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Read Summer Crossing (2006)

Summer Crossing (2006)

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Genre
Rating
3.43 of 5 Votes: 4
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ISBN
0812975936 (ISBN13: 9780812975932)
Language
English
Publisher
modern library

Summer Crossing (2006) - Plot & Excerpts

Роман служит прекрасной иллюстрацией к тому, что, раз автор не хотел публиковаться, значит, у него были причины.Текст очень и очень слабый, вот прямо видно, что это черновик. Местами попадаются очень хорошие, ограненные абзацы, а за ними - опять мелодрама и скелет из клише. Герои не прописаны, а просто вбухнуты в текст кусками. Их поступки текстом романа не мотивированы никак. Симпатичная девочка из богатой семьи, которой мама предположительно везет из Парижа невиданной красоты платье дебютантки, влюбляется в парковщика, ветерана войны, а потом оказывается, что и еврея, ай-яй-яй, что скажет семья. Какой-то ворох драматических деталей про обоих никак не связывает этих двух людей между собой, нет никаких оснований для любви и интриги. С чего вдруг они полюбили друг друга? Даже используя популярную теорию про противоположности, их роман выглядит натужно и нелепо. Самый цельный персонаж - Питер, девушкин друг детства, про которого есть примерно три абзаца - ярких, остроумных, красивых три абзаца.Что касается языка - иногда в тексте проскальзывают хорошие куски, но их очень мало, в основном - мелодрама и высокопарные фразы с загадочным смыслом. Вот даже это «Нельзя бросить другого человека — бросить можно только себя» - оно что вообще означает? Паоло Коэльо заплакал от зависти.В общем, теперь всем молодым авторам, наверное, должно быть понятно, что без труда и переписывания хорошего текста не получится (и к чести Капоте, сам-то он видел, что текст "thin, clever, unfelt"), а публиковать случайно найденное можно, только если вы порылись в ящиках у Сэлинджера, который даже в стол, говорят, писал не навскидку.

Somehow, I guess Scarlett Johansson intends to make a movie out of this tiny novel about rich people sitting around thinking about rich people things, and the poor people who sit around thinking about those rich people sitting around thinking about rich people things. Seriously, the amount of "stuff happening" here makes Lost in Translation look like a Michael Bay production in comparison. It has plenty of hints of the greatness found in Other Voices, Other Rooms, the novel Capote rightly abandoned this effort to create, but it never reaches that level of haunting loveliness. So, yeah, kinda disappointing, but not long enough to be irritatingly so. We have a rich society type who is sneaking around behind her snobby family's back to slum it with a rough-around-the-edges parking lot attendant with a secret heart of gold. Ish. Okay, more like the "turn your finger green" sort of gold. Then there's the flamboyant, better-suited best friend who also loves Grady, our heroine. Ish. She smokes some cigarettes, smokes some weed, has some sexy times, mulls over her muddled emotions, people talk and don't talk. Fin. The most lively scenes feature the best friend, and I would have probably been more generous about this if Capote had developed his character further, since Grady is such an insufferable bore. The most interesting thing about her is she has a cool dude name, something I always wished I had. Alex, Parker, Charlie, Grady. It's charming, right?Maybe the movie will be beautiful, but I'm having trouble imagining it being engaging considering the book is, though in no way stylistically weak (hence, three stars), pretty clearly something Capote neither finished, nor intended to finish. An exercise. I anticipate long shots of pretty people staring out windows and pensively smoking, and maybe a few scenes of naked parts in sheer pink things. Could be good, I guess. Perhaps on silent, it will sync with Dark Side of the Moon in some interesting ways. We'll see. I did like L.I.T., I swear.I'll save you the trouble: this is not a book review.

What do You think about Summer Crossing (2006)?

"Non si lasciano le persone, si lascia solo se stessi"Grady McNeil, diciassettenne, è la bella figlia di un facoltoso newyorkese. Clyde è un ventitreenne un po’ frivolo di famiglia modesta, veterano di guerra senza un soldo che lavora in un parcheggio. I due si incontrano, si scoprono e quasi per gioco si innamorano. E quando Grady riesce a rimanere a New York da sola tutta l'estate i due si godono, senza più i limiti imposti dai genitori perbenisti, la loro storia d’amore. Mentre Clyde si ritrova in un lussuoso appartamento con una ragazza intelligente e sveglia, Grady scopre la genuinità di Clyde, che proviene da un ambiente in cui i sentimenti valgono più del conto in banca.Con lui Grady trascorre l’estate, anche se "era sempre stata consapevole che lui non poteva essere cucito nella trama concreta del suo futuro. Anzi, forse era proprio per questo che aveva scelto di innamorarsi di lui: quella storia doveva essere il fuoco dell’anno prima, destinato a riflettersi sulla neve che presto sarebbe caduta".Impossibile non collegare Grady con Holly, la protagonista di “Colazione da Tiffany”, di cui possiede alcuni tratti caratteriali, quali l’amore per la trasgressione e la ribellione alle regole.Grady a un certo punto dice ”che non le è nemmeno venuto in mente di domandarsi se sposerà Clyde,” perché pensa che questo genere di cose riguardi la gente adulta: "Il matrimonio era una cosa che poteva verificarsi solo molto più avanti, quando sarebbe cominciata la vita grigia e seria, perché per lei, ne era assolutamente sicura, la vita vera non era ancora iniziata; in quel momento, invece, vedendosi triste e pallida nello specchio, si rese conto che era già cominciata da un pezzo".Capote, che ha scritto questo romanzo all’età di diciannove anni, ha la capacità di prendere un soggetto complesso, indagarlo e descriverlo con una prosa perfetta, mettendo in luce i lati più nascosti dell’animo umano con semplicità, senza drammatizzare e giudicare. Grady è la protagonista indiscussa della vicenda, essendo esempio di immaturità, incoscienza ed infelicità."la maggior parte della vita è così noiosa che non vale nemmeno la pena di parlarne, e ciò è vero a qualsiasi età".E’ il primo romanzo di Capote, ma nonostante metta già in mostra le capacità dello scrittore, non è certamente il suo romanzo migliore. È un romanzo romantico, triste e amaro con un finale duro, anche se un po’ troppo rapido.
—Roberto

Mr. Truman will probably throw a fit in his grave if I tell him that his first novel wasn't nearly as entertaining as Ms. Novik's. So he is a great writer, I don't doubt that. And for a first novel, Summer Crossing is probably better than most.Doesn't mean I have to like it, and I didn't. It didn't make sense to me, which is probably more a question of age than of writing. But the book did nothing to me: I wasn't particularly interested in what was happening, I didn't seem to like the characters or understand their motives, I wasn't shocked, provoked, intrigued, sad or anything. I would probably have put the book away if it had been any longer. Well, at least now I can say I have read it, and isn't that what reading the classics is all about anyway? *g*
—Oceana2602

This is Capote's first novel, written when he was nineteen, which is the reason I've given so imperfect a work four stars. It is so clearly the work of a young genius that it would be churlish not to. He is already an accomplished writer and this story of a reckless debutante is absorbing and worth reading for the skill with which Capote delineates the collision between two very different milieus--each of which he understands and depicts with great accuracy. My favorite passage, about the main character, Grady McNeil, as she contemplates the working class world of her lover when she meets his family: "For Grady, who, in this sense, had little sense of family, it was a strange, a warm, an almost exotic atmosphere. It was not, however, an atmosphere she would have chosen for herself--the airless inescapable pressures of intimacy with others would have withered her soon enough--her system required the cold, exclusive climate of the individual. She was not afraid to say: I am rich, money is the island I stand on; for she assessed properly the value of this island, was aware its soil contained her roots; and because of money she could always afford to substitute: houses, furniture, people." Is there a better description of the different emotional atmospheres of the rich and the poor?
—Steve Turtell

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