"The Lay of the Land" by Richard Ford, a reader's journal (16)

Suburbia

Hardly a reader's journal anymore, since I've finished the book a few days ago. I will come back to it, though. The afterthoughts are of some resentment. When, towards the end, storytelling grabs the narrative and kicks digression to someplace in the back, there's the improbability of it all - sometimes a seemingly cheap one (a dying man gets shot -!- by immigrants and is "saved" by another one) and there's the immigrant line of thought, one I did not enjoy and will pursue. Wade Arsenault's episode, the last one of genius in the course of the narrative.

Done with the suburbia, where all digressions are possible, done with the warm cozyness of looking at others from high windows, done with word play and punctuation, done with wit, I'm returning to the nauseating odours of real life, vein cutting, shame and self-facing/efacing. All in Tahar Ben Jelloun's "Corruption", an author not so beloved by the English-speaking. "Corruption", an extremely bad translation of "L'Homme Rompu", or broken man. Sometimes getting the heck out of America is sheer necessity.

Here, all my other reading journal entries about "The Lay of the Land". This one is the last, but I still expect to come back and write a small conclusion. How the immigration issue upset me and drove me away from the book.