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3.48 AVERAGE
3.48 AVERAGE
COMENTÁRIO
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"Falconer"
John Cheever
Tradução de José Lima
Falconer foi a confirmação perfeita de que John Cheever é um autor a ler tudo o que me for possível. Depois de ler nestas férias o "Crónica de Wapshot" a leitura de um dos seu mais destacados romances mostra a maestria na inovação que Cheever representa.
Desta feita, a obra situa-se numa prisão cujo nome dá o mote ao título do livro, quase sempre limitado ao "Bloco F" e a um grupo restrito de detidos.
O protagonista, Izequiel Ferragut está preso por assassinar o irmão, aparentemente numa discussão doméstica ingénua. Ferragut é também um heroínamo, depende da metadona que lhe é administrada na prisão.
Cheever parte assim do quotidiano de uma prisão, e num registo de escrita que nos faz lembra a torrente de delírio numa ressaca de abstinência das drogas, apresenta o dia-a-dia dos homens ali detidos. Esse fluxo, algo rapido, prende o leitor no desejo de conhecer melhor cada uma das personagens que se cruzam na vida do protagonista Ferragut.
Outro elemento interessante da obra está relacionado com as práticas sexuais entre os detidos apresentadas como óbvias mas circunstanciais. Este seria um belo tema de debate...
Uma última nota acerca do tempo da sua vida a em que Cheever escreveu este livro pois vais corresponder ao momento em que o autor deixa de consumir álcool, assumindo um problema de consumo excessivo (sobre isso falarei em outro momento).
⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐
"Falconer"
John Cheever
Tradução de José Lima
Falconer foi a confirmação perfeita de que John Cheever é um autor a ler tudo o que me for possível. Depois de ler nestas férias o "Crónica de Wapshot" a leitura de um dos seu mais destacados romances mostra a maestria na inovação que Cheever representa.
Desta feita, a obra situa-se numa prisão cujo nome dá o mote ao título do livro, quase sempre limitado ao "Bloco F" e a um grupo restrito de detidos.
O protagonista, Izequiel Ferragut está preso por assassinar o irmão, aparentemente numa discussão doméstica ingénua. Ferragut é também um heroínamo, depende da metadona que lhe é administrada na prisão.
Cheever parte assim do quotidiano de uma prisão, e num registo de escrita que nos faz lembra a torrente de delírio numa ressaca de abstinência das drogas, apresenta o dia-a-dia dos homens ali detidos. Esse fluxo, algo rapido, prende o leitor no desejo de conhecer melhor cada uma das personagens que se cruzam na vida do protagonista Ferragut.
Outro elemento interessante da obra está relacionado com as práticas sexuais entre os detidos apresentadas como óbvias mas circunstanciais. Este seria um belo tema de debate...
Uma última nota acerca do tempo da sua vida a em que Cheever escreveu este livro pois vais corresponder ao momento em que o autor deixa de consumir álcool, assumindo um problema de consumo excessivo (sobre isso falarei em outro momento).
Nothing in particular happens in this book, but it kept me interested enough to keep turning pages until the end.
Hmm. What a strange book. It says the place is a prison, but I think a mental ward is a better possibility. I enjoyed the book, but I wouldn’t recommend it to anyone. I’m unsure what the point of it was too. The conversations were the highlight, and the character Tiny. “Why you an addict?”
dark
emotional
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
Complicated
Loveable characters:
Complicated
Diverse cast of characters:
N/A
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
Een bijzonder boek: in een nogal zakelijke stijl toch heel bijzondere beelden oproepen en karakters tekenen, je moet het maar kunnen. Zo zou ik wel willen kunnen schrijven!
Een man zit in de gevangenis voor broedermoord. Hij mist de vrijheid die we zo vanzelfsprekend vinden, maar hij vindt ook schoonheid en verlossing.
Een man zit in de gevangenis voor broedermoord. Hij mist de vrijheid die we zo vanzelfsprekend vinden, maar hij vindt ook schoonheid en verlossing.
18 days since I started this and according to my kindle I'm at 28%... and now I've given up... I really wanted to like it and tried hard to push through but i couldn't read more than 3 or 4 pages before i stopped caring and lost the will to live... awful characters and dense writing...
My girlfriend gave me a copy of Falconer as a gift and I was quite intrigued by the blurb. It said something about a prisoner who killed his brother, finding redemption through a relationship with a fellow inmate. The novel is so much more than that. It is kind of hard to describe what happens in Falconer, which is weird because the story is pretty straight forward. The reason I say this is because there are so many subjects that are being dealt with over the course of the book. It is a very short novel but nonetheless it tackles subjects like drug addiction or sexuality rather profoundly. Cheever never stays with a subject for very long though. You could think of it as a very brief succession of meditations on life and humanity, for which the story in prison only acts as a vessel in the form of beautiful prose:
What he felt, what he saw, was the utter poverty of erotic reasonableness. That was how he missed the target and the target was the mysteriousness of the bonded spirit and the flesh. He knew it well. Fitness and beauty had a rim. Fitness and beauty had a dimension, had a floor, even as the oceans have a floor, and he had comitted a trespass. It was not unforgivable - a venal trespass - but he was reproached by the majesty of the realm. It was majestic; even in prison he knew the world to be majestic. He had taken a pebble out of his shoe in the middle of mass.
Cheever's storytelling in Falconer is very serious but at times it has a very magical feel to it. There is somehow always a feeling that life is beautiful and that everything happens for a reason, which is weird considering the bleak overtone of the novel. I think that this ambiguity is exactly what Cheever meant to accomplish because it can be found within pretty much every character of the novel. Farragut, the main character, seems to be rotten to the core but there are flashes of great kindness and empathy. The prison guard Tiny is a terribly violent and heartless person at the beginning of the novel but surprises the reader by being the only person in prison that treats Farragut humanely and fair. Cheever perfectly displays the paradoxical being of humanity, its beauty and its ugliness, because one cannot exist without the other. Sure, there are good-natured people that do a lot of things right and there are purely evil people but you can find a little bit of both in almost anyone. Humans are often ignorant of their ignorance, just as Farragut thinks his above average intellect will get him out of prison, just by writing a couple of pseudo-intellectual (but ultimately douchy) letters to people in power. Cheever succeeds at creating characters that are not easy to like but are also hard to hate, which can sometimes be a sign of bad writing but in this case it signifies something bigger, something that goes beyond the prisoners of Falconer.
My only real problem with the novel was the lack of any real character development, which can probably be attributed to its length and its wide array of topics. While the blurb advertised the novel as a story about a relationship saving someone from himself, I felt like said relationship did not have much impact on Farragut at all. Sure, he was affected by it for a while but in the grand scheme of things it did not really change him as a person. The story gives too much room to symbolism and philosophical questions, which prevents Farragut from noticeably evolving. For me personally, this was not a big deal because I still gained a lot from reading the book but the story was not as rewarding as it could have been.
First and foremost, Falconer is a meticulous study of human nature, of its beauty and its flaws. While all of us make wrong decisions almost every day, there is a good spirit within a lot of us that always seems to prevail. Of course, one could interpret it the other way around: We sometimes stumble upon occasional goodness, even though we are inherently malicious beings. I believe that both can be the case. History has shown that our world is capable of raising humans that are capable of inconcievable evil. But I can only speak for myself when I say that I have experienced inherent goodness within many people over the course of my short life. I believe in the goodness in people and quite frankly, I believe this to be the more productive approach. Maybe not in business, but in leading a virtuous life.
Originally posted to my blog The Mugwump Diaries
What he felt, what he saw, was the utter poverty of erotic reasonableness. That was how he missed the target and the target was the mysteriousness of the bonded spirit and the flesh. He knew it well. Fitness and beauty had a rim. Fitness and beauty had a dimension, had a floor, even as the oceans have a floor, and he had comitted a trespass. It was not unforgivable - a venal trespass - but he was reproached by the majesty of the realm. It was majestic; even in prison he knew the world to be majestic. He had taken a pebble out of his shoe in the middle of mass.
Cheever's storytelling in Falconer is very serious but at times it has a very magical feel to it. There is somehow always a feeling that life is beautiful and that everything happens for a reason, which is weird considering the bleak overtone of the novel. I think that this ambiguity is exactly what Cheever meant to accomplish because it can be found within pretty much every character of the novel. Farragut, the main character, seems to be rotten to the core but there are flashes of great kindness and empathy. The prison guard Tiny is a terribly violent and heartless person at the beginning of the novel but surprises the reader by being the only person in prison that treats Farragut humanely and fair. Cheever perfectly displays the paradoxical being of humanity, its beauty and its ugliness, because one cannot exist without the other. Sure, there are good-natured people that do a lot of things right and there are purely evil people but you can find a little bit of both in almost anyone. Humans are often ignorant of their ignorance, just as Farragut thinks his above average intellect will get him out of prison, just by writing a couple of pseudo-intellectual (but ultimately douchy) letters to people in power. Cheever succeeds at creating characters that are not easy to like but are also hard to hate, which can sometimes be a sign of bad writing but in this case it signifies something bigger, something that goes beyond the prisoners of Falconer.
My only real problem with the novel was the lack of any real character development, which can probably be attributed to its length and its wide array of topics. While the blurb advertised the novel as a story about a relationship saving someone from himself, I felt like said relationship did not have much impact on Farragut at all. Sure, he was affected by it for a while but in the grand scheme of things it did not really change him as a person. The story gives too much room to symbolism and philosophical questions, which prevents Farragut from noticeably evolving. For me personally, this was not a big deal because I still gained a lot from reading the book but the story was not as rewarding as it could have been.
First and foremost, Falconer is a meticulous study of human nature, of its beauty and its flaws. While all of us make wrong decisions almost every day, there is a good spirit within a lot of us that always seems to prevail. Of course, one could interpret it the other way around: We sometimes stumble upon occasional goodness, even though we are inherently malicious beings. I believe that both can be the case. History has shown that our world is capable of raising humans that are capable of inconcievable evil. But I can only speak for myself when I say that I have experienced inherent goodness within many people over the course of my short life. I believe in the goodness in people and quite frankly, I believe this to be the more productive approach. Maybe not in business, but in leading a virtuous life.
Originally posted to my blog The Mugwump Diaries
What a weird little book. Fun to read though. Makes me pretty sure I don’t want to go to prison.
"Long ago when they first invented the atomic bomb people used to worry about its going off and killing everybody, but they didn't know that mankind has got enough dynamite right in his guts to tear the f*** planet to pieces."
Read this with one of my English students who had enjoyed a story by Cheever ("The Swimmer") and wanted to try a novel. I'd never read this author before and did not know what we were in for.
Falconer is a nightmarish, phantasmagorical tale of imprisonment and escape, more of a series of vignettes than a coherent narrative, of which some or even most of the scenes may be dreams or fantasies. The protagonist, a former WASP professor who rejoices in the name of Ezekiel Farragut, has been sent to prison for killing his brother (an act he denies and which is further explained only in the final few pages of the book). Through Cheever's stylized, mannered prose, we move in and out of his current and past experiences, impressions, memories, and visions, which are comic, repulsive, pathetic, and squalid by turns.
I would not go to this book expecting realism of any kind. It's not a realistic prison exposé. It's a sort of Inferno through which Farragut must pass, coming in the end to a kind of apotheosis, but not giving us anything solid for our tidy minds to grasp. We are only left with the certainty of what another prisoner expresses in the quote above, that in the guts of man is all the explosive needed to blow up the world -- but maybe also all that is needed to redeem it.
Read this with one of my English students who had enjoyed a story by Cheever ("The Swimmer") and wanted to try a novel. I'd never read this author before and did not know what we were in for.
Falconer is a nightmarish, phantasmagorical tale of imprisonment and escape, more of a series of vignettes than a coherent narrative, of which some or even most of the scenes may be dreams or fantasies. The protagonist, a former WASP professor who rejoices in the name of Ezekiel Farragut, has been sent to prison for killing his brother (an act he denies and which is further explained only in the final few pages of the book). Through Cheever's stylized, mannered prose, we move in and out of his current and past experiences, impressions, memories, and visions, which are comic, repulsive, pathetic, and squalid by turns.
I would not go to this book expecting realism of any kind. It's not a realistic prison exposé. It's a sort of Inferno through which Farragut must pass, coming in the end to a kind of apotheosis, but not giving us anything solid for our tidy minds to grasp. We are only left with the certainty of what another prisoner expresses in the quote above, that in the guts of man is all the explosive needed to blow up the world -- but maybe also all that is needed to redeem it.