Spy of the First Person - Hardcover

Shepard, Sam

 
9780525521563: Spy of the First Person
Hardcover
ISBN 10: 0525521569 ISBN 13: 9780525521563
Verlag: Knopf, 2017

Inhaltsangabe

The final work from the Pulitzer Prize–winning writer, actor, and musician, drawn from his transformative last days
 
In searing, beautiful prose, Sam Shepard’s extraordinary narrative leaps off the page with its immediacy and power. It tells in a brilliant braid of voices the story of an unnamed narrator who traces, before our rapt eyes, his memories of work, adventure, and travel as he undergoes medical tests and treatments for a condition that is rendering him more and more dependent on the loved ones who are caring for him. The narrator’s memories and preoccupations often echo those of our current moment—for here are stories of immigration and community, inclusion and exclusion, suspicion and trust. But at the book’s core, and his, is family—his relationships with those he loved, and with the natural world around him. Vivid, haunting, and deeply moving, Spy of the First Person takes us from the sculpted gardens of a renowned clinic in Arizona to the blue waters surrounding Alcatraz, from a New Mexico border town to a condemned building on New York City’s Avenue C. It is an unflinching expression of the vulnerabilities that make us human—and an unbound celebration of family and life.

Die Inhaltsangabe kann sich auf eine andere Ausgabe dieses Titels beziehen.

Über die Autorin bzw. den Autor

SAM SHEPARD was the Pulitzer Prize–winning author of more than fifty-five plays and three story collections. As an actor, he appeared in more than sixty films, and received an Oscar nomination in 1984 for The Right Stuff. He was a finalist for the W. H. Smith Literary Award for his story collection Great Dream of Heaven. In 2012 he was awarded an honorary doctorate from Trinity College, Dublin. He was a member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters, received the Gold Medal for Drama from the Academy, and was inducted into the Theater Hall of Fame. He died in 2017.

Auszug. © Genehmigter Nachdruck. Alle Rechte vorbehalten.

1

Seen from a distance. That is, seeing from across the road, it’s hard to tell how old he is because of the wraparound screen porch. Because of his wraparound shades. Purple. Lone Ranger. Masked bandit. I don’t know what he’s protecting. He’s actually inside an enclosed screen porch with bugs buzzing, birds chirping, all kinds of summer things going on, on the outside—butterflies, wasps, etc.—but it’s very hard to tell from this distance exactly how old he is. The baseball cap, the grimy jeans, the old vest. He’s sitting in a rocking chair, as far as I can tell. A rocking chair that looks like it was lifted from a Cracker Barrel. In fact, it still has the broken security chain around one leg. I think from this distance it’s red but it could be black, the rocker, some of these colors originate from the Marines, some of them from the Army, some from the Air Force, depends on the depth of one’s patriotism, and he just rocks all day. That’s all. Telling stories of one kind or another, little histories. Battle stories. People come by, and they see him sitting there on the porch in his rocker mumbling to himself. And they just walk up and sit down. They seem to know him somehow. At first they seem as though they don’t, but then they do. Also there are other people who come by. Who come and go. One of them looks like it might be his son. Tall and lanky. One looks like it could be his daughter. Two of them look like they might be his sisters. They come and go from deep inside the house but it’s very hard to tell from this distance how deep the house goes.

Robins are chirping approval. More or less. Robins are always chirping here, for some reason. I think mostly protecting nests. Protecting pale blue eggs. From crows and blackbirds. Swooping. Menacing birds trying to get their babies. Little robins with red breasts chirping madly trying to scare away the crows. Big bad birds.

2

They gave me all these tests. Way out in the middle of the desert. The painted desert. Land of the Apache. Land of the Saguaro. They gave me blood tests, of course. All kinds of blood tests testing my white corpuscles, testing my red corpuscles, testing one against the other. Then they tested my spinal column. They gave me a spinal tap even. They put me through MRIs. Tubes where they could look at my whole body to see if there was any paralysis in any bones or muscles. Cross-sections, sliced sections. X-rays. Ghostly pictures. And they looked at decay and they looked at all kinds of things and they couldn’t come up with an answer until finally one guy, I think some kind of neurosurgeon, he had black hair and a white coat and glasses, electric probing shocks with a steel rod. He injected them into each arm and an electric current pulsed through and I could feel these shocks in my arms. He’s the one who came up with the answer that something was wrong. And I said, well, I know something is wrong. Why do you think I’m in here? He just looked at me with a blank stare.

In the mornings I would have breakfast at a Mexican joint. Enchiladas. Cheese and eggs. Green chili.

3

There used to be orchards as far as the eye could see. Like picture postcards. Orange orchards, olive orchards, grape orchards, avocado orchards, lemon orchards, pear orchards. Orchards of every kind corresponding to the nationality that brought them here. For instance, the Italians and the Spanish brought oranges, avocados—well, the avocados came up through Mexico—tangerines, grapefruit, those kinds of things. The Italians brought olives. Out through Padua, sweeping silver leaves, limbs gnarled like old sailors. Black bark, silvery leaves. There were oceans of olive orchards everywhere. Way up in Chico there were almond orchards. Almond orchards that turned white in spring. Beautiful almond orchards that looked like Japanese calligraphy. Gorgeous. Walnut groves. Palm trees out in the Indio desert. Tall. Really tall. Some of them 100 feet or more. There was a border town between California and Arizona. The Colorado River ran through it. It was 1953 and white men used to dress up as Arabs on camels and parade back and forth in the street wearing Shriner caps pretending to be full of Arab pride. They were guys from the Midwest who owned barber shops and drugstores and had thick glasses. They had never seen the desert. I used to ride in the back seat of a Chrysler, right past the Colorado River with my aunt, my great-aunt who had blue hair and she was Welsh and her husband was fairly wealthy, but he had died by that time. His name was Charlie Upton, from Liverpool. And he had a penchant for whiskey and barroom brawls. In one of these fights he had his ear bitten off. Mike Tyson style. Bit right in half so that he only had one half an ear on one side of his face. I forget which side that was. But anyhow, he was wealthy enough to buy a Chrysler sedan on the black market during the War. Big heavy car. Beautiful car. Good for the open road. It had plaid seats. Plaid, not any other color but red plaid. I was all alone in a sea of plaid. It had an armrest that folded down in the middle of the back seat and behind each of the front seats was a kind of cord that went across, I suppose to support yourself for getting in and out of the vehicle if you were old. I wasn’t that old then, maybe eight or nine, and my great-aunt who was my mother’s mother’s sister, her name was Grace and she had blue hair. She would drive me out there to Indio to the date festival where we would get date shakes and watch the white men pretend to be Arabs on camels parading back and forth in the heat. From the tops of the 100-foot palm trees you could see parrots peeking out. Red. Black. And green. Date shakes, imagine that.

There’s a place along the way that always made me feel peaceful and I don’t know why. There’s a wharf behind it. The wharf leads out to the Pacific. The wharf creaks and moans. Sometimes it chatters and thuds when cars cross it. The timbers rattle. Sand covers the sidewalk. Sand blown in from the beach. Surfers twelve years old or maybe thirteen carry their boards under their arms coming home in the twilight. Bermuda shorts on, hair all oily, covered in sand. Small dogs walk behind them. Small dogs of no significant breed. Pelicans cling to the wharf. Seagulls swoop. Sandpipers hum and sing and dance their little dance. The seaweed is soaking. Far in the distance two people are getting up from the beach just in bathing suits folding a huge orange towel. The squirrels are scurrying for cover. The sun is setting on the Pacific. People are unlocking their cars from a distance. Pushing buttons, zapping their cars, making the doors buzz and sing, making little Close Encounters of the Third Kind noises. People are getting in and starting their cars, driving out of the parking lot under the palm trees, past the lawns, past the glassed-in sitting rooms where blond women are serving them lobster. Somebody is turning off a lawn mower. Somebody’s sitting at a bus stop. Somebody’s waiting for somebody. Lights are coming on. They’re starting to serve dinner. They’re bringing steaming pots of something. Something like crab. Something like cod. Bowls full of cod. Bowls full of hot rice. People are going home. Somebody is waiting for somebody. Somebody’s waiting for a bus. Everybody’s waiting for somebody to take them out of there—to take them far away. Down below they’re just starting to swim and it’s not even really dark yet but they are starting. Old men starting to drink. Young women are smoking cigarettes. The boats are rocking back and forth, back and forth. Bells are chiming. Some boats are unloading nets. Nets full of octopus spilling on the wharf. Somebody’s waiting.

But inside...

„Über diesen Titel“ kann sich auf eine andere Ausgabe dieses Titels beziehen.

Verlag
Knopf
Erscheinungsdatum
2017
Sprache
Englisch
ISBN 10 
0525521569
ISBN 13 
9780525521563
Einband
Gebundene Ausgabe
Anzahl der Seiten
96
Kontakt zum Hersteller
Nicht verfügbar
Verantwortliche Person
Nicht verfügbar

Weitere beliebte Ausgaben desselben Titels

9780525563365: Spy of the First Person

Vorgestellte Ausgabe

ISBN 10:  0525563369 ISBN 13:  9780525563365
Verlag: Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group, 2018
Softcover