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Norman Rush

Autor(a) de Mating

6+ Works 2,057 Membros 34 Críticas 3 Favorited

About the Author

Includes the name: Norman Rush

Obras por Norman Rush

Mating (1991) 1,301 exemplares
Mortals (2003) 375 exemplares
Whites (1986) — Autor — 218 exemplares
Subtle Bodies (2013) 161 exemplares
The Victim 1 exemplar
Witmannen 1 exemplar

Associated Works

Object Lessons: The Paris Review Presents the Art of the Short Story (2012) — Introdução; Contribuidor — 220 exemplares
The Ruins of the Earth (1973) — Contribuidor — 162 exemplares
The Best American Short Stories 1984 (1984) — Contribuidor — 104 exemplares
The Best American Short Stories 1985 (1985) — Contribuidor — 61 exemplares
The Literary Lover: Great Stories of Passion and Romance (1993) — Contribuidor — 50 exemplares
Bad Moon Rising (1973) — Contribuidor — 23 exemplares
The Best American Short Stories 1971 (1971) — Contribuidor — 21 exemplares
The Paris Review 84 1982 Summer (1982) — Contribuidor — 6 exemplares

Etiquetado

Conhecimento Comum

Data de nascimento
1933-10-24
Sexo
male
Nacionalidade
USA
Locais de residência
Rockland County, New York, USA
Educação
Swarthmore College (1956)

Membros

Críticas

Obviously very good. But I just didn't want to spend more time with the narrator.
 
Assinalado
ben_a | 17 outras críticas | Apr 5, 2023 |
This was one of the most boring books I have read in a long time. The back of it made me think of The Quarry by Iain Banks or The Big Chill. Instead it took those story lines, getting together old friends for a death as in The Big Chill, or pending death as in the Quarry, but populated the story with one dimensional characters that were so boring and pretentious, that only an academic or a NYT book reviewer could slog through it. For anyone else, don't bother.
 
Assinalado
zmagic69 | 11 outras críticas | Mar 31, 2023 |
Liked a lot. Strange story, amazing word selection. (Had to look up many many dozens of words - all well used.) Long but it went quickly.
 
Assinalado
steve02476 | 17 outras críticas | Jan 3, 2023 |
“I wore myself out collecting enough wood for a ring fire, got us all set up inside it, went into my tent, and closed my eyes, and immediately there were lions in the neighborhood. There may have been only one. I heard a roar like no other sound on earth. I felt it in my atoms. This is my reward for taking precautions, was my first thought. I made myself emerge. I peered around. My [donkeys] were standing pressed together and shaking pathetically. I looked for glints from lion eyes out in the dark but saw nothing. In the morning I found it hard to eat. There was terror in me. I could die in this place, it was clear.”

The unnamed protagonist of Mating is an American thirty-something nutritional anthropologist living in Botswana in the 1980s. She has just determined that her doctoral thesis is going nowhere. She meets Nelson Denoon, the founder of Tsau, a secretive utopian community run by African women in a remote area of Botswana. Denoon intrigues her, and she wants to get to know him intimately, so she treks solo across the Kalahari Desert to reach Tsau, where she hopes to be welcomed.

“[H]e went into a sort of aria asking how Tsau could fail to be terrific, since it was the pyramidon at the top of all his prior failures, so called. He gave the entire sequence of truths learned, project to project, such as controlling the scale, working in the vernacular, cutting expatriate staff to near zero, locating yourself remotely enough to avoid premature disruption, balancing collective and individual incentives, basing your political economy on women instead of men…”

This novel is one of the most unusual I have read. It is a novel of ideas and philosophy. It explores intimacy, love, history, politics, economics, feminism, and justice. It is a little drawn out in the beginning, recounting several of the protagonist’s relationships in Gabarone, but once she starts her trek across the Kalahari, it is entirely engrossing. She is searching for the “ideal” romantic relationship. The narrative is filled with intellectual sparring and literary references. Topics include commune life, capitalism, socialism, Marxism, apartheid, and the geopolitics of southern Africa. As an added bonus, it is guaranteed to expand the reader’s vocabulary, even if it is already vast.

There is an intriguing psychological component, where questions arise as to the reason Nelson wants to remain in Tsau. This part gets into philosophy, such as that of the Tao Te Ching, and transformations caused by near-death experiences. Is the change real or fabricated?

This book takes time to read, not only due to its length, but also due to the need to absorb, or possibly look up, some of the regional references that will likely not be in many readers’ immediate scope of knowledge. A helpful glossary is included for the Afrikaans and Setswana terms, as well as descriptions of (real) local organizations. Rush has a dense writing style that respects a reader’s intelligence. I found it masterfully written and intellectually stimulating.

4.5
… (mais)
 
Assinalado
Castlelass | 17 outras críticas | Oct 30, 2022 |

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Estatísticas

Obras
6
Also by
8
Membros
2,057
Popularidade
#12,503
Avaliação
½ 3.7
Críticas
34
ISBN
41
Línguas
4
Marcado como favorito
3

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