The Museum at the End of the World
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- 13,99 €
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- 13,99 €
Beschreibung des Verlags
Set in Nashville, Memphis, New Orleans, and Ottawa, Ontario, the stories in The Museum at the End of the World span the life of writer Robert Ford and his wife Sheila. Playing with various forms of comedy throughout, author John Metcalf paints a portrait of 20th century literary life with levity, satire, and unsuspecting moments of emotional depth.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
In this collection of linked stories, Metcalf's first fiction since Adult Entertainment was published in 1990, he brings his trademark humor once again to Anglo-Canadian writer Robert Forde. A present-day story, "Ceazer Salad," opens with Forde despairing over a review of his latest book, but other stories travel in time and location. Meditating on class and culture, Metcalf's stories takes readers on a cruise where the characters wander grumpily around Byzantine ruins, into a tale of growing up in England in the '50s, and through North America and its politics in the '60s. The most interesting story, "Lives of the Poets," is an extended comic tale in which Forde hosts a poet's granddaughter, now elderly, when the university where he teaches honors the writer with a burial in Poet's Corner. The two spend a day drinking, reminiscing, and setting the world to rights. Metcalf combines his recurring themes of coming-of-age and the inadequacies of education with his vast knowledge of literature and music. The characters, dialogue, and situations feel rather dated, but the curmudgeonly, pedantic narrator an intellectual railing against the novel's "modern" world and its curious cast of characters is amusing, and the writing is sharp and funny.
