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Indlæser... Train Dreams (2002)af Denis Johnson
  
Der er ingen diskussionstråde på Snak om denne bog.  ffortsa | Oct 31, 2023 |   To me, the work teaches that most people's lives are hardly easy -the protagonist's was certainly much more difficult than most. Still, each of us must carry on when difficult times, even tragedy, strike. My only criticisms are the book was a bit disjointed at times, and actually may have been a better as a full-length novel. Also, I found the superstitious elements unnecessary. To me, they devalued his work somewhat. (  ) la2bkk | Aug 30, 2023 | Episodic, but as others have said, written as epic in miniature. A whole life boiled down to a few short scenes, almost all solitary, focused on Robert Grainier. I read this trying to recall where I had previously read something of such seemingly simple storytelling about the American wilderness. Perhaps something like Cormac McCarthy edited like Raymond Carver. I am also reminded of Sebastian Barry’s Days without End, which also combines the harsh environment of the American West with poetic language. (  ) CarltonC | Aug 15, 2023 |  ) d.v. | May 16, 2023 |  ) zmagic69 | Mar 31, 2023 |
 Wie Treindromen leest, kan maar één reden bedenken - een armzalige - waarom dit boek geen prijs waardig werd geacht: de Pulitzerdames en -heren zullen het wel te dun hebben bevonden. Het beslaat inderdaad nog geen honderd pagina's. Maar in die beperkte ruimte presenteert Jonhson de rijkdom van een vuistdikke roman. Treindromen is op een wonderlijke, knarsende manier zowel meedogenloos als vol compassie, een werk waarin Johnson zich een rauwe poëet en een meester van de suggestie betoont. Je moet wel een motherfucker zijn om zo'n boek geen Pulitzer Prize te gunnen. The denouement of Train Dreams is so tragic and surreal that the reader at first denies its grisly approach: yet when it comes, it is written with such credibility that it fulfils the book's theme, the collapse of the rational world for a decent man. Softly and beautifully, this novel asks a profound question of human life: is the cost of human society and so-called civilisation perhaps just too high? The board of the Pulitzer prize for fiction failed to award it to the shortlisted Train Dreams – or to any work. Poor souls, cowering from the howls of the old American mountains. What Johnson builds from the ashes of Grainier’s life is a tender, lonesome and riveting story, an American epic writ small, in which Grainier drives a horse cart, flies in a biplane, takes part in occasionally hilarious exchanges and goes maybe 42 percent crazy. It’s a love story, a hermit’s story and a refashioning of age-old wolf-based folklore like “Little Red Cap.” It’s also a small masterpiece. You look up from the thing dazed, slightly changed. The visionary, miraculous element in Johnson's deceptively tough realism makes beautiful appearances in this book. The hard, declarative sentences keep their powder dry for pages at a time, and then suddenly flare into lyricism; the natural world of the American West is examined, logged, and frequently transfigured. I started reading "Train Dreams" with hoarded suspicion, and gradually gave it all away, in admiration of the story's unaffected tact and honesty. Train Dreams draws its title ostensibly from the fact that Grainier had “started his life story on a train ride he couldn’t remember, and ended up standing outside” another train, but it could just as easily stem from his early work experiences on the railroad, which “made him hungry to be around such other massive undertakings.” By the end of the book, it seems as though this hunger has hardly been sated ― Grainier’s few celebrations are tiny and even his failures, while frequent, are never grand ― but Johnson’s accomplishment is grand, and this book, short as it is, feels like a massive monument to a deceptively simple life and the wilderness in which it was lived. Tilhører ForlagsserienIndeholdt iHæderspriserDistinctionsNotable Lists
Presents the story of early twentieth-century day laborer Robert Grainer, who endures the harrowing loss of his family while struggling for survival in the American West against a backdrop of radical historical changes. No library descriptions found. |
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 Google Books — Indlæser...GenrerMelvil Decimal System (DDC)813.54Literature English (North America) American fiction 20th Century 1945-1999LC-klassificeringVurderingGennemsnit: (3.91)
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An orphan is taken in by his uncle in the Pacific Northwest in the late 1800s, even taking his name, but has little memory of his origin. As he grows, a striking incident turns him from a layabout life to one of utility, if not purpose. As he goes through his adult life, he finds love and disaster, hard work and its joys; industry and culture grow around him, past the essential rural 19th century on into the machines and entertainments of a more modern era.
Highly recommended. (