Middle C
A Novel
(Sprache: Englisch)
In a series of brilliant variations, William Gass presents a man s life futile, comic, anarchic arranged in an array of vocabularies, altered rhythms, forms, and tones, with music as both theme and structure.
It begins in Graz, Austria, in 1938, when...
It begins in Graz, Austria, in 1938, when...
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In a series of brilliant variations, William Gass presents a man s life futile, comic, anarchic arranged in an array of vocabularies, altered rhythms, forms, and tones, with music as both theme and structure.It begins in Graz, Austria, in 1938, when Joseph Skizzen s father pretends to be Jewish and emigrates to avoid the Nazis. In London with his wife and children for the duration of the war, he mysteriously disappears and the rest of the family relocates to a small town in Ohio. Here Joseph Skizzen grows up and leads a resolutely ordinary life, but one that is built on a scaffold of forgery and deceit. Outwardly he is a professor of music at a mediocre college; secretly he is the earnestly obsessive curator of a private Inhumanity Museum, meant to contain the guilt of centuries of atrocities. Middle C tells the story of his journey a story that is also an investigation into the nature of identity and the ways in which each of us is several selves.
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. . . it repented Jehovah that he had made man . . .Chapter 1
Miriam, whom Joey Skizzen thought of as his mother, Nita, began to speak about the family s past, but only after she decided that her husband was safely in his grave. His frowns could silence her in midsentence; even his smiles were curved in condescension, though at this time in his absence, her beloved husband s virtues, once admitted to be many, were written in lemon juice. He had a glare to bubble paint, she said. Her recollection of that look caused hesitations still. She would appear alarmed, wave as if she saw something gnatting near her face, and stutter to a stop. Joey was helped to remember how, at suppertime, for only then was the family gathered as a group, the spoon would become still in his father s soup, his father s head would rise to face the direction of the offending remark, his normally placid look would stiffen, and fires light in his eyes. His stare seemed unwilling to cease, although it probably was never held beyond the lifetime of a minute. But a minute . . . a minute is so long. Certainly it continued until his daughter s or his wife s uneasy expression sank into the bottom of her bowl, and the guilty head was bowed in an attitude of apology and submission.
When the soup was a clear broth, as it often impecuniously was, Joey could occasionally see his face floating in a brown dream, and he thought of his mother s real self submerged in a brown dream too, beyond the reach of life. His father sent his spoon to the bottom, and they could hear it scrape as he ladled, faster and faster as the level dropped. He was a noisy eater because he felt noise signified relish and appreciation. Whenever a meal was especially skimpy, Yankel, as he insisted he was, slurped his soup, he sucked his teeth, and he exclaimed Aaah! after a set of swallows. When they had bread, he would strenuously rend it just above the surface of the soup so that flecks of crust would fall as snow
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might on a pond. Then he d allow the torn piece to follow after, his hands aiming it somewhat like a bomb. His father would watch the hunk slowly tan, gradually sog, and finally sink. Joseph knew he had to finish his bowl, whose basin would have to seem licked, but he hated to put his own implement down there in the dream and see it thrust through his own moist eye or quivery cheek because down there his thin bit of all-purpose tableware suddenly became his father s wide one, ready to scoop up his nose or chin and inhale him spoon by spoon the way, later, he read that the Titan who was called Saturn had swallowed his children.
They had reached London by then, where Joseph was born Yussel, and where his father finally got a job printing leaflets for the army; leaflets that were to be dropped on the Germans to threaten or cajole. Yankel was proud of the errors he had caught in the texts. He laughed the way stout Austrians would laugh at anything inauthentic. He often described the leaflets for the family, demonstrating the size of the sheets, summarizing their messages, enacting the way they would flutter out of the sky. Heads will turn and hearts will fail, he said, spinning like a waltzer. Each littering page is hastening your father back from exile thanks to the RAF and the government s printing offices back to Vienna, perhaps even to Graz. His wide hands wavered for each leaf a wiggle here, a wobble there and then he would bend down to show, on the floor, how they d land and even how they d blow about the street. Already a bit of me is back, he bragged. They will pick up each piece. You know how neat we are. For the mayor he made a face that was puffed as a frog s; for the mayor he mimed a body bent to hold its belly from the ground; and, for the mayor, he pretended to read
They had reached London by then, where Joseph was born Yussel, and where his father finally got a job printing leaflets for the army; leaflets that were to be dropped on the Germans to threaten or cajole. Yankel was proud of the errors he had caught in the texts. He laughed the way stout Austrians would laugh at anything inauthentic. He often described the leaflets for the family, demonstrating the size of the sheets, summarizing their messages, enacting the way they would flutter out of the sky. Heads will turn and hearts will fail, he said, spinning like a waltzer. Each littering page is hastening your father back from exile thanks to the RAF and the government s printing offices back to Vienna, perhaps even to Graz. His wide hands wavered for each leaf a wiggle here, a wobble there and then he would bend down to show, on the floor, how they d land and even how they d blow about the street. Already a bit of me is back, he bragged. They will pick up each piece. You know how neat we are. For the mayor he made a face that was puffed as a frog s; for the mayor he mimed a body bent to hold its belly from the ground; and, for the mayor, he pretended to read
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Autoren-Porträt von William H. Gass
William H. Gass essayist, novelist, literary critic was born in Fargo, North Dakota. He is the author of seven works of fiction and nine books of essays, including Life Sentences, A Temple of Texts, and Tests of Time, and was a professor of philosophy at Washington University. He died in 2017.
Bibliographische Angaben
- Autor: William H. Gass
- 2013, 416 Seiten, Masse: 13,3 x 20,2 cm, Kartoniert (TB), Englisch
- Verlag: VINTAGE
- ISBN-10: 0804168784
- ISBN-13: 9780804168786
- Erscheinungsdatum: 27.06.2016
Sprache:
Englisch
Pressezitat
Middle C takes its place in that great line of modern novels about inauthenticity. . . . However, there is nothing sham to Gass s art: It s not just dazzling, it s the real thing. The Washington PostA world-devouring novel. . . . Of all living literary figures, William Gass may count as the most daringly scathing and most assertively fecund: in language, in ideas, in intricacy of form; above all in relentless fury. . . . This unquiet bildungsroman is designed to detonate its mild, middling title. . . . Exhilaratingly ingenious . . . unexpected and dizzying. Cynthia Ozick, The New York Times Book Review
Rhythmic and sonic. . . . A final statement of Gass s belief in the sound of literary language. The Times Literary Supplement (London)
Gass is a magician of the word, the writer of a prose so rich that it makes Vladimir Nabokov s seem impoverished. . . . Metaphors leap through hoops, similes elicit oohs and ahs, and daredevil paragraphs bring down the house. There s never any fat or slack to his sentences, though sometimes they unfold quietly, almost slyly, until blossoming into little stories all their own. The Washington Post
Middle C is driven by plot, by a largely comic chain of cause and consequence. . . . Skizzen proves as befuddled an academic wanderer as anyone this country has seen since Nabokov s Timofey Pnin. The New York Review of Books
A mischievous variation on the moral dilemmas raised in Gass s The Tunnel . . . In this exuberantly learned bildungsroman this torrent of curious facts and arch commentary, puns and allusions internationally lauded virtuoso Gass reflects on humanity s crimes and marvels, creating his funniest and most life-embracing book yet. Booklist (starred)
Extraordinary. . . . A religious allegory and a philosophical meditation on language and consciousness as the source of evil. The Boston Globe
Gass orchestrates his fiction with thematic elements as a composer might a symphony. Timeout
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New York
Exhilarating . . .dazzling. Milwaukee Journal Sentinel
Epic . . . crazily rich with thought . . . remarkably detailed. . . . Gass beautifully coaxes the unheard music from a seemingly muted life. . . . The unprecedented work of a master. Publishers Weekly
A masterly work of language and imagery from one of America s most celebrated authors. Library Journal (starred)
Engaging, melancholy. . . . Gass remains a master of apt metaphors, graceful sentences and a flinty, unforgiving brand of humor; it may be the most entertaining novel you ll read that half wishes humanity was wiped off the map. . . . Gass, now 88, clearly has endings on his mind, which he addresses with fearsome brio and wit. Kirkus
Exhilarating . . .dazzling. Milwaukee Journal Sentinel
Epic . . . crazily rich with thought . . . remarkably detailed. . . . Gass beautifully coaxes the unheard music from a seemingly muted life. . . . The unprecedented work of a master. Publishers Weekly
A masterly work of language and imagery from one of America s most celebrated authors. Library Journal (starred)
Engaging, melancholy. . . . Gass remains a master of apt metaphors, graceful sentences and a flinty, unforgiving brand of humor; it may be the most entertaining novel you ll read that half wishes humanity was wiped off the map. . . . Gass, now 88, clearly has endings on his mind, which he addresses with fearsome brio and wit. Kirkus
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