Ray Robertson
Autor von Moody Food: A Novel
Über den Autor
Poetic, poignant and clever, "What Happened Later" is a unique and engaging story of two lives that were forever changed by one book.In 1967, only ten years after the sensational success of ON THE ROAD, Jack Kerouac was a physically broken, spiritually lost man. Late that summer, accompanied by his mehr anzeigen friend, Joe Chaput, Kerouac set out for Riviere-du-Loup, Quebec, on a spiritual quest to connect with his French-Canadian roots. Predictably, the trip was a drunken, chaotic disaster, and a little more than two years afterward, Kerouac was dead.Fifteen years later, after falling under the spell of the larger-than-life-myth of Jack Kerouac, a working-class, small-town Ontario teenager named Ray Robertson embarked upon his own quest--to own a copy of ON THE ROAD. Rebuffed at every turn in his attempt to possess the elusive novel, Robertson nonetheless slowly begins to recognize the existence of a world beyond the factories, hockey rinks and suburbs of his hometown, and also begins to comprehend his own French-Canadian heritage.Taking its title from Kerouac himself--"What Happened Later" was the title of his proposed sequel to ON THE ROAD--this novel tells the story of what happened after the fame generated by Kerouac's famous book and what happened next in the life of a young man infatuated with the legendary author.Interweaving the story of one author's slow decline with one boy's literary coming of age, "What Happened Later" explores the ever-shifting dualities of myth and reality, loss and hope, innocence and experience, endings and beginnings. weniger anzeigen
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Wissenswertes
- Geschlecht
- male
- Nationalität
- Canada
- Wohnorte
- Toronto, Ontario, Canada
Chatham, Ontario, Canada - Agent
- Samantha Haywood (Transatlantic Literary Agency)
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Enjoyed this easy to listen to short philosophical book. Many memorable quotes and ideas both of his and other writers. So much so that I have to get the ebook in order to write some of them down.
Ray Robertson's latest novel, 1979, set in his own hometown of Chatham, Ontario, is a curiously compelling coming of age story compacted into that one year. Thirteen year-old Tom Buzby is doing his best to make sense of things, living with his older sister and father in rooms above the tattoo parlor where his dad plies his trade, after his "Jesus freak" mom has run off to Toronto with a storefront preacher. Thirteen is always a tough age, but dealing with all those feelings and girls and sexual awakening has got to be even tougher without a mom.
Tom is also working. He's a paperboy. And he is known throughout the town as "the miracle boy" who had a near-death experience when he was lost in the city sewers and nearly succumbed to sewer gas fumes. So people open up to him, tell him personal things, think he knows something, has special powers. But if Tom does know things or does have special powers, it doesn't do him much good. He's just this motherless kid, doing his best to grow up, to survive, and on top of all this -
"We were learning about the Cold War in history class, the jittery game of nuclear chicken the two most powerful countries in the world had been playing off and on since the end of World War Two."
So there's that. And there's Allison, a potential girlfriend who's an athletic tomboy, with whom he goes jogging in the town cemetery. And speaking of cemeteries, on the advice of a friend, he buys a copy of SPOON RIVER ANTHOLOGY at the local bookstore. And someone else recommends he try CATCHER IN THE RYE. And interspersed throughout the narrative are the little imagined newspaper stories - thumbnail sketches of whole lives - about dozens of local people that Tom knows or only casually encounters.
So here's what we've got: a paperboy, on the cusp of puberty, who is still mostly innocent, motherless, confused, and maybe possessing a kind of unrealized second sight, who jogs in a cemetery. What Robertson seems to be attempting here is a kind of literary mashup - of Salinger, Edgar Lee Masters, and, judging from the sad little lives represented in the imaginary newspaper stories, maybe also a bit of Thoreau's "lives of quiet desperation." And, fantastically, he pretty much succeeds!
I'm pretty sure that 1979 was a real labor of love for Robertson, who, like his young protagonist, was thirteen in 1979, and remembers all the agonies both large and small of being that age in that particular year. This is a damn good book. Bravo, Mr Robertson. Very highly recommended.
- Tim Bazzett, author of the memoir, BOOKLOVER… (mehr)
Tom is also working. He's a paperboy. And he is known throughout the town as "the miracle boy" who had a near-death experience when he was lost in the city sewers and nearly succumbed to sewer gas fumes. So people open up to him, tell him personal things, think he knows something, has special powers. But if Tom does know things or does have special powers, it doesn't do him much good. He's just this motherless kid, doing his best to grow up, to survive, and on top of all this -
"We were learning about the Cold War in history class, the jittery game of nuclear chicken the two most powerful countries in the world had been playing off and on since the end of World War Two."
So there's that. And there's Allison, a potential girlfriend who's an athletic tomboy, with whom he goes jogging in the town cemetery. And speaking of cemeteries, on the advice of a friend, he buys a copy of SPOON RIVER ANTHOLOGY at the local bookstore. And someone else recommends he try CATCHER IN THE RYE. And interspersed throughout the narrative are the little imagined newspaper stories - thumbnail sketches of whole lives - about dozens of local people that Tom knows or only casually encounters.
So here's what we've got: a paperboy, on the cusp of puberty, who is still mostly innocent, motherless, confused, and maybe possessing a kind of unrealized second sight, who jogs in a cemetery. What Robertson seems to be attempting here is a kind of literary mashup - of Salinger, Edgar Lee Masters, and, judging from the sad little lives represented in the imaginary newspaper stories, maybe also a bit of Thoreau's "lives of quiet desperation." And, fantastically, he pretty much succeeds!
I'm pretty sure that 1979 was a real labor of love for Robertson, who, like his young protagonist, was thirteen in 1979, and remembers all the agonies both large and small of being that age in that particular year. This is a damn good book. Bravo, Mr Robertson. Very highly recommended.
- Tim Bazzett, author of the memoir, BOOKLOVER… (mehr)
Lives of the Poets (with Guitars) is a book inspired by a true love and appreciation of music - specifically rock 'n roll, roots, 60's pop, bluegrass, (and punk) music, in the case of these 'outsiders' - fueled by free wheeling literary knowledge, and the deep, poignant insights of Ray Robertson. Though the artist's progressions and the tragic arc their lives and careers tend to follow can be repetitious, each musician's story has something to say about life and living in the world they created within. Robertson does a great job of weaving quotes from authors and celebrities, first-hand accounts of the artists and wonderful descriptions of their music and its impact on his and other peoples lives with Lives of the Poets. This book is also a great playlist generator, and will make you appreciate and even love these artists even if you haven't heard their music.… (mehr)
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- 255
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- #89,877
- Bewertung
- 3.6
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- 12
- ISBNs
- 49
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Sadly, the settlement had only a bit part and the plot seemed to go nowhere.… (mehr)