Christopher Tilghman
Autor von Mason's Retreat
Über den Autor
Writer Christopher Tilghman was born in Boston in 1946 and later graduated from Yale University. After Tilghman served in the Navy, he took on construction work until he was able to establish himself as a writer. Tilghman's short stories appeared in The New Yorker magazine and in Best American mehr anzeigen Short Stories. He also published In a Father's Place, a collection of short stories, and Mason's Retreat, his first novel. (Bowker Author Biography) weniger anzeigen
Werke von Christopher Tilghman
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Wissenswertes
- Geburtstag
- 1946-09-05
- Geschlecht
- male
- Nationalität
- USA
- Wohnorte
- Charlottesville, Virginia, USA
Cambridge, Massachusetts, USA - Ausbildung
- Yale College (AB|1968)
- Berufe
- professor
- Beziehungen
- Preston, Caroline (spouse)
- Organisationen
- University of Virginia
- Preise und Auszeichnungen
- Whiting Writers' Award (1990)
Guggenheim Fellowship
Ingram Merrill Fellowship
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- 545
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- #45,748
- Bewertung
- 3.6
- Rezensionen
- 15
- ISBNs
- 41
- Sprachen
- 1
Since interracial marriage is illegal in Maryland — and dangerous anywhere in the United States — the couple has chosen France. Or, rather, Thomas has. Beal, though she loves Thomas and has agreed to the plan as the most practical, sensible way to have a life together, hasn’t chosen anything, and therein hangs a tale.
Thomas and Beal in the Midi offers an unusual twist on interracial marriage. Between the two participants, race causes no rifts. Other people construct what they will about the Baylys, often to indulge their bigotry, but their reactions leave no scars.
The real problem is that the two exiles have married young; their inexperience makes for growing pains, specifically Beal’s difficulties being a beautiful woman. She’s tired of having men tell her who she is or must be, which is perfectly understandable, especially because that would put her in their power. But Thomas doesn’t do that, so when she lets herself be put upon or even drawn to other men who do, it’s perverse.
True, Thomas does decide, after a few months’ research in Paris, that they'll move to Languedoc and grow grapes, and, as the man of the couple, he’s expected to be the planner. But the way Tilghman portrays his protagonists, Thomas would like nothing better than to share his enthusiasm, and Beal acts as if she couldn’t care less.
Consequently, her rebellion — if such it is — takes the form of permitting approaches from precisely those men who look upon her as an object for their own admiration, a self-defeating and hurtful choice all around.
To be fair, Thomas has a certain reserve about him, a delicacy that keeps him from assuming too much. It can be maddening and charming, both, and one thing about Beal’s secret admirers, they’re not shy about talking. Meanwhile, Thomas has a mild flirtation of his own, looking for the intellectual passion Beal withholds, so the wrong doesn’t go only one direction. But he’s more honorable, with a firmer conscience. I find him far more sympathetic than his wife, who acts like an immature ninny, at times. That’s why I like the novel less than I wanted to.
For all that, though, it’s a beautiful piece of writing. Tilghman has a terrific eye for emotional nuance, which finds unexpected meaning in small moments and fills the spaces with tension in this less-than-busy plot. In fact, the last part of the narrative seems rushed, a little, as though a quicker resolution had to happen, even at the expense of a confrontation or two that need to happen before the reader’s eyes. Nothing like destroying a climax before it starts.
Aside from the marvelous prose, I also like the symbolism. Thomas’s grape-growing experiment comes on the heels of an agricultural disaster, the invasion of phylloxera, an aphid that laid waste to much of France’s grape rootstock.
To keep his vineyards alive, he must therefore graft resistant American stock on to what already grows, while uprooting the one hardy local varietal that makes insipid wine, and whose market is glutted. Since Thomas’s father’s peach orchards died off from blight (symbolic of the slavery that existed there), you can take the grafting metaphor in any direction you wish — Beal and Thomas’s marriage; America and Europe; Thomas repairing his father’s mistakes; a rebuilding of tolerance; new life in general.
I could have happily read more about the wine business. But Thomas and Beal in the Midi is an unusual love story, and there’s much to admire in it.… (mehr)