriguing psychological component, where questions arise as to the reason Nelson wants to remain in Tsau. This part gets into philosophy, such as that of the Tao Te Ching, and transformations caused by near-death experiences. Is the change real or fabricated?
This book takes time to read, not only due to its length, but also due to the need to absorb, or possibly look up, some of the regional references that will likely not be in many readers’ immediate scope of knowledge. A helpful glossary is included for the Afrikaans and Setswana terms, as well as descriptions of (real) local organizations. Rush has a dense writing style that respects a reader’s intelligence. I found it masterfully written and intellectually stimulating.
4.5
… (mere)
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Associated Authors
Statistikker
- Værker
- 6
- Also by
- 8
- Medlemmer
- 2,065
- Popularitet
- #12,443
- Vurdering
- 3.7
- Anmeldelser
- 34
- ISBN
- 41
- Sprog
- 4
- Udvalgt
- 3