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Sto caricando le informazioni... The Yellow Arrow (New Directions Paperbook, 845) (originale 1993; edizione 2009)di Andrew Bromfield (Traduttore)
Informazioni sull'operaLa freccia gialla e i racconti sull'essenziale di Viktor Pelevin (1993)
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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'm a big fan of Victor Pelevin, but I've never read the novella via which he first came to international attention. Until now, when I came across a sweet little used hardcover edition at the Powell's mothership on vacation in Portland last week. Which I then, while waiting for my sister and hostess to get off work, proceeded to take to the nearest pub and devour over a few pints of Guiness, not only because it is Pelevin, but because it is also another entry in that weird trope of fictions concerning perpetual railroads about which I have written here before. The Yellow Arrow is the name of this train, crossing the wilds of the post-Soviet frontier but never actually reaching its possibly no-longer-existent destination. The train has been travelling for so long that most of its passengers no longer remember their lives before boarding it; indeed, many seem no longer to believe that they had lives before becoming passengers. A whole slightly Kafkaesque culture has developed on board, complete with histories, competing mythologies, secret societies and yes, black market economic cartels based around the strip mining of the train itself for raw materials. There is a news media, a secret governing cabal, even a set of peculiar funeral customs that, bizarrely, do not involve treating the bodies of the dead as more raw material for recycling and reuse; though the train never stops to take on supplies, some kind of basic carbon/nitrogen/water inputs are coming in from somewhere, even though we are assured there is no inhabited world outside the train anymore. Pelevin is still kind of finding his voice here (this work was originally published in 1993), but already playing well with his themes of absurdity and willful ignorance and misplaced faith and trust and the way in which mass media manipulates reality. Its protagonist, Andrei, feels very much like an early sketch of his later hero, Babylen of Homo Zapiens fame, somewhere between a naif and a sophisticate in the ways of his world, not sure he should trust his friends, not sure if they are his friends, but willing to do what he has to in order to make it all work for him somehow. If it's not quite as wickedly funny as Pelevin's later works, it's plenty philosophical, impossible not to read as a parable of both Soviet and post-Soviet Russia (masterfully and weirdly, it manages to be both at once), and enjoyable. I wouldn't recommend it as an introduction to Pelevin -- I still think that should be Omon Ra -- but if you've found you've liked his other works and curious to have a peek at his beginnings, this is a must-see. The book consists of 3 novellas (the title of the first one is on the cover, and rightly so, as it's probably the most striking) and a number of short stories. All of it is full of allegory, metaphors, is often deeply philosophical; all of it is open to interpretation. I will not claim I've understood all what Pelevin means. Maybe on the second or third read, or maybe never - but somehow it just seems OK. It's like New Age philosophy meets science fiction with a helping of fantasy. (And I am not a fan of fantasy, but here somehow it didn't bother me). The style of writing is very approachable and easy to read, even though loaded with deepest meaning (I expected a heavier style, so it took me by surprise), not to mention it sort of eggs you on - to see what Pelevin will come up with next. I missed only one novella: it had computer games in its premise, and I am neither interested nor good at it. There is a romantic and idealistic touch, there are some real shockers - like in the review he writes on the book about Stalin. Some things Pelevin describes seem plausible and implausible at the same time, some are utterly incongruous. There are trips into solipsism. But I never once lost interest or was bored. nessuna recensione | aggiungi una recensione
Appartiene alle Collane Editoriali群像社ライブラリー (26) È contenuto in
La Freccia gialla è un treno di cui non si vede né la testa né la coda, che corre senza mai fermarsi, verso la sua destinazione finale: un ponte distrutto. I passeggeri conducono i loro mille piccoli traffici quotidiani, ignari del destino che li attende e quando uno di loro muore, il corpo viene gettato dal finestrino secondo i rituali consolidati di un vero e proprio cerimoniale. L'unico che riesce a scuotersi dall'ipnosi del suono ininterrotto delle ruote è il protagonista, Andrej, che decide di mettersi alla ricerca di un modo per scendere. Ma molte domande lo ossessionano e lo frenano: cos'è davvero il treno? Chi sono i suoi passeggeri? E cosa c'è (ammesso che qualcosa ci sia) al di fuori del treno? Annotation Supplied by Informazioni Editoriali Non sono state trovate descrizioni di biblioteche |
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Google Books — Sto caricando le informazioni... GeneriSistema Decimale Melvil (DDC)891.7344Literature Literature of other languages Literature of east Indo-European and Celtic languages Russian and East Slavic languages Russian fiction USSR 1917–1991 Late 20th century 1917–1991Classificazione LCVotoMedia:
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A mystical journey... the ending had an effect on me for sure. ( )