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Indlæser... White Peopleaf Allan Gurganus
Indlæser...
Bliv medlem af LibraryThing for at finde ud af, om du vil kunne lide denne bog. Der er ingen diskussionstråde på Snak om denne bog. Loved this book. Has totally made me obsessed with short stories. ( ) What a great collection - the last was the most moving, Blessed Assurance. I liked how some of the characters overlapped from previous stories. Only one in this collection I just wasn't able to get through, the rest were all excellent in their own way. A blend of Flannery O'Connor with John Cheever. I had no expectations of this novel. It was suggested to me by a friend who is usually trustworthy. So when I started reading, I was just heart-wrenchingly captured by the first chapter, a description of the family dynamic between a WW2 era father and his two sons. By page 17 I was so enamoured of the characters...so imagine my surprise when Chapter 2 was a completely different narrative of a different family. This book appears to be a series of essays...perhaps an ethnographic review of the lives of white people, most of the stories coming from the southern United States. A quaint enough idea and yet there is so much missing. One of the essays "Nativity: Caucasian" describes a birth at an upstanding stereotypical bridge tournament, with wealthy southern US women reflecting their "white women" identity. As I am sure many different cultural groups feel when a work is meant to portray their ethnic beliefs, I found this horribly shallow. I wished that the essays covered a more diverse range of personality. Or perhaps the diversity within the "white culture" and why not discuss racial issues that are foundational in the white experience? For instance, if we are going to talk about southern white folk, we had just as well talk about how the white southern identity is built around the systematic oppression and forced migration of the entire continent of Africa, and how the culture of oppression has defined white culture in the south. I would be lying if I said that my review of this book is not affected by my own ethnicity, or the fact that I live in Canada and have a difficult time identifying with the southern white experience. And Gurganus does write lovely prose (which is why he gets my 3-1/2 stars). I guess I am just rubbed the wrong way by the title. This book is good for 1) people interested in narrative studies of ethnic groups 2) people interested in reading short essays before bed 3) those experiencing sexuality conflicts, especially men 4) individuals questioning identity I would not recommend this novel for, say, someone from another cultural group wanting to learn more about "white people." Maybe the title should be Southern Entitled Whiners. ingen anmeldelser | tilføj en anmeldelse
Hæderspriser
From Allan Gurganus, author of the beloved, bestselling Oldest Living Confederate Widow Tells All and winner of the Sue Kaufman Prize for First Fiction from the American Academy and Institute of Arts and Letters, here are eleven masterful works of short fiction. First seen in The New, Yorker, Harper's, the Paris Review, Granta, and elsewhere, they are darkly comic stories and novellas about love and money among American WASPs, that majority outnumbered, outflanked, and somewhat out of love with itself. 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:
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