My First Suicide
Описание книги
"Pilch's antic sensibility confirms that he is the compatriot of Witold Gombrowicz, the Polish maestro of absurdist pranks. But readers with a taste for the fermented Irish blarney of Flann O’Brien, Samuel Beckett, and John Kennedy Toole might also savor Pilch."—Barnes & Noble Review[/i]Neither strictly a collection of stories nor a novel, the ten pieces that comprise My First Suicide straddles the line between intimate revelation and drunken confession. These stories reveal a nostalgic and poetic Pilch, one who can pen a character's lyrical ode to the fate of his father's perfect chess table in one story, examine a teacher's desperate and dangerous infatuation with a student in the next, and then, always true to his obsessions, tell a remarkably touching story that begins by describing his narrator's excitement at the possibility of a three-way with the seductive soccer-fan, Anka Chow Chow. The stories of My First Suicide[/i] combine irony and humor, anecdote and gossip, love and desire with an irresistibly readable style that is vintage Pilch. Jerzy Pilch[/b] is one of Poland's most important contemporary writers and journalists. In addition to his long-running satirical newspaper column, Pilch has published several novels, and has been nominated for Poland's prestigious NIKE Literary Award four times; he finally won the Award in 2001 for The Mighty Angel[/i]. His novels have been translated into numerous languages. David Frick[/b] is a professor in the Department of Slavic Languages and Literatures at the University of California, Berkeley.
Отрывок из книги
Praise for Jerzy Pilch
“A very gifted writer… The hope of young Polish prose.”
.....
The Most Beautiful Woman in the World disappeared between my one glance at her and the next. When the heavens abruptly darkened, and the rains came down in sheets, I lifted my face; then, with the instinctive thought that one ought somehow to shield the Venus of the Third Republic—perhaps take off my jacket and throw it over her shoulders; by some miracle, produce an umbrella from somewhere; conjure up a cape out of a handkerchief—all this lasted a second, my protective visions didn’t even have time to take on concrete shape; I glanced again in her direction, and she was gone. I think I even glanced instinctively in the direction of the swaying crowns of the trees, but this was a childish instinct.
Apart from everything else—granted, she was The Most Beautiful Woman in the World, she belonged to the top ten, or to the top hundred, of the most beautiful women in the world—but some sort of slender and ethereal beauty she was not. A healthy broad, to tell the truth: six feet tall, a glorious bust, not pumped up with any element lighter than air, massive thighs, and a wrestler’s frame. Just a few years ago, all sorts of abundance had been heaped high on this frame. The story of the trademark diet she had worked out to perfection, and of her shockingly effective loss of weight, was known to the nation just as well as the story of the resurrection of Lord Jesus, and perhaps even better. Now, of course, she was slender and slim like a poplar, but still there wasn’t a chance that the wind would carry her off like a feather to the height of the genuine poplars growing next to the fence.
.....