Arthouse: A Novel - Softcover

Deshell, Jeffrey

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1573661619 ISBN 13: 9781573661614

Verlag: F2C, 2011

Inhaltsangabe

An audacious transformation in prose of fourteen Modernist films

From film to film, Jeffrey DeShell follows a forty-something failed film studies academic—The Professor. While The Professor is reinvented with each new chapter (or film), what remains is DeShell’s inventive deconstruction and representation of modern cinema. At times borrowing imagery, plot, or character elements, and at times rendering lighting, rhythm, costuming, or shot sequences into fictional language, The Professor’s journey sends him from the Southwestern town of Pueblo, Colorado, into the role of rescuer as he aids an attempted-rape victim, and finally to Italy. Ultimately though, The Professor is left alone, struggling to reconcile the real world with his life in cinema.
 

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Über die Autorin bzw. den Autor

Jeffrey DeShell is the author of the novels In Heaven Everything is Fine, S & M, Peter: An (A)Historical Romance, and The Trouble with Being Born.
 

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ARTHOUSE

a novelBy Jeffrey DeShell

FC2

Copyright © 2011 Jeffrey DeShell
All right reserved.
ISBN: 978-1-57366-161-4

Contents

The Good, the Bad and the Ugly.....................1Sátántangó..........................11Thunder Road.......................................35Branded to Kill....................................53Grand Illusion.....................................73The Texas Chainsaw Massacre........................91Shoah..............................................113Tokyo Story........................................133Shame..............................................145Fellini Satyricon..................................163A Man and a Woman..................................193The Conformist.....................................213Contempt...........................................239Berlin Alexanderplatz..............................257

Chapter One

The Good, the Bad and the Ugly

Sergio Leone (1966)

He had better hurry, or he'd be late for his meeting with the Rodriguez Brothers. They weren't really brothers, just three guys all named Rodriguez. They probably weren't all named Rodriguez either, but what could you do? He sure as shit wasn't going to ask any questions.

He wanted to take the Grand Cherokee, but that was blocked by his F-150 in the driveway. As he searched in his pocket for his keys, he looked up toward the house, and noticed his mom's wheelchair, sitting on the porch, empty. That was unusual. His mother could walk some, but Liz kept her strapped in the chair because she was easier to manage that way. If she were inside with Liz, there was no reason the chair would be out on the porch. He looked around, past the house to the decrepit barn, then swiveled his gaze south and then east, to the hill, the driveway and the boys' trailer. No sign of her, or anyone else. Fuck. He hoped she hadn't wandered off. He did not want to be late for his meeting with the brothers.

He hurried across the driveway to the porch. Her chair was indeed empty, and the straps unbuckled, not broken. The wheels were locked and the chair was in the shade. A blue plastic cup was on its side on the floor. Maybe she was inside. He pushed the screen open and rushed to the kitchen door, where her could hear singing. Liz was working at the counter, singing to the radio, her back toward the door. She was wearing jeans shorts and a tube top. She was too old to wear a tube top. Too something.

"Hey Liz, have you seen my mother?"

She turned, placing her right hand on her heart. "Jesus, you scared me. I didn't hear you come in."

"Have you seen my mom?"

"She's outside on the front porch." She frowned. "I set her up in the shade and locked her wheels."

"She's not there."

"Oh no."

"Goddam it Liz, you can't do this. You can't just leave her." They both began to move from the kitchen out to the front door. "When did you put her out there?"

"Fifteen minutes ago. She can't hardly walk."

They were out on the porch now. "She must have walked somewhere. Where does she like to go?"

"She's always in her wheelchair. She don't go nowhere."

"Well, do you see her? You go north, and look in the garage and lab and around. If you see Jerry or Glow or anyone, get them to help. I'll go south and maybe check out the barn."

She stood on the porch, not moving. "I can't do this if she's going be wandering."

He turned and spoke over his shoulder. "It's a tough job."

"Yeah it's a tough job, cleaning up after your senile mom and watching that she don't fall out of that chair onto her face again. Not to mention making sure L'il Kevin remembers to put his dick inside his pants when he gets dressed in the morning. Yeah it's a tough job, taking care of that near zucchini and a 'tard. So, unless you'd rather wipe your mother's ass yourself, leave me the fuck alone."

He stopped. "It beats working on Colfax for five bucks a hummer. Or did your new Trans Am slip your mind somehow?"

"Fuck you."

He started again, walking backwards and yelling, "Maybe when I go up to Denver I'll stop at Leroy's and say, 'remember Liz? She's now working the champagne room outside of Pueblo. She only has two customers, but they're real devoted.'"

"Fuck you."

"Her tits have gone and her ass has fallen, but she just bought a classic '91 Trani. Too bad she lives at the end of a fucking dirt road. With a bunch of tweakers. And that band she was always talking about starting? She just signed a four CD record deal with RCA. Going to do all her own songs, too."

"Fuck you asshole."

"She's a comet man. You gotta grab her coattails and fly."

Fucking Liz. It was too hot for his mother to be wandering out here in the desert. He walked up the hill on the dirt road, reasoning that the semi-paved road would be more inviting to his mother's sense of balance than the overgrown footpath by the barn. And the barn was scary. The opposite of picturesque, it was like a pimple on the face of a homely child. Nothing dramatic had happened to it: but the years first of indifference, then neglect and finally desertion, along with the wind, dust and snow, had taken their toll. When they first moved out, they had spent a couple of nights there, camping in the loft while they fixed up the house and arranged the Winnebagos (the mobile homes came later). They even had a Halloween party there one night, everyone X-ing out and grooving to Prince on L'il Kevin's box. But then Mace freaked, insisting the walls were too red, like blood, which got everyone thinking, and the party broke up. He and Jerry had returned a couple of days later, and some animal had crawled into something and died, aerating the entire structure with a decomposing funk. He wasn't going to go all House of Usher (the Epstein, not the Corman, although the Corman was cool too) here: nobody except for Kevin liked the barn. He reached the top of the mesa and noticed the dry wind kicking up dust and blowing a few tumbleweeds around. The light came low and direct from his left, and, coupled with the blowing dust, made him squint through his sunglasses.

This was ugly country. Oklahoma or Nebraska had nothing on this part of Colorado. Thirty, forty miles north, the truck farms of the Arkansas River Valley snaked along Colorado 50, offering some of the best cantaloupe and chilies in the world. Fifty miles west (as the crow flies, about a ninety mile drive), San Isabel National Forest marked the eastern frontier of the Rockies. But here was nowhere. And no matter how he tried, there was nothing he could do to make it engaging: it was too barren, too dry, too rocky and too monotonous to inspire feelings of awe, wonder, or the least bit of sympathy or connection. It wasn't a landscape, it was just land. Flat, dusty land with gorges and rocks. And harsh, glaring, unfiltered light. It wasn't beautiful, certainly, not like the deserts of New Mexico or the high plains of the western slope. It wasn't sublime, either, like the Arches or Badlands. It was just butt ugly, desolate, irredeemable, hopeless. Maybe he'd feel differently if he hadn't grown up here. Maybe he'd be able to see the stark severity as some kind of unspoiled purity. Maybe the pristine indifference could be recuperated as something meaningful: nature as timeless and inexplicable and humans as mortal and insignificant and all that bullshit. But he couldn't see it that way. He felt nothing for this topography other than a mild...

Details zur Ausgabe

• Verlag: F2C
• Erscheinungsdatum: 2011
• Sprache: Englisch
• ISBN 10: 1573661619
• ISBN 13: 9781573661614
• Einband: Taschenbuch
• Auflage: 1
• Anzahl der Seiten: 273
• Kontakt zum Hersteller: Nicht verfügbar
• Verantwortliche Person: Nicht verfügbar