Identify Books To A Flag for Sunrise
| Original Title: | A Flag for Sunrise |
| ISBN: | 0345306503 (ISBN13: 9780345306500) |
| Edition Language: | English |
| Literary Awards: | Pulitzer Prize Nominee for Fiction (1982), PEN/Faulkner Award for Fiction Nominee (1982), Los Angeles Times Book Prize for Fiction (1982), National Book Critics Circle Award Nominee for Fiction (1981), National Book Award Finalist for Fiction (Hardcover) & (Paperback) (1983) (1982) |
Robert Stone
Mass Market Paperback | Pages: 440 pages Rating: 3.87 | 880 Users | 77 Reviews
Mention Appertaining To Books A Flag for Sunrise
| Title | : | A Flag for Sunrise |
| Author | : | Robert Stone |
| Book Format | : | Mass Market Paperback |
| Book Edition | : | Deluxe Edition |
| Pages | : | Pages: 440 pages |
| Published | : | November 12th 1982 by Ballantine Books (first published 1981) |
| Categories | : | Fiction. Literary Fiction. Literature. Contemporary |
Description In Favor Of Books A Flag for Sunrise
”A scorpion comes up to a buffalo on a riverbank. Please, sir, says the scorpion – could you give us a ride across? No way, says the buffalo. You’ll sting me and I’ll drown. But the scorpion swears he won’t. Why would I, he asks the buffalo, when if I did, I’d drown along with you? So off they go. Halfway across the scorpion stings the buffalo. And the poor Buffalo says, you bastard, you killed us both. Before they go under, the scorpion says – it’s my nature.”It is the late 70s. America is reeling from a Vietnam hangover. And burnouts from that war go looking for some foothold. They descend, or wash up, on Tecan, an invented Central American cauldron. Father Egan, a drunk and dying priest. Justin Feeney, a nun and nurse, who will laicize if she gets out. Frank Holliwell, an alcoholic anthropologist, asked to give a lecture. And Pablo Tobar, a Coast Guard deserter driven by Benzedrine.
There is revolution in the air, but that is simply a tableau for the literary flailing of American purpose. It is all of a piece, Stone writes: child murderers, right-wing dictators, American interests. Wait, whaaaat? There’s a very rubbishy sort of American loose on the world these days.
Robert Stone is self-aware if not self-debasing. He understands he is being cinematic:
Movies are movies, Oscar. This is your life.
And:
It’s a Walt fucking Disney true life adventure, sweetheart.
Stone writes thrillers, sort of. The amoral, drug-fueled violence is surely meant to be metaphorical. Like Cormac McCarthy, but with less talent and, oddly, less hope.
So, Holliwell is haunted by his unspecified spook-work in Vietnam. Pablo serves as that legacy. Father Egan is a drunken oracle. Justin is either the American kindness which can not be allowed to survive, or maybe just a convenient too-hot-to-be-a-nun character so at least someone can get naked, damnit.
What A Flag for Sunrise is not, however, is a clash of cultures. Nothing like Matthiessen’s At Play in the Fields of the Lord. ‘Tecan’ is a fictitious country, so, apparently, there’s no real need to create a Tecanese people or culture. The natives are props against which the Americans can be ugly adventurers. We lost our soul in Vietnam, he says, and never got it back.
Stone reworked this theme to much better artistic success in Outerbridge Reach. But AFFS is thematically and metaphorically accessible, deeper than its plot, even if disagreeably so. Stone sums things up for us: it was not easy to watch all the world’s deluded wandering across the battlefield of a long-ago lost war. One had to close the heart to pity – if one could. The truth was a fine thing, but it had to be its own reward.
A man has nothing to fear…who understands history, Stone concludes. That would be hopeful, Robert, had we not been cast as scorpions, damned by our nature.
Rating Appertaining To Books A Flag for Sunrise
Ratings: 3.87 From 880 Users | 77 ReviewsDiscuss Appertaining To Books A Flag for Sunrise
Well, I found the POV characters in this book utterly unlikeable, and I would have rated this book as 2 stars were it not for this line: "There is a creature in another dimension whose jewelry is dead worlds. When this creature requires more of them, it plants the seed of life on a tiny planet. After a while there are people and then nothinga patina. I reread this line several times and found it so thought provoking that I added another star to the book.A scorpion comes up to a buffalo on a riverbank. Please, sir, says the scorpion could you give us a ride across? No way, says the buffalo. Youll sting me and Ill drown. But the scorpion swears he wont. Why would I, he asks the buffalo, when if I did, Id drown along with you? So off they go. Halfway across the scorpion stings the buffalo. And the poor Buffalo says, you bastard, you killed us both. Before they go under, the scorpion says its my nature.It is the late 70s. America is reeling from
(3.5/5) The narrative propels, paradoxically, the seemingly meaningless existential physical and mental wandering of the four central characters - action made inaction - hamster wheeling through the Central American forest in search of meaning - and fleeing from its existential dread - going nowhere - but exhausting and death.As the novel seems to progress - setup, climax, resolution, conclusion - but there is no conclusion - no salvation, no revolution. Only misplayed hands, but the cards we
That real 70s macho dispirited gritty tone that at first was refreshing and later became not a thing I wanted to escape to.
"A Flag for Sunrise" is not an easy book. It doesn't have a conventional thriller plot, easily drawn characters or an easy chain of events and motivations to follow. While it has plenty of action (especially at the end) it is like an updated Under the Volcano, where the landscape of Latin America is fully charged with myths and sacred/profane danger.The main thing I fixed on while reading the book was the necessity and futility of transformation. Everything and everybody is being transformed -
When I started college, I thought I was going to major in "International Studies" or "International Relations" or some such; I could speak French and Spanish and planned to "pick up" other languages (ah, the arrogance!), and basically become, maybe not necessarily a "spook," but someone who worked in many different countries and would be at home in any of them. Not once did I consider the possibility that maybe I would feel at home in none of them. And now, having read stuff like Greene's The
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
Note: Only a member of this blog may post a comment.