Klik op een omslag om naar Google Boeken te gaan.
Bezig met laden... Cutter and Bone (origineel 1976; editie 1976)door Newton Thornburg
Informatie over het werkCutter and Bone door Newton Thornburg (1976)
Bezig met laden...
Meld je aan bij LibraryThing om erachter te komen of je dit boek goed zult vinden. Op dit moment geen Discussie gesprekken over dit boek. Basis of the 1981 film "Cutter's Way." Aimless Richard Bone--in his mid-thirties, a dropout from his life, sponging off women and crashing at the squalid Santa Barbara house of his friend, Vietnam veteran and multiple amputee, the cynical, ravaged, suicidal Alex Cutter--unwittingly witnesses the dumping of a body and finds he's drawn the attention of the police. Cutter and Bone hatch a sleazy blackmail scheme from Bone's vague notion that the person he saw that night was power broker J.J. Wolfe. The plot thickens, the obsession darkens into a spiral of mental deterioration and self-destruction.. Ambiguity is endemic till the end. (Quite different from the movie.) "I'm out here, and I'm alone. And I don't think I can get back." Cutter and Bone by Newton Thornburg is a 1976 thriller about two men, one a dropout gigolo called Richard Bone and the other, Alex Cutter, a drunken, one-eyed, one-armed, one-legged Vietnam vet. They live together with Alex’s druggie girlfriend and mother of Alex’s baby, and hustle to bring in enough money for booze, drugs and food. One night while driving home, Boone witnesses a murderer disposing of his victim's body, and although he really didn’t get a good look at the killer, when he sees a picture of a wealthy president of a corporation, J.J. Wolfe, he is pretty sure he is looking at the murderer. Cutter decides that they should blackmail J. J. Wolfe and make some big cash. But while Cutter goes about gathering information and causing havoc he is also exposing them to a killer’s scrutiny. This was a fascinating read. Cutter is full of self-destructive impulses and could be very vicious in his treatment of others. Bone is trying to escape the idea of a mundane American Dream and craves freedom but can’t quite shake his ingrained sense of responsibility. Mo comes from a well-to-do family but has dropped out so far that she now lives her life in a pill and wine induced haze. I don’t believe I have read this book before but I am pretty sure I must have seen the 1981 film starring Jeff Bridges as John Bone as I felt an immediate sense of familiarity with these characters. The author has created a very good thriller but Cutter and Bone is also a book that uses dark humor, violence and a smidgen of sympathy to show the impact that the Vietnam war had on these particular lost souls. Cutter and Bone, like Thornburg's Dreamland, is a story that on its surface is about murder and conspiracy, but is more about the twisted characters in it than it about the crime story. Both this book and Dreamland involve amateurs who are rootless drifters trying to solve a mystery. But Cutter and Bone is the R-rated version, involving not just rootless but decent characters trying to do good in a crazy world, but essentially nihilistic worthless cancers on society's backside. Cutter and Bone is Hunter S Thompson's Fear and Loathing meets murder mystery. It's a long strange trip involving two cynical men with no jobs, no real connections, and both half mad. One is an unrepentant gigolo living off any woman he can hypnotize or crashing in his buddy's pad. He once walked away from a middle management job, a wife, and kids. The other survived Vietnam with one less eye and one bloody stump of an arm. Witnessing the dumping of a teenage gir's body is what changes their worlds. They set out to blackmail the culprit together with the victim's sister. Then, after drowning in the sea and more booze than twenty bathtubs would contain, it's a trip to the Ozarks with a college co-ed and not much of a plan. Not your ordinary crime fiction, but a powerful study of despair, rootlessness, and losing one's mind. No one writes this stuff like Thornburg. No one. geen besprekingen | voeg een bespreking toe
A thriller, and a whacking good thriller, too--shows how much can be done by a writer who knows his business--the best novel of its kind in ten years!--New York Times First published in 1976, Cutter and Bone is the story of the obsession of Cutter, a scarred and crippled Vietnam veteran and his attempt to convince his buddy, Bone, that the latter witnessed a murder committed by the conglomerate tycoon, JJ Wolfe. Captivated by Cutter's demented logic, Bone is prepared to cross the country with Cutter in search of proof of the murder. Their quest takes them into the Ozarks--home base of the Wolfe empire--where Bone discovers that Cutter is not pursuing a murderer so much as the great enemy itself, them, the very demons that have dogged his life. A prolific writer, Newton Thornburg lives in upstate New York. His novels include A Man's Game, To Die in California, Dreamland, The Lion at the Door, and Eve's Men. Geen bibliotheekbeschrijvingen gevonden. |
Actuele discussiesGeenPopulaire omslagen
Google Books — Bezig met laden... GenresDewey Decimale Classificatie (DDC)813.54Literature English (North America) American fiction 20th Century 1945-1999LC-classificatieWaarderingGemiddelde:
Ben jij dit?Word een LibraryThing Auteur. |
Driving home late one night, Bone sees a man driving an expensive car stuff something resembling a set of golf clubs into the trash and then drive off. It turns out that the golf clubs were in fact the body of a young girl who has been murdered. When by chance Bone sees the picture of billionaire chicken magnate J. J. Wolfe in the paper, he thinks he recognizes Wolfe as the man who stuffed the body in the trash. When Cutter hears this he devises a scheme to blackmail the presumed murderer. What could go wrong?
The book perfectly evokes the milieu of California in the 70's, and the hardscrabble life of a Vietnam vet. The dialogue particularly stars in this book, and Cutter, despite his bitterness and meanness, is brilliantly witty. It was a very good read, but I'm not entirely sure why it made the 1001 list.
3 /12 stars
First line: It was not the first time Richard Bone had shaved with a Lady Remington, nor did he expect it to be the last."
I'm not including the last line because if I did, you would know what happens to Bone in the end.
There is apparently a very good movie of the same name that was made from this book, starring Jeff Bridges. ( )