Broken Sleep: An American Dream - Couverture souple

Bauman, Bruce

Couverture souple

ISBN 10 : 1590514483 ISBN 13 : 9781590514481

Editeur : Other Press LLC, 2015

A propos du livre

Revue de presse

“A plangent tour de force of epic proportions...Broken Sleep’s amalgam of distinct perspectives creates an incoherent coherence that challenges and rewards in turn. Both a nightmare and a dream, this work successfully engages with eternal questions of truth and evil to form a solid and captivating literary experience.” —Library Journal (starred review)

"Big-thinking...a postmodern epic." —Kirkus Reviews

"Readers who like their fiction on the wacky side will appreciate the rollicking energy." —Booklist

"Vibrant, captivating, and touching...Broken Sleep is brimming with colorful characters, fascinating dialogue, and beautiful yet tragic relationships, making it easy to read and hard to forget." —PopMatters

“A literary novel with a great plot. ...[Broken Sleep] is a funny novel, but it’s also an incredibly serious emotional novel in a way we don’t get nowadays so much.” —David Kipen, KPCC Take Two

Broken Sleep is a Pynchon-esque shaggy dog of a novel spanning nearly eight decades of American history, from World War II to the not-too-distant future...[This] novel explores the seedy undersides of high art, rock and roll, and national politics with freewheeling zeal and bitter, satiric bite. Often funny, occasionally heartbreaking, and always revelatory, Bauman puts deep character-driven narratives through their proverbial paces, playing with conventions of form, genre, and conceptions of history." —The Rumpus

“Such a pleasure to plunge into this joyous kaleidoscope of a novel, a multi-voiced tumbling chorus of outrageous characters, hidden parenthood, secrets and discoveries, the gritty outré art world of the 1970s, rockers and mad visionaries and a man named Moses who just wants to live his life when illness forces him to open up the closed door of his family’s mysterious past. I haven’t seen a book with such energy and joy and sweeping delights since The World According to Garp. Bauman’s novel is a tour de force.” —Janet Fitch, author of Paint It Black and White Oleander

“Consuming multitudes of novels before it and after, Bruce Bauman’s flipbook-epic spectacularly shuffles voice and memory—a careening travelogue on psychic terrains of fate, art, sex, madness, history, philosophy, rock ’n’ roll, the personal political, and laws of identity for which no statute of limitations can exist. This is raging, inspiration-jacked literary insomnia at the deepest hour of our brilliant dreaming.” —Steve Erickson, author of These Dreams of You and Zeroville

“Bauman’s gift for balancing playfulness with historical accuracy, for naming figures with an expressively poetic flair, and for hanging the narrative armature on the believable private scandals of the iconically famous.” – White Hot Magazine
 
“Broken Sleep is a stunning, original, unpredictable novel, with a mix of wild voices and riveting, driving stories.  I love all the characters—the rebel Salome, sad Moses fighting for his life, the incredibly charismatic Alchemy, the much abused Absurda, and that troublesome Mindswallow. The world that Bauman imagines is chilling and vivid, and there is an abundance of wisdom throughout the book, with startling insights on every page. The novel is a brilliant success—brave, wonderfully eccentric, utterly confident and engrossing.” —Joanna Scott, author of De Potter’s Grand Tour

“Bruce Bauman’s Broken Sleep is a rare bird: a sprawling, encyclopedic narrative, partly a meditation on the nature of art and storytelling, partly a family saga, and perhaps rarest of all an experimental novel that’s also very readable. A high-risk enterprise with a similarly high pay off.” —Geoff Nicholson, author of The City Under the Skin

“Broken Sleep is an unabashedly Big Think book that refuses to be categorized. On the surface it’s a roller coaster, jetting forward with ideas/observations on everything from avant-garde art to rock ’n’ roll renown to history and philosophy. Yet beneath the surface it is also a warm-hearted exploration of the deep messiness of families. Of parents, present and absent, and their children. Of siblings and spouses and volitional families of friends and bandmates. It’s a simultaneously poignant and exhilarating ride.” —Melvin Jules Bukiet, author of After

"Bruce Bauman is one of the most engaging and engaged writers and thinkers that I know." —Rebecca Goldstein, author of Plato at the Googleplex

"A synesthetic and unfettered book that cascades between a quartet of voices to depict a family not so much broken as fractured over several generations, and shifts in art and politics from the 60s and, prophetically, into our future.  A stunning, lively and funny evisceration of American art, culture, and politics, and of the links connecting them.” —Brian Evenson, author of The Open Curtain

Extrait

“Mr. Lively, if you or he won’t help me, I am going to die.”
Lively’s expression went dark as if the fuse to his emotional box had blown out. He uncrossed his legs and leaned back. “I’m leaving for Houston later tonight. It’s my granddaughter’s sweet sixteen tomorrow and I am not missing that. Family means something to me.” His slow Texas accent, laden with the air of gentility, unnerved Moses.
“If I can’t see him, I at least need to talk to him.”
Lively leaned forward, “May I be so bold as to ask you a favor?”
“Sure.”
“When you talk to your mother, Hannah, say hello for me.”
“So, you knew her?”
“We’d met when they were still married. Attractive woman.”
“So, you’ll help me?”
“I’ll try.” Using his cane he pushed himself up. They followed and all three turned toward the door.
* * *
Jay and Moses rode the elevator in silence, attempting to absorb what they’d just seen and heard. As they stepped gingerly outside and crossed the street, Jay squeezed his hand. Suspicious Lively had planted a bug on them, she whispered, “You’re a good man, no matter who your father is.” She half-grinned. “Or how distasteful his friends are...”
That night, Moses, listening to Jay’s steady breathing, fell in and out of the semi-alert state where dreams seem real and reality seems dream-like. At 6 a.m. he pushed himself out of bed, the maxim he often stressed to his students racing through his head: One person’s version of history is another person’s version of an incomplete truth.

 

À propos de cette édition

• Éditeur: Other Press LLC
• Date d'édition: 2015
• ISBN 10: 1590514483
• ISBN 13: 9781590514481
• Reliure: Broché
• Nombre de pages: 648