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Contrapposto: A Novel - Softcover

Eggers, Dave

 
9798217346967: Contrapposto: A Novel
Softcover
ISBN 13: 9798217346967
Verlag: Diversified Publishing, 2026

Inhaltsangabe

A sweeping novel about friendship, love, and the lifelong pursuit of art from Dave Eggers, the award-winning, bestselling author of The Circle, Hologram for the King, and The Eyes & the Impossible

Cricket Dib, born on the American prairie, has no particular prospects or ambitions until, in grade school, he realizes he can draw. He soon meets a girl, Olympia Argyros, one year older, who is captivating and brilliant and far more worldly. Recognizing his talent, she convinces him to deface, with profound vulgarity, a popular playground. Under her direction, he does it willingly, already in love, and thus begins a sixty-five-year entwining between Cricket and Olympia, encompassing friendship, working partnership and love affair. Together they go to art school—an experience of dubious value—and then navigate the art world for the next fifty years, together and apart.

Contrapposto is a moving and very funny novel about allies and art, and what it means to be an artist. All through their lives, Cricket sees Olympia as his soulmate and destiny, and while she is always his champion, romantically her eyes are always seeking something—and someone—else. Their love changes over the decades, but their commitment to each other, and their search for meaning in the making of art, never wanes. The novel spans the globe, from New York to Cambodia, Indiana to Paris, and follows Cricket and Olympia through sickness and health, war and death.

The novel is a wild and beautiful examination of the rules and market forces of the art world, but chiefly it’s about two friends who believe they can change that world, and bring new meaning to it, if only they can start their own movement, dodge charlatans, remain open-eyed and open-hearted, avoid going mad, avoid dying young of rare cancers, stay true to their ideals, and never tire of beauty. Not easy, but not impossible, either.

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Über die Autorin bzw. den Autor

DAVE EGGERS is the author of many books, among them The Every, The Circle, The Monk of Mokha, A Hologram for the King, What Is the What, and The Museum of Rain. He is the cofounder of 826 National, a network of youth writing centers, and Voice of Witness, an oral history book series that illuminates the stories of those impacted by human rights crises. A member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters, Eggers has been a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize, the National Book Award, and the National Book Critics Circle Award, and is the recipient of the Dayton Literary Peace Prize, the American Book Award, and the Newbery Medal, for the most distinguished contribution to children's literature with The Eyes and the Impossible. He has attended the JetPack Aviation academy in Moorpark, California, but is not yet certified to fly off-tether. Born in Boston and raised in Illinois, he has now lived in the San Francisco Bay Area for three decades. He and his family often consider leaving, but yet they do not leave.

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The next day, at eleven, Cricket was at home when he saw a boxy compact car, painted a burnt orange, pull into the driveway. His mother was out front getting the newspaper when Olympia swept out of her car and strode fear­lessly toward her, hand extended. Olympia was wearing a loose sunflower-yellow blouse and a flowing white skirt. Cricket stepped outside to intervene but wasn’t quick enough.

“I’m Olympia,” she said, and shook his mother’s hand firmly. “We’ve met. At the Romanians’. I took piano.”

No friend of his had ever introduced themselves this way, so directly, so professionally.

“That was you!” his mother said. “Now look at you. You’re a woman!”

Olympia smiled, clearly accustomed to comments like this.

“We’re heading to the track,” Olympia said. “Want to come?”

There were a hundred responses possible, most of them shocked or dis­pleased, but his mother laughed. She was disarmed, rendered mute. “The track? Like the racetrack?”

“Don’t worry, I never gamble,” Olympia said. “It’s just to watch the colors in motion. You should come! It’s such a nice day.”

His mother was struck dumb again. She looked to the front porch, where she found Cricket; he had no idea what to do or say. “Well,” she finally said. “That is a tempting invitation, Olympia. You guys go. Have fun.”

Olympia tapped the roof of her car and Cricket got in.

“When will you be home?” his mother asked. She was frozen in the driveway.

“Last race is at three forty-five,” Olympia said from the driver’s-side win­dow, while backing away, “so an hour after that? But we might have dinner. Do you need him at a certain hour?”

Cricket’s mom shook her head and waved her hand listlessly.

“You enjoy the day now!” Olympia said. She left the driveway and was soon on the highway. The car smelled of spicy deodorant and watermelon gum and something old and stale— a stain somewhere that hadn’t come out. Her car was a stick shift, and Olympia shoved the wood-topped shifter around with authority, occasionally brushing Cricket’s knee when she did.

“It’s so hot today, right?” Olympia said, and took the hem of her skirt and flapped it like a sparrow’s wing. He caught a flash of her pink, freckled calf.

“Are we really going to the track?” he asked.

“You’ve never been?” Olympia asked. “I like your mom. She seems sweet. You got your braces off. Didn’t you have braces? Have you been doing this?” She ran her tongue over the bright surface of her teeth.

He told her about Dr. Talmadge as the landscape flew by.

“What a dick,” she said. “You want me to kill him for you?”

The day was bright and warm and he stole glances at her when she spoke, trying to find any part of her that resembled the girl he’d known before.

“You look different,” she said. “Your hair was longer before. And you were this tiny little kid. You’re almost grown up. Will you keep growing?” He felt obligated to say yes.

“I can’t believe I’m back in Indiana,” she said, looking at the fallow fields and strip malls. “It’s so fucking flat. Sorry we stopped writing letters. I have all yours in a box back in Connecticut. Do you have mine?”

“I do,” he said.

“You’re a romantic,” she said. “I guess I knew that.”

“You look different but the same,” she said. “A lot like your mom. You have an innocent face. Have you heard of the ‘innocent eye’?”

“No.”

“Well you need that!” she said, and laughed a thundering laugh. “That’s the whole thing, right? To be able to see everything, like, anew?”

They arrived at a vast white structure, ornate like a wedding cake.

“This is it.” Olympia put the car in neutral and coasted into the lot with­out slowing, sending a couple scurrying. She threw her bag, crocheted and enormous, over her shoulder and locked the doors.

“Sorry!” she sang to the couple. “Ready?” she asked Cricket.

“Do I need an ID?”

“Not to get in,” she said. “You don’t need a ticket or anything. It’s free.”

They entered the gates and found a trio of horses in a round pen dense with flowers and garlands. A jockey in pink and black sat atop the shimmer­ing burgundy hide of an enormous horse wearing a white headdress.

“The colors!” Olympia said. “Can you believe it? Look at that one!”

A silky black horse was led into the pen, a jockey in polka dots standing in his stirrups. “This is so the bettors can inspect them before the races. See how that coat shimmers? What would be the evolutionary point of a shimmer like that? I’m thirsty. Are you thirsty?”

She led him through the turnstiles and into a dim corridor smelling of urine, bleach and cigarettes. She stopped when she saw a concession counter.

“You wait here,” she said. “Actually, over there,” she said, and pointed to a dim corner. “Do you have a ten?”

Cricket gave her a ten. He’d brought fifteen.

“I’ll be back,” she said.

He watched her disappear into the corridor under the grandstand, men stepping aside as she approached. One elderly man took off his baseball hat in a most formal way and closed his eyes as she passed.

She returned with two clear plastic cups full of yellow beer. He reached for one. “Not yet,” she said. “Follow me.” She led him through the cool concrete corridors until she turned quickly and they walked into the bright light of the fairgrounds, a sea of green grass, bursts of rosebushes, red and white and yellow, and carnations, and in the center of it all, a silver fountain spraying white water. He’d never seen anything more beautiful.

They sat down and she handed him one of the cups.

“You’re fine now,” she said. “Just don’t walk around with it,” and she drank half of hers in one take. She placed her cup between her legs and wiped her mouth with the base of her hand. “It’s Pabst, so it’s good.”

They were sitting in the grandstand’s sunny lower seats, and the sun multiplied the effect of the beer on Cricket; he was drunk in minutes.

“Wait till you see them run,” she said. “Tell me if you think it looks like slow-motion. I can’t figure it out.”

The bell rang, the chutes opened, and a distant clacking began. Cricket had expected to witness violent speed, noise and chaos, but it was not that.

“See how they seem to go in slow motion from here?” she asked.

“I do,” he said.

“Thank you! I was starting to think I was crazy. They’re moving so fast, I realize that objectively, but from here it’s so incredibly slow. Do you see it that way? I know your way of seeing is unusual. You must like Degas,” she said. “The way you draw.”

“I think so,” he said, and took a long sip of the yellow beer. It was already warm and he didn’t know the name she had just said. Every minute, she ut­tered a name he didn’t know, a place he’d never heard of.

“You think so! When you see horses don’t you think...

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Verlag
Diversified Publishing
Erscheinungsdatum
2026
Sprache
Englisch
ISBN 13 
9798217346967
Einband
Taschenbuch
Anzahl der Seiten
593
Kontakt zum Hersteller
Harder
https://www.edel.com

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