Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie



  • 080415

    7 mai 2015

    Lequel le point commun entre une nouvelle d’Amy Hempel, une nouvelle prise dans Récits d’un jeune médecin, une nouvelle de Bolaño, une nouvelle dite française, une nouvelle lue au hasard du pouce dans la dernière édition digitale du New-Yorker (ça s’appelle Appolo) ? Quel rapport avec celles de Pynchon dans Slow Learner ? Des bouts de roman ces nouvelles. L’une me rappelle un Faulkner (mais quoi ? Si je t’oublie Jérusalem ?). Une inondation. L’une je sais plus. L’une c’est un bout lu dans V. (mais pas le même). Dans la dernière cette façon de faire : introduire des personnages étranges sous la forme d’une liste.

    Etienne’s friends included the Mostly brothers, Arnold and Kermit, who sniffed airplane glue and stole mousetraps from the store, which for fun they would then cock, stand out in the middle of some empty field and throw at each other ; Kim Dufay, a slender, exotic-looking sixth-grader with a blond pigtail that hung to her waist and was usually blue on the end from being dunked in inkwells, who had a thing about explosive chemical reactions and was responsible for replenishing the cache of sodium up at the hideout, smuggling the stuff out of the Mingeborough High School lab with the connivance of her boyfriend Gaylord, an infatuated sophomore shot-putter who just liked them young ; Hogan Slothrop, the doctor’s kid, who at the age of eight had taken to serious after-bedtime beer-drinking and at the age of nine got religion, swore off beer and joined the Alcoholics Anonymous, a step his father, who was what is known as permissive, gave his blessing to and which the local A.A. group tolerated because they thought having a kid around would be inspirational ; Nunzi Passarella, who had begun his career in second grade by bringing somehow a full « Etienne’s friends included the Mostly brothers, Arnold and Kermit, who sniffed airplane glue and stole mousetraps from the store, which for fun they would then cock, stand out in the middle of some empty field and throw at each other ; Kim Dufay, a slender, exotic-looking sixth-grader with a blond pigtail that hung to her waist and was usually blue on the end from being dunked in inkwells, who had a thing about explosive chemical reactions and was responsible for replenishing the cache of sodium up at the hideout, smuggling the stuff out of the Mingeborough High School lab with the connivance of her boyfriend Gaylord, an infatuated sophomore shot-putter who just liked them young ; Hogan Slothrop, the doctor’s kid, who at the age of eight had taken to serious after-bedtime beer-drinking and at the age of nine got religion, swore off beer and joined the Alcoholics Anonymous, a step his father, who was what is known as permissive, gave his blessing to and which the local A.A. group tolerated because they thought having a kid around would be inspirational ; Nunzi Passarella, who had begun his career in second grade by bringing somehow a full-grown pig in to Show-and-Tell Time, a quarter-ton Poland China sow, in the school bus and everything, and had gone on to found a Crazy Sue Dunham cult, in honor of that legendary and beautiful drifter who last century had roamed all this hilltop country exchanging babies and setting fires and who, in a way, was the patron saint of all these kids. 

    Thomas Pynchon, Slow Learner