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Dr. Brinkley's Tower

por Robert Hough

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456558,523 (3.71)15
In the 1931 war-ravaged Mexico border town of Corazón de la Fuente, where the only enterprise in town is a brothel, Dr. Romulus Brinkley decides to build a gargantuan new radio tower to broadcast his miraculous "goat gland operation" said to cure sexual impotence. Inspired by the shenanigans of a real life American con man.… (mais)
Adicionado recentemente porSid317, nathalieafoy, NafizaBMC, beninck, Luetzen, annieabdalla
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Mostrando 1-5 de 6 (seguinte | mostrar todos)
The Mexican revolution left the small town of Corazon de la Fuente deep in poverty and still emotionally raw from the memories of violence. Robert Hough evokes a real sense of place when he describes the unrelenting blistering heat of the day & the dustiness of the town. One day their fortunes appear to change as the local Mayor makes a deal with (unbeknownst to him) an American con-man named Dr. Brinkley to build the largest radio tower ever, just behind the local whorehouse.

Dr. Brinkley claims to have conquered the problem of male impotence by replacing human testicles with those of a goat. He conducts the surgeries from a converted hotel, in a small town in Texas and wants to build the tower in order to advertise his services and reach the largest possible audience. The tower ends up being so large and the signal so strong, that it is rumoured that the signal can reach Alaska.This is a fictional account of an actual event that occurred in the 1930's.

The story mainly focuses on the relationships between a handful of characters and and changes that occur in the town after the tower is built. By all accounts, Dr. Brinkley was not a nice man but in this story, although the tower takes center stage, the man himself is more of a sideline character. The reader can only guess at the depth of his depravity.
Towards the end of the story as you may suspect, undesirables are attracted to the town which leads to heavy fighting, reminiscent of the Revolution. The most respected men of the town must act if they are to save their beloved town.

I enjoyed the begining of book with decriptions of the town & its people but towards the with the heavy fighting, I was eager for the author to wrap up the story. It was an interesting story for the most part. Prior to reading this book, I had never heard of Dr. Brinkley. While I enjoyed reading about the romances, marriages & friendships between the five most respected men in town, I would have given this book a higher rating if we had been able to learn more about Dr, Brinkley himself. The story plays more like a regular romantic drama than a real piece of historical fiction. This story was so important to the communications history of the US, that they enacted the Brinkley Act, named after Dr. Brinkley.

( )
  Icewineanne | Aug 4, 2016 |
This is the story of a town and its people. Robert Hough has created a large, but memorable, cast of characters that drew me right into their small town in Mexico. Great writing, and a good story.

This story examines the effects of war, peace and economic development on a small town. When a rich American builds a radio broadcast town, prosperity comes to Corazon de la Fuente. And, with prosperity comes changes in the town's inhabitants. A wonderfully drawn portrait of life, love, deception, and hope. ( )
  LynnB | Jun 10, 2013 |
I really enjoyed this book and am glad that I read it. The setting is a little border town in Mexico called Corazon de la Fuente. The time is 1931 which is a time when Corazon had just come out of a bloody civil war. Along comes an American named Romulus Brinkley and he tells the citizens that he is going to build a huge radio tower near their town. At first they are happy because there is work and jobs. But then they realize that the tower's frequencies are broadcasting through every bit of metal in the town, including a young woman's new braces. Now they are not so happy with this gargantuan piece of metal being so close. The story appears simple enough, but it's the cast of characters that makes the book so delicious. Hough has created an entire community here of beautiful characters even though Brinkley was an actual person. I loved all the characters from the young Francisco who plays an important role in the book, to Father Alvarez the alcoholic pries,t to the hacendero to the lame and ineffective mayor. (And a whole host of others.) This book is a romp back in time and lots of fun. I thoroughly enjoyed it. ( )
  Romonko | May 17, 2013 |
Just over the border, in the sleepy post-revolutionary Mexican town of Corazón de la Fuente, the erection of a mammoth radio tower will soon transform the lives of everyone living under its green-hazed penumbra. Dr Brinkley, the tower’s progenitor, is a million watt charlatan and his heavy brand of hucksterism and patent medicine, pitched to address men’s greatest fear, is wildly successful. But with so much potency on the loose, is it any wonder the citizenry of Corazón de la Fuente end up being shown the business end of his tower?

Robert Hough’s gentle, descriptive prose traces the hopes and fears of a wide selection of Corazón de la Fuente’s favourite sons and daughters in near-sepia tones. From the lame mayor, Miguel Orozco, to the Spanish hacendero, Antonio Garcia, to Madam Félix and the Marias of the House of Gentlemanly Pleasures, Hough treats his subjects with compassion and just enough self-awareness to keep them interesting. But perhaps my favourite of the many citizens of Corazón de la Fuente is the aged molinero, Roberto Pántelas, and his young love, Laura Valesquez. Their sad story, tragic but humane, captivates the reader. How could their end signal anything other than the downfall of Corazón de la Fuente?

Of course Corazón de la Fuente does not go down without a fight. The elder statesmen of the town, together with the young Francisco Ramirez, and the ancient curandera who foretold the malignant effect the tower would have, take it in hand to set things right. But perhaps too much has happened and too much has changed by then.

This is fine writing by an author clearly in command of his craft. A pleasure to read and to recommend. ( )
  RandyMetcalfe | Aug 30, 2012 |
In which I chat about reading Dr. Brinkley's Tower in a single day. (You can't build a tower that quickly, but you can read about it.)

Admittedly, I shuffled this volume amongst my stack of current reads for weeks before I started reading. (There is always a book in there that is trying on the idea of being a current read, rather than actually being read currently.)

The front cover immediately appealed (that image is mesmerizing, isn't it?). And I've been wanting to find time for one of Robert Hough's novels for years. Since 2001, to be exact, when his novel about the greatest female tiger trainer, Mabel Stark, caught my reader's eye.

But the back cover suggested that it was equal parts Mark Twain and Gabriel García Márquez. And I've only read a couple of works by each author, and admiring them isn't the same as loving them.

Strangely enough, now I understand the comparison, and it having been made about this novel has made me think more fondly about both Twain's and Márquez's works.

I hopped from one reader's foot to the next for some time, the indecision strengthened by the fact that it's over 400 pages long.

Finally I plucked it off the stack. (I don't know why: I carry that stack of books everywhere in the house, depending where I'm spending time, and eventually I get tired of the scenery and I have to finish reading books to alter the view.)

Here is what I read: "Francisco Ramirez stood fretting before an antique full-length mirror framed in strips of shellacked mesquite."

(I wasn't hooked yet. I wish that I could say that I was, but it took a little longer.)

"It was a fine piece of craftsmanship, hand-built and intricate with detail; if you looked closely, you could see deer heads carved into the frame, each one gazing bemusedly in a different direction."

Looking back, I think it began here, with those carved deer heads, gazing bemusedly -- yes, bemusedly -- but I don't think I recognized it at the time.

(Periodically. there is a word in Robert Hough's prose which stands out for me, like bemusedly. To the point where I wonder if it's not pretentious to have chosen a 5$-word when a penny-word would have done the trick. But then I think about it, and it's the perfect word: perfect for the whole story, not just the sentence or the paragraph. They are quite ordinary words, but not the sort that you see in novels everyday, which makes them seem extraordinary. I imagine there is a Dr. Brinkley's Tower lexicon somewhere, and that idea thrills me, that someone could have spent that much time imagining a world and its inhabitants. Well, isn't that why we read? To find that kind of world?)

But I wasn't actually hooked yet (I settled into the story wholly on page 22: I'm a sucker for an old-fashioned romance), and it wasn't instantaneous, more like a steady cinching of interest, so each sentence must have been subtly reeling me in.

The sentences are carefully crafted, although they seem effortless. Take the first sentences from each paragraph on the first few pages:

"It was 1931, the long, bloody years of the revolution still a fresh wound."

"The mirror's real dissolution had occurred during the revolution, when government soldiers were continually requisitioning goods for the war effort, only to spend the proceeds in houses of ill repute."

"Given these shortcomings, the mirror had been relegated to the bedroom used by Francisco, who was now assessing himself in the turbulent, hypercritical way of all adolescents."

"The problem, as he saw it, was his nose."

"The accident had rendered the bridge of his nose somewhat lumpy in appearance, not unlike the backbone of a spiny armadillo."

They read almost like their own story, even though you're missing all the rest of the sentences that come between.

(You can, however, read a sample chapter on the publisher's site, if you're curious, and I hope you are. Though I've included these for flavour, illustrating the way in which the author deals with historical context, the inclusion of houses of ill repute -- lest you be sensitive to such realities, the variation in sentence length and tone, and the occasional figurative image.)

In between are the sentences that build the story, the ones that are -- even if you're unaware -- pulling you into the tale of Francisco and Roberto and Violeta and Madam Félix -- and the Reyes brothers and the Marias and Miguel and Antonio and Carlos and and and -- in this 1930s Mexican frontier town.

The connection to the narrative builds slowly; there is a wide cast of characters, and they are introduced steadily, building an understanding of Corazón de la Fuente across the chapters.

(And there is a lot of detail in the prose, a lot that you could imagine another writer putting into parentheses, or editing out entirely, so if you're bored with the style of this post, you might find your attention wandering in the novel as well. Dr. Brinkley's Tower really isn't a novel written for those who like to read the text boxes instead of the text, for those who read in one-minute chunks.)

Sometimes the characters feel familiar, as though perhaps you've caught a glimpse of them on-screen or on other pages. Sometimes you suspect what's going to happen, as though you've heard this story before.

Well, it has all been told before, right?

Love and grief, friendship and betrayal, progress and devastation.

(And, when I thought about it, it wasn't so much that I knew what was going to happen, but just that I hoped it so hard, because I really did want things to turn out well for these characters. Remember, I was hooked.)

Ultimately, however, there is a hook, a catch. And readers of Robert Hough's earlier works might well have suspected this, for his last novel, The Culprits opens with a warning:

"Life is a deception. Oh yes -- it's a ruse, it's a scam, it's a carnival shell game."

(I don't mean a twist, not like an O'Henry story, or a big reveal. More like when you thought something was true the whole time, but then you realize that you shouldn't have assumed, or like when you thought something wasn't true, because it seemed too fantastical, but then you discover it was real.)

It's a big question: what do we trust? While we're figuring it out, we can trust in good storytelling.

(Robert Hough's backlist was added to my TBR list before I reached page 22.)

[This was originally posted here, on Buried In Print.) ( )
2 vote buriedinprint | Aug 29, 2012 |
Mostrando 1-5 de 6 (seguinte | mostrar todos)
Dr. Brinkley’s Tower reads like a fable, with Hough adopting a tongue-in-cheek, faux naïf style reminiscent, at times, of Louis de Bernières. However, neither the novel’s outcome nor the fates of its various (mostly likeable) characters is ever really in doubt, and Hough’s wisecracking can’t make up for the lack of suspense. Nor is Hough quite strenuous enough in resisting the temptation to teach his readers lessons in both history and human nature.
 
Hough has made a career specializing in fiction that’s thoroughly researched and possessed with a vibrant moral heartbeat. Dr. Brinkley’s Tower is so successful precisely because of how much attention is paid to its characters’ feelings and desires, no matter how slight...Hough’s greatest skill, however, is as an old-fashioned storyteller. Dr. Brinkley’s Tower moves like an extremely well-oiled machine, juggling and nudging forward all kinds of subplots without ever drawing attention to the muscularity required to do so. The scene where a town-wide brawl breaks out in the wake of a misguided guess-how-many-gumballs contest brings a smile to my face, still.

Not all novels need to put such a premium on storytelling, of course. But those that do would benefit from looking to Hough as an example of how to get the job done right.
 
Hough is a master storyteller, and he works here with a practised hand to avoid stereotype and at the same time give a clear sense of the general problems engendered by the new influx of wealth into the impoverished town. “...America has always understood itself to be very separate from Mexico.” A similar insight lies at the heart of Doctor Brinkley’s Tower and its shrewd rendering of the multiple ambivalences at play in the cultural clash and the interwoven histories of what Hough’s narrator calls “the bridge separating an obscenely rich nation from an incorrigibly poor one.”
 
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As always, to Suzie, Sally and Ella
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Francisco Ramirez stood fretting before an antique full-length mirror framed in strips of shellacked mesquite.
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And then slowly, in the manner of those who have lost themselves in love, their corporeal selves melted away, freeing them from the self-consciousness that, at all other times, defines the act of living.
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In the 1931 war-ravaged Mexico border town of Corazón de la Fuente, where the only enterprise in town is a brothel, Dr. Romulus Brinkley decides to build a gargantuan new radio tower to broadcast his miraculous "goat gland operation" said to cure sexual impotence. Inspired by the shenanigans of a real life American con man.

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