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Sto caricando le informazioni... The Last Picture Showdi Larry McMurtry
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Iscriviti per consentire a LibraryThing di scoprire se ti piacerà questo libro. Attualmente non vi sono conversazioni su questo libro. I read this book out of curiosity about how it would compare to the movie, diected by Peter Bogdonovich. Apparently, his wife, Polly Platt read the book and recommemded he bring it to film. Thalia Texas, the setting, is a lonely, dreary town, filled with lonely, disenchanted people. The only way the townspeople can fill the lonely void in their lives is through sex. That's it on a nutshell. Some characters are cartoonish, for example, Jacy. She pursues men and sex to enhance her wild reputation. Why? Is sje bored? Is she in competition with her mother? The book could have been better if some of these (and other) character motivations were explored. In this case, the movie was better than the book. The lonely aches and confusing relationships of a desolate small town in nowhere, Texas, are painfully captured in this classic novel. "It was another one of those mornings when no one was there" - this stark sentence neatly summarises the atmosphere of a bleak, cold and forlorn town in which the well-drawn characters search restlessly for meaning or comfort, or give up hope. McMurtry's writing is direct, plain, and minimally regional in tone, which serves to accentuate the emptiness and heartache around every windswept corner of the plot. As a portrait of a dying community, and the remorseless inevitability of endings, this is fine work of art. nessuna recensione | aggiungi una recensione
Appartiene alle SerieThalia, Texas (1) Premi e riconoscimenti
An almost-true story about a small town in Texas that ought to exist if it doesn't, with characters like Sam the Lion, the delectable Jacy, and Ruth Popper, the coach's wife. Non sono state trovate descrizioni di biblioteche |
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Google Books — Sto caricando le informazioni... GeneriSistema Decimale Melvil (DDC)813.54Literature English (North America) American fiction 20th Century 1945-1999Classificazione LCVotoMedia:
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But the book isn't really about Duane. It's sort of about Jacy, but it's really about Sonny, Duane's best friend, and their senior year in high school. Sonny is just kind of drifting along without much direction, being mediocre at sports and crushing on his best friend's girl, until he finds himself in an affair with Ruth, the football coach's neglected wife. He's thrilled to be getting laid regularly and fond of Ruth, but their affair triggers something deeper for her. Stuck in a bad marriage she made to rebel against her parents, she feels seen and desired for the first time in her adult life, giving her back some of her dampened inner fire but also making her heart-wrenchingly dependent on the attention of a teenage boy. And when Jacy sets her sights on Sonny, well...heartbreak is in order.
One of the things that struck me particularly about this novel was the lack of romance in the way that McMurtry dealt with sex. The experience of sex for the characters ranges from the purely transactional (both Sonny and Duane sleep with hookers) to the deeply meaningful (the way that Ruth views her assignations with Sonny). It felt more honest than either treating it consistently as either a purely physical exercise or A Mystical Union Of Two Souls. There's even a range of feeling about sex within the characters themselves: for example, Jacy sleeps with the besotted Duane as a means to an end of losing her virginity to be more attractive to another man and coolly leaves him shortly thereafter, but she's genuinely hurt when she has sex with the local pool hustler because she feels real desire for the first time in her life and it turns out she's just a a way he's acting out towards his own lover. It hits on the way that sex actually works in real life, with a wide spectrum of meaning depending on the content, and it's just part of why the novel rings so true and so real.
Sonny's not a bad guy, despite his sometimes cavalier treatment of Ruth's feelings. He's just young and is still feeling his way into becoming an adult. Which is pretty much everyone's situation, including the adults themselves...it's the rare coming-of-age story that doesn't neglect the older generation. The idea that we're all just trying to figure out how to be a grown-up is what gives the novel its power. I loved this book and the way it took you inside the character's heads (mostly Sonny, Jacy, and Ruth, but a few others) and let you see situations and other characters from different perspectives. It creates a sense of people, not just characters, on the page. It felt like a tour of loneliness, in a way: everyone in the story is lonely and trying to deal with that loneliness in their own way. Everyone's grasping at something they think will help that seems tantalizingly just out of reach. Which isn't just small-town life, to be certain, but cities seem to have more to offer to distract from that emptiness. The people of Thalia, though, just have their aching hearts. It's not a long book, but I found it so compelling that I blasted right through it. Simple but vivid prose and emotionally honest characters made it hard to put down. ( )