商品簡介
"The power of this beautiful novel stems as much from the rich and poignant music that emanates from it, from its permanent ebb and How between past and present, as from the tide of memories that recount the painful drift of one man." Le Monde
"The jazz scenes crackle with energy and authority...Coulson moves fluidly between the past and the present, and the novel is ultimately quiet, affecting and redemptive." Publishers Weekly
"Will remind readers of classic authors like Steinbeck and Zola, or perhaps such contemporary masters of wounded male pride and self-doubt as Raymond Carver and Russell Banks." The Buffalo News
"An ambitious effort that heralds the arrival of an intriguing talent...Achieves the quiet beauty of William Maxwell's finest work---generous, episodic, elegiac but not sentimental..." The Nation
"A beautifully told story about family bonds, love, loss, and the power of memory over our lives." the Bloomsbury Review
"Coulson's richly textured narrative abounds in passion and wonder...His real subject is not loss but the art of losing, the infinitely varied ways in which people try to live in the wake of loss." The San Diego Union-Tribune
"Assured and purposeful...Coulson infuses each surprising and evocative moment with great feeling and mythic resonance...creating a somberly beautiful family saga." Booklist
"Coulson is what we used to call (with apologies to the vegetarians) a meat and potatoes storyteller: clear, vivid, big-hearted. So many unheard voices speak and sing through his voice. Listen." Martin Espada
Moving from the Great Lakes to the jazz bars of Detroit and Chicago, of Song and Water is a tale of singlehanded sailors and jazz musicians, of working-class dreams blighted by family duty, personal betrayals, and the untold violence between fathers and sons.
The novel follows the life of Coleman Moore, a jazz guitarist of early fame who finds himself adrift and in the company of ghosts: his mentor, a black jazz legend trying to live peacefully on the edge of a white town; his grandfather, a Prohibition rumrunner turned ruthless entrepreneur; and his first love, a clear-headed woman who refuses to live in the dark tunnels of the past.
As he abandons music and turns his mind to a damaged sailboat, Coleman begins a hazardous course, risking the love of his daughter and the trust of Brian James, his longtime collaborator and friend. Driven by mid-life doubts, Coleman revisits his early ambitions and desires, returning through a maze of time and memory to the central crisis of his life, a moment of tremendous cruelty that calls into question much of what he hopes for and believes.
In language that evokes the riffs and rhythms of jazz and the sound and movement of the Great Lakes, Joseph Coulson's second novel is a profound Orphic journey, a story of hidden truths, unfulfilled dreams, and possible redemption.
作者簡介
Joseph Coulson's first novel, The Vanishing Moon (2004), was selected for the Barnes & Noble Great New Writers series and won the Book of the Year Award, Gold Medal in Literary Fiction, from ForeWord Magazine. Coulson is the author of three volumes of poetry: The Letting Go, A Measured Silence, and Graph. His first play, A Saloon at the Edge of the World (co-authored with William Relling, Jr.), a noir drama showcased by Theater Artists of Marin, won both popular and critical acclaim in the San Francisco Bay area. He received a Gray Writing Fellowship (selected by Robert Creeley) and a Ph.D. in American literature from the State University of New York at Buffalo. A teacher for many years, he recently served as Editorial Director for the Great Books Foundation in Chicago. He lives in Cambridge, Massachusetts.
