Articles liés à Like You'd Understand, Anyway: Stories

Like You'd Understand, Anyway: Stories - Couverture rigide

 
9780307265210: Like You'd Understand, Anyway: Stories
Afficher les exemplaires de cette édition ISBN
 
 
Book by Shepard Jim

Les informations fournies dans la section « Synopsis » peuvent faire référence à une autre édition de ce titre.

Extrait :
Pleasure Boating in Lituya Bay

Two and a half weeks after I was born, on July 9th, 1958, the plates that make up the Fairweather Range in the Alaskan panhandle apparently slipped twenty-one feet on either side of the Fairweather fault, the northern end of a major league instability that runs the length of North America. The thinking now is that the southwest side and bottom of the inlets at the head of Lituya Bay jolted upward and to the northwest, and the northeast shore and head of the bay jolted downward and to the southeast. One way or the other, the result registered 8.3 on the Richter scale.

The bay is T-shaped and seven miles long and two wide at the stem, and according to those who were there it went from a glassy smoothness to a full churn, a giant’s Jacuzzi. Next to it, mountains twelve to fifteen thousand feet high twisted into themselves and lurched in contrary directions. In Juneau, 122 miles to the southeast, people who’d turned in early were pitched from their beds. The shock waves wiped out bottom-dwelling marine life throughout the panhandle. In Seattle, a thousand miles away, the University of Washington’s seismograph needle was jarred completely off its graph. And meanwhile, back at the head of the bay, a spur of mountain and glacier the size of a half-mile-wide city park–forty million cubic yards in volume–broke off and dropped three thousand feet down the northeast cliff into the water.

This is all by way of saying that it was one of the greatest spasms, when it came to the release of destructive energy, in history. It happened around 10:16 p.m. At that latitude and time of year, still light out. There were three small boats anchored in the south end of the bay.

The rumbling from the earthquake generated vibrations that the occupants of the boats could feel on their skin like electric shock. The impact of the rockfall that followed made a sound like Canada exploding. There were two women, three men, and a seven-year-old boy in the three boats. They looked up to see a wave breaking over the seventeen-hundred-foot-high southwest bank of Gilbert Inlet and heading for the opposite slope. What they were looking at was the largest wave ever recorded by human beings. It scythed off three-hundred-year-old pines and cedars and spruce, some of them with trunks three or four feet thick, along a trimline of 1,720 feet. That’s a wave crest 500 feet higher than the Empire State Building.

Fill your bathtub. Hold a football at shoulder height and drop it into the water. Imagine the height of the tub above the waterline to be two thousand feet. Scale the height of the initial splash up proportionately.
When I was two years old, my mother decided she’d had enough of my father and hunted down an old high school girlfriend who’d wandered so far west she’d taken a job teaching in a grammar school in Hawaii. The school was in a little town called Pepeekeo. All of this was told to me later by my mother’s older sister. My mother and I moved in with the friend, who lived in a little beach cottage on the north shore of the island near an old mill, Pepeekeo Mill. We were about twelve miles north of Hilo. This was in 1960.

The friend’s name was Chuck. Her real name was Charlotte something, but everyone apparently called her Chuck. My aunt had a photo she showed me of me playing in the sand with some breakers in the background. I’m wearing something that looks like overalls put on backward. Chuck’s drinking beer from a can.

And one morning Chuck woke my mother and me up and asked if we wanted to see a tidal wave. I don’t remember any of this. I was in pajamas and my mother put a robe on me and we trotted down the beach and looked around the point to the north. I told my mother I was scared and she said we’d go back to the house if the water got too high. We saw the ocean suck itself out to sea smoothly and quietly, and the muck of the sand and some flipping and turning white-bellied fish that had been left behind. Then we saw it come back, without any surf or real noise, like the tide coming in in time-lapse photography. It came past the hightide mark and just up to our toes. Then it receded again. “Some wave,” my mother told me. She lifted me up so I could see the end of it. Some older boys who lived on Mamalahoa Highway sprinted past us, chasing the water. They got way out, the mud spraying up behind their heels. And the water came back again, this time even smaller. The boys, as far out as they were, were still only up to their waists. We could hear how happy they sounded. Chuck told us the show was over, and we headed up the beach to the house. My mother wanted me to walk, but I wanted her to carry me. We heard a noise and when we turned we saw the third wave. It was already the size of the lighthouse out at Wailea. They’d gotten me into the cottage and halfway up the stairs to the second floor when the walls blew in. My mother managed to slide me onto a corner of the roof that was spinning half a foot above the water. Chuck went under and didn’t come up again. My mother was carried out to sea, still hanging on to me and the roof chunk. She’d broken her hip and bitten through her lower lip. We were picked up later that day by a little boat near Honohina.

She was never the same after that, my aunt told me. This was maybe by way of explaining why I’d been put up for adoption a few months later. My mother had gone to teach somewhere in Alaska. Somewhere away from the coast, my aunt added with a smile. She pretended she didn’t know exactly where. I’d been left with the Franciscan Sisters at the Catholic orphanage in Kahili. On the day of my graduation, one of the sisters who’d taken an interest in me grabbed both of my shoulders and shook me and said, “What is it you want? What’s the matter with you?” They weren’t bad questions, as far as I was concerned.

I saw my aunt that once, the year before college. My fiancée, many years later, asked if we were going to invite her to the wedding, and then later that night said, “I guess you’re not going to answer, huh?”
Sans Farine

My father, Jean-Baptiste Sanson, had christened in the church of Saint-Laurent two children: a daughter, who married Pierre Hérisson, executioner of Melun, and a son, myself. After my mother’s death he remarried, his second wife from a family of executioners in the province of Touraine. Together they produced twelve children, eight of whom survived, six of whom were boys. All six eventually registered in the public rolls as executioners, my half brothers beginning their careers by assisting their father and then myself in the city of Paris.

My name is Charles-Henri Sanson, known to many throughout this city as the Keystone of the Revolution, and known to the rabble as Sans Farine, in reference to my use of emptied bran sacks to hold the severed heads. I was named for Charles Sanson, former adventurer and soldier of the King and until 1668 executioner of Cherbourg and Caudebec-en-Caux. My father claimed he was descended from Sanson de Longval and that our family coat of arms derived from either the First or Second Crusade. Its escutcheon represents another play on our name: a cracked bell and the motto San son: without sound.

You want to know–all France wants to know–what takes place in the executioner’s mind: the figure who before the Revolution wielded the double-bladed axe and double-handed sword and who branded, burned, and broke on the wheel all who came before him. The figure who now slides heads through what they call the Republican Window on the guillotine. Does he eat? Does he sleep? Do his smiles freeze the blood? Is he kind to those he kills? Does he touch his wife on days he works? Does he reach for you with blood-rimmed fingernails? Did he spring full-blown from a black pit to send batch after batch through the guillotine?

Becoming shrill, my wife calls it, whenever I get too agitated in my own defense.

“What struck people’s minds above all else,” Livy, the great Roman, wrote in his History on Brutus’s sacrifice of his own sons for the good of the Republic, “is that his function as consul imposed on the father the task of punishing his sons, and that his unbendingness compelled him personally to order the execution, the very sight of which was not spared him.” In Guérin’s rendering of the scene, the hero turns away but does not blanch. Standing before it in the old Royal Academy with Anne-Marie, I told her that perhaps this is the way we attain the sublime: by our fierce devotion to the required. She was not able to agree.

I am a good Catholic. The people’s judges hand out their sentences, and mine is the task of insuring that their words become incarnate. I am the instrument, and it is justice that strikes. I feel the same remorse as anyone required to be present at an execution.

Before the Revolution, justice was apportioned and discharged in the name of the King, who ruled by divine right as one of God’s implements. Punishment of malefactors was God’s will and therefore earned for his sovereign minister God’s grace and esteem. But in the eyes of most, that grace and esteem did not extend as far as the sovereign’s handservant. Before the Revolution, daughters of executioners were forbidden to marry outside the profession. When their girls came of age, such families had to display on their doors a yellow affidavit clarifying the family’s trade, and acknowledging the taint in their bloodline. Letters of commission and payments were not passed into their hands but dropped before them. They were required to live at the southern ends of towns, and their houses had to be painted red.

Before the Revolution, a woman with whom I dined at an inn demanded I be made to appear in court to apol...
Revue de presse :
“To praise Shepard’s mastery of voice is to undersell what these stories are doing; it isn’t the voice Shepard inhabits but the world. . . . Shepard is an impressive writer, but I wasn’t impressed until I finished the book: I was too busy being enthralled.”
—Daniel Handler (a.k.a. Lemony Snicket), The New York Times Book Review

"Utterly captivating . . . Shepard's gutsy, brilliantly imagined, strongly made, fresh and propulsive stories grapple with follies minor and major, deliver us to the wilderness at the heart of the human psyche, and explode and reassemble our vision of the carnival we call civilization."
—Donna Seaman, The Chicago Tribune

"What's most remarkable about these stories, in the end, is how gently Shepard wraps the most extremely foreign and obscure events around emotional dilemmas common to all of us . . . The truth is we should understand this entire menagerie of characters. Scrape away the singular, perfectly detailed lives Shepard has given them and one thing is clear: They are us."
—John Freeman, The Boston Globe

"Cannily crafted . . . The stories couldn’ t be funnier—or deadlier—in this mad-smart, wildly inventive set."
—Lisa Shea, Elle

"A macro book with a micro eye. These wildly diverse stories share a fascination with the inevitable cost of familial obligation and the inescapable fallout from disaster, both natural and human-made.”
—Tara Ison, Los Angeles Times Book Review

"With a near spooky sense of empathy and a wit that finds its mark like lightning, the stories in Jim Shepard's Like You'd Understand, Anyway transport readers light-years beyond what they think they know of the world."
Vanity Fair

"An astounding set of stories [that] are so dangerously brilliant, they're radioactive."
—Vince Passaro, O Magazine

"Just when I think I'm quits with stories for good, I read a collection that knocks me dumb . . . In a little over two hundred pages, Jim Shepard tells us just about everything we need to know . . . [He] gives us our world in this little book. We'd be fools to ignore the offer."
—Benjamin Alsup, Esquire

"Jim Shepard casts a cool yet ultimately sympathic eye on those who perpetrate such follies and, in doing so, reveals their humanity."
—Carole Goldberg, The Hartford Courant

"So varied in tone, theme, voice and setting are these stories that they might've been written by a hydra. A hydra, that is, surfeited with remarkable wit, compassion and the gift of gab . . . Virtuoso work."
Kirkus

Les informations fournies dans la section « A propos du livre » peuvent faire référence à une autre édition de ce titre.

  • ÉditeurAlfred a Knopf Inc
  • Date d'édition2007
  • ISBN 10 0307265218
  • ISBN 13 9780307265210
  • ReliureRelié
  • Numéro d'édition1
  • Nombre de pages211
  • Evaluation vendeur

Frais de port : EUR 6,54
Vers Etats-Unis

Destinations, frais et délais

Ajouter au panier

Autres éditions populaires du même titre

9780307277602: Like You'd Understand, Anyway

Edition présentée

ISBN 10 :  0307277607 ISBN 13 :  9780307277602
Editeur : Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group, 2008
Couverture souple

Meilleurs résultats de recherche sur AbeBooks

Image d'archives

Shepard, Jim
Edité par Knopf (2007)
ISBN 10 : 0307265218 ISBN 13 : 9780307265210
Neuf Couverture rigide Quantité disponible : 1
Vendeur :
Cobblestones Books
(Marblehead, MA, Etats-Unis)
Evaluation vendeur

Description du livre Hardcover. Etat : New. Etat de la jaquette : New. N° de réf. du vendeur 003327

Plus d'informations sur ce vendeur | Contacter le vendeur

Acheter neuf
EUR 9,63
Autre devise

Ajouter au panier

Frais de port : EUR 6,54
Vers Etats-Unis
Destinations, frais et délais
Image d'archives

Shepard, Jim
Edité par Knopf (2007)
ISBN 10 : 0307265218 ISBN 13 : 9780307265210
Neuf Couverture rigide Quantité disponible : 1
Vendeur :
GoldenWavesOfBooks
(Fayetteville, TX, Etats-Unis)
Evaluation vendeur

Description du livre Hardcover. Etat : new. New. Fast Shipping and good customer service. N° de réf. du vendeur Holz_New_0307265218

Plus d'informations sur ce vendeur | Contacter le vendeur

Acheter neuf
EUR 20,53
Autre devise

Ajouter au panier

Frais de port : EUR 3,74
Vers Etats-Unis
Destinations, frais et délais
Image d'archives

Shepard, Jim
Edité par Knopf (2007)
ISBN 10 : 0307265218 ISBN 13 : 9780307265210
Neuf Couverture rigide Quantité disponible : 1
Vendeur :
Books Unplugged
(Amherst, NY, Etats-Unis)
Evaluation vendeur

Description du livre Etat : New. Buy with confidence! Book is in new, never-used condition. N° de réf. du vendeur bk0307265218xvz189zvxnew

Plus d'informations sur ce vendeur | Contacter le vendeur

Acheter neuf
EUR 28,62
Autre devise

Ajouter au panier

Frais de port : Gratuit
Vers Etats-Unis
Destinations, frais et délais
Image d'archives

Shepard, Jim
Edité par Knopf (2007)
ISBN 10 : 0307265218 ISBN 13 : 9780307265210
Neuf Couverture rigide Quantité disponible : 1
Vendeur :
Book Deals
(Tucson, AZ, Etats-Unis)
Evaluation vendeur

Description du livre Etat : New. New! This book is in the same immaculate condition as when it was published. N° de réf. du vendeur 353-0307265218-new

Plus d'informations sur ce vendeur | Contacter le vendeur

Acheter neuf
EUR 28,62
Autre devise

Ajouter au panier

Frais de port : Gratuit
Vers Etats-Unis
Destinations, frais et délais
Image d'archives

Shepard, Jim
Edité par Knopf (2007)
ISBN 10 : 0307265218 ISBN 13 : 9780307265210
Neuf Couverture rigide Quantité disponible : 1
Vendeur :
Wizard Books
(Long Beach, CA, Etats-Unis)
Evaluation vendeur

Description du livre Hardcover. Etat : new. New. N° de réf. du vendeur Wizard0307265218

Plus d'informations sur ce vendeur | Contacter le vendeur

Acheter neuf
EUR 26,27
Autre devise

Ajouter au panier

Frais de port : EUR 3,27
Vers Etats-Unis
Destinations, frais et délais
Image d'archives

Shepard, Jim
Edité par Knopf (2007)
ISBN 10 : 0307265218 ISBN 13 : 9780307265210
Neuf Couverture rigide Quantité disponible : 1
Vendeur :
GoldBooks
(Denver, CO, Etats-Unis)
Evaluation vendeur

Description du livre Hardcover. Etat : new. New Copy. Customer Service Guaranteed. N° de réf. du vendeur think0307265218

Plus d'informations sur ce vendeur | Contacter le vendeur

Acheter neuf
EUR 26,62
Autre devise

Ajouter au panier

Frais de port : EUR 3,97
Vers Etats-Unis
Destinations, frais et délais
Image d'archives

Shepard, Jim
Edité par Knopf (2007)
ISBN 10 : 0307265218 ISBN 13 : 9780307265210
Neuf Couverture rigide Quantité disponible : 1
Vendeur :
Front Cover Books
(Denver, CO, Etats-Unis)
Evaluation vendeur

Description du livre Etat : new. N° de réf. du vendeur FrontCover0307265218

Plus d'informations sur ce vendeur | Contacter le vendeur

Acheter neuf
EUR 28,82
Autre devise

Ajouter au panier

Frais de port : EUR 4,02
Vers Etats-Unis
Destinations, frais et délais
Image d'archives

Shepard, Jim
Edité par Alfred a Knopf Inc (2007)
ISBN 10 : 0307265218 ISBN 13 : 9780307265210
Neuf Couverture rigide Quantité disponible : 1
Vendeur :
Revaluation Books
(Exeter, Royaume-Uni)
Evaluation vendeur

Description du livre Hardcover. Etat : Brand New. 1st edition. 211 pages. 9.00x6.00x1.00 inches. In Stock. N° de réf. du vendeur 0307265218

Plus d'informations sur ce vendeur | Contacter le vendeur

Acheter neuf
EUR 40,72
Autre devise

Ajouter au panier

Frais de port : EUR 11,64
De Royaume-Uni vers Etats-Unis
Destinations, frais et délais
Image d'archives

Shepard, Jim
Edité par Knopf (2007)
ISBN 10 : 0307265218 ISBN 13 : 9780307265210
Neuf Couverture rigide Quantité disponible : 2
Vendeur :
Save With Sam
(North Miami, FL, Etats-Unis)
Evaluation vendeur

Description du livre Hardcover. Etat : New. Brand New!. N° de réf. du vendeur VIB0307265218

Plus d'informations sur ce vendeur | Contacter le vendeur

Acheter neuf
EUR 53,08
Autre devise

Ajouter au panier

Frais de port : Gratuit
Vers Etats-Unis
Destinations, frais et délais
Image d'archives

Shepard, Jim
Edité par Knopf (2007)
ISBN 10 : 0307265218 ISBN 13 : 9780307265210
Neuf Couverture rigide Quantité disponible : 1
Vendeur :
BennettBooksLtd
(North Las Vegas, NV, Etats-Unis)
Evaluation vendeur

Description du livre Etat : New. New. In shrink wrap. Looks like an interesting title! 0.8. N° de réf. du vendeur Q-0307265218

Plus d'informations sur ce vendeur | Contacter le vendeur

Acheter neuf
EUR 55,78
Autre devise

Ajouter au panier

Frais de port : EUR 3,86
Vers Etats-Unis
Destinations, frais et délais