David Grand (1) (1968–)

La traduction un peu poussive et manquant de rythme nuit à l'agrément de la lecture du livre.
Le roman est un hymne à la découverte du cinéma, à la création et à l'innovation, un plaidoyer pour la nature et le silence. Un livre de trahisons multiples et de secrets.
La naissance de Hollywood est décrite comme un enfer envahissant et factice qui souille la pureté du paradis naturel environnant. Un autre enfer est évoqué dans la dernière partie du livre : celle de l'horreur des tranchées en France, lors de la Première guerre mondiale.
Roman symboliste empruntant beaucoup aux mythes et à la Torah, il donne vie à des personnages archétypaux qui apparaissent plus comme des personnages de fables que des personnages issus du réel.
Eu égard à la thématique abordée, le style aurait pu être cinématographique. Il l'est néanmoins assez peu, notamment en raison de son rythme lent; il se fait en revanche pictural à bien des d'endroits. Cette impression n'est pas uniquement due aux nombreuses descriptions d'images qui émaillent le récit mais à une sorte de charme qui finit par opérer à travers ce presque huit-clos à Mount Terminus.… (altro)

Set in the early years of the 20th century, ‘Mount Terminus’ chronicles the rise of the film industry and the growth of Los Angeles through the eyes of Joseph Rosenbloom, most often referred to as ‘Bloom’. Bloom’s father is a millionaire due to his invention, a device that allowed the smooth projection of film.
When Bloom’s mother dies, his father takes him to Mount Terminus, California, to raise Bloom in isolation on the house on the hill. The elder Rosenbloom feels that his money has created a world where his son will always be taken care of, but he hasn’t counted on the fact that no matter how hard you try, the world will always find its way in and pain will enter every life.

The prose is dense but not slow reading. The story has epic proportions and reads like a grim fairy tale: sibling betrayals in two generations, a stolen birthright (and more), good and evil twins, a quest. Bloom is the innocent to whom things happen rather than a person who makes things happen; he is a puer who takes forever to mature. Bloom is not, in fact, a particularly interesting character, but enough adventures happen to and around him that the story kept my interest. The story is not just about Bloom; it’s about love and art and unwise grandiosity. It reads like a long dream that you don’t really want to have end.… (altro)

“Mount Terminus,” by David Grand, is like no book I’ve ever read before. It’s surreal, dark, enigmatic, outlandish, and most of all, extraordinarily dense. Yes, I have to emphasize that part, dense. Remember that. It is the single best word to describe this novel. In fact, it reads like an impenetrable onslaught of phantasmagorical literary imagery. The prose can be both artistically stunning and mind-numbing: some parts are like a stylized tragic postmodern opera; others are like a fanciful and delightful adult fairy tale; and still others reminded me of Haruki Murakami, Franz Kafka, and Edgar Allen Poe all mixed together. And yes, there were times I shook my head and thought I’d slipped momentarily and crazily into some kind of literary steampunk world of anachronistic technologies.

Much of the time this book was more exhausting than enjoyable. I found it incredibly draining to cut through all that lush fantastical imagery to find and follow the threads of the plot within. However in the end, I was happy I read the book. I admit that I almost gave up on it many times. The imagery was so dense and constant that it actually made my brain ache. My mind protested being forced persistently to imagine so much outside its own experience. It felt battered and assaulted by a deluge of bizarre mental pictures. One can only take so much and then the mind goes numb. Perhaps had I read it slowly, savoring the eccentric intellectual and literary delights of every page, the book would have been more pleasing. However, if I’d read it at that pace, it would have taken many weeks to finish. I have a stack of books waiting to read and review. I did not have that type of time to spare. I wish I had. I plan to keep this book in my library and read it again sometime in the future when I have more leisure to read it slowly.

So what’s this unusual book about? It’s about cosmic injustice and the healing power of love. It’s about sibling love and betrayal. It’s about the life-sustaining properties of art and imagination. It’s about the seduction of living a life apart, a life of solitude devoted to art and love. The marketing blurb emphasizes that it’s also about the beginnings of the city of Los Angeles. While that theme forms a strong foundation that underpins virtually the entire plot, I found this aspect of the novel to be one of its least appealing and effective elements. On the other hand, I did very much enjoy the book’s emotional imagery conjuring up the early days of filmmaking, a time when cinema was God-like, a realm of spectacular imagination and magic-making. That part was wondrous and very potent.

All the characters in this book are bigger-than-life exaggerations. Do not expect any realistic three-dimensional characters. The people in this book are the type of characters you’d encounter in a stylized opera (say “Wozzeck “or “Nixon in China”). My best brief description of this book is that it is a brilliant literary postmodern allegorical fairy tale.

I can’t say I loved this book. For me, it was just too exhausting and difficult to read…at least at the pace that I attempted to read it. I finished it in five days. In retrospect, I’d rather have read it leisurely over three weeks or more. As a result, it is difficult to know how to rate this book. Given the experience I had, I’d rate it no more than three stars. But I sincerely intend to reread it in the future when I have more time and then, I suspect, I’ll find that experience to be a full five-star pleasure. So, how do I rate it now? I’d say four stars makes sense…and that’s what I will do.

If my review has piqued your interest, I encourage you not to hesitate in trying this extremely unique and outstanding postmodern treat. But give it plenty of time! The joy of this book does not reside with the story; rather, it is the page-by-page journey through the dense phantasmagorical imagery…that’s the real treat and delight of this book.… (altro)