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Bezig met laden... De laatste held (1964)door Thomas Berger, Thomas Berger
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. Věřte tomu nebo ne, Jacku Crabbovi je 111 let. Věřte nebo nevěřte, Jack Crabb má dva otce: jednoho bĂlĂ©ho a druhĂ©ho, sice duchovnĂho, zato nefalšovanĂ©ho indiánskĂ©ho náčelnĂka kmene ÄŚejenĹŻ, kterĂ˝ mu takĂ© dal to nezapomenutelnĂ© jmĂ©no - MalĂ˝ velkĂ˝ muĹľ MalĂ˝ velkĂ˝ muĹľ Jack Crabb tak zdÄ›dil od kaĹľdĂ©ho svĂ©ho pĹ™edka nÄ›co a vĂ˝sledkem je zábavnĂ˝ vypravěč, kterĂ˝ si neláme hlavu s rasovĂ˝mi rozdĂly a pĹ™epĂná podle momentálnĂ potĹ™eby mezi bĂlĂ˝mi a rudĂ˝mi návyky a zvyklostmi. Un desocupado coleccionista y aficionado a las antigĂĽedades indias tiene oportunidad de entrevistar a un irascible anciano de más de ciento diez años, el viejo Jack Crabb, superviviente de la batalla de Little Big Horn, aquella en la que sioux, cheyennes y otros aliados hicieron picadillo a Custer y a parte de su sĂ©ptimo de caballerĂa. Pero Jack Crabb no sĂłlo fue el Ăşnico superviviente de aquella legendaria batalla. En su relato al coleccionista, le cuenta que primero fue niño blanco, luego, tras el asesinato de su familia por los indios, niño cheyenne, y adolescente blanco y guerrero cheyenne (con el nombre de “Pequeño Gran Hombre”) despuĂ©s, y jugador de ventaja, y buscador de oro, y cazador de bĂşfalos, y explorador del ejĂ©rcito, y confidente del general Custer, y amigo de “Wild Bill” Hickok. I only discovered Thomas Berger’s 1964 novel Little Big Man after watching its 1970 movie version starring Dustin Hoffman in the title role. But coincidentally, this second reading of the book coincided almost perfectly with the fiftieth anniversary of the first time I read it — and it turned out to be as entertaining as ever. The novel’s main character, Jack Crabb, is the Forrest Gump of the second half of the nineteenth century. Despite dying at 34 years of age before he could complete his memoir, Crabb tells of his experiences and/or friendships with the likes of George Armstrong Custer, Wild Bill Hickok, Calamity Jane, Wyatt Earp, and others. Much like the fictional Forrest Gump would do in his own part of the country decades later via novel and film, Jack was everywhere out West where anything of consequence seemed to be happening, including the Battle of the Little Big Horn. The fictional editor responsible for getting Little Big Man’s memoir into print put it this way: “It is of course unlikely that one man would have experienced even a third of Mr. Crabb’s claim. Half? Incredible! All? A mythomaniac! But you will find, as I did, that if any one part is accepted as truth, then what precedes and follows has a great lien on our credulity. If he knew Wild Bill Hickok, then why not General Custer as well?” Jack Crabb’s big adventure begins when his father converts to Mormonism and decides to move the family cross country to Salt Lake City. Unfortunately for Mr. Crabb and his family, an Indian raid on the wagon train the family was a part of ended their move well before its intended destination. The good news is that not everyone in the family was killed in that raid; the bad news is that Jack and his older sister were carried away by the raiders. Jack’s sister, who had talked the Indians into taking Jack along in the first place, manages to escape early on, but she does so without including Jack in her escape plan. And that’s how Jack became the adopted son of an Indian chief and survived to have all the adventures captured in Little Big Man. For the next quarter of a century, Jack will move between the white world and the Native American world each time he needs to save his life from one side or the other. Whenever he finds himself on the losing side of any battle between the Americans and the Indians, Jack manages to switch sides just in the nick of time in order to survive and begin a new set of adventures. He is so good at saving his own neck, in fact, that by the time his memoirs have attracted some interest, Jack Crabb is 111 years old and still feisty as ever. Bottom Line: Little Big Man is great fun despite the tragic events the novel vividly portrays as Jack Crabb negotiates the two very different cultures he spends time in. It is the story of America’s westward expansion and the simultaneous near elimination of a race of people who already called this country home. It is a farcical view of American history that still manages the kind of emotional impact that serious, nonfiction history books do not always achieve. Little did they expect it, but fans of Little Big Man were to be rewarded 35 years later with the publication of Berger’s The Return of Little Big Man. How did Jack manage to tell the rest of his story? I’ll leave that up to you to find out because it’s all part of the fun.
A successful, serious but, crack-brained burlesque of Indian mores and frontier life, this tells the story of Jack Crabb, the 111-year-old lone survivor of Custer's last stand at Little Bighorn. (Berger is the author of Crazy in Berlin and Reinhart in Love, both of which had patches of unorthodox brilliance.) Onderdeel van de reeks(en)Little Big Man series (book 1) Onderdeel van de uitgeversreeks(en)Gallmeister, Totem (206) J'ai lu, Roman (3281) Le livre de poche (3863) Is opgenomen inHeeft de bewerkingPrijzenErelijsten
Classic Literature.
Fiction.
Literature.
Western.
HTML:“The truth is always made up of little particulars which sound ridiculous when repeated.” So says Jack Crabb, the 111-year-old narrator of Thomas Berger’s 1964 masterpiece of American fiction, Little Big Man. Berger claimed the Western as serious literature with this savage and epic account of one man’s extraordinary double life. After surviving the massacre of his pioneer family, ten-year-old Jack is adopted by an Indian chief who nicknames him Little Big Man. As a Cheyenne, he feasts on dog, loves four wives, and sees his people butchered by horse soldiers commanded by General George Armstrong Custer. Later, living as a white man once more, he hunts the buffalo to near-extinction, tangles with Wyatt Earp, cheats Wild Bill Hickok, and fights in the Battle of Little Bighorn alongside Custer himself—a man he’d sworn to kill. Hailed by The Nation as “a seminal event,” Little Big Man is a singular literary achievement that, like its hero, only gets better with age. Praise for Little Big Man “An epic such as Mark Twain might have given us.”—Henry Miller “The very best novel ever about the American West.”—The New York Times Book Review “Spellbinding . . . [Crabb] surely must be one of the most delightfully absurd fictional fossils ever unearthed.”—Time “Superb . . . Berger’s success in capturing the points of view and emotional atmosphere of a vanished era is uncanny. His skill in characterization, his narrative power and his somewhat cynical humor are all outstanding.”—The New York Times. Geen bibliotheekbeschrijvingen gevonden. |
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Google Books — Bezig met laden... GenresDewey Decimale Classificatie (DDC)813.54Literature English (North America) American fiction 20th Century 1945-1999LC-classificatieWaarderingGemiddelde:
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