Автор:Thomas Mcconnell Год: 2005 Издание: [не указанo] Страниц: 196 ISBN: 0896725359 Book DescriptionAll humans are in some sense exiled. Hugh Kenner Imagine Chaucer?s pilgrims?without a Canterbury. Across a landscape devoid of monumental shrines, they would wander still, having no more alternative than the planet swimming in its system, just as they would continue to talk the stories of their lives. Such pilgrims are the characters inhabiting A Picture Book of Hell. In stories and situations that chime against one another like variations on musical themes, the quiet wanderers in this collection seem all entrained on the "pointless quest for the questless point," as one narrator concludes. Two old friends repeatedly fail to rendezvous, save in the last connection of a suicide note. A reluctant bank teller abandons his life and his rented house to take the place of a dead vagabond. The volume?s title novella discloses a veteran of the First World War struggling to reconcile the two worlds he?s come to know too well, neither of which seems to...
