Tinkers
Tinkers is a novel by the American musician and author Paul Harding . With his debut, he won the Pulitzer Prize in 2010 .
action
An old man is dying. The reader finds him in the middle of his family in his house in Maine , experiences his last days with him and accompanies him again and again in his memories through his past life, through his poor childhood, the landscape of Maine and gets to know his father, who was still 'Tinker', as a tinker and traveling trader, went around with mules and carts.
George Washington Crosby, the protagonist of the novel, begins to hallucinate in the last days of his life. In his imaginations he sees the walls and the ceiling of his house, the sky and the stars tumbling down on him. While he finds himself buried under ticking clocks, old photos and rusty tools, his past life is poured out in a torrent of disordered memories.
He sees again his late passion for watches, with which he not only earned money, but also opened up the universe for him. He sees his poor but adventurous childhood, his father Howard, who drives overland with his epileptic seizures, which frightened him very much, or the hermit Gilbert, whom his father brings tobacco into the wilderness once a year. After forty-eight hours of unconsciousness, George wakes up one last time. He dies with a memory of Christmas 1953.
Criticism and reception
The novel was published in the USA in 2009. It was already available to a number of publishers who showed no interest. A young, small publisher finally decided to publish it. This was followed by the Pulitzer Prize and many positive commendations in the English-speaking world of literature. “Tinkers is not a sensational new book, but one that is convincing in terms of style and subject. Impressive and soulful, without ever slipping into kitschy regions ... "
Tinkers is an unusual book. It's about the memories of an old man on his deathbed. The author is also unusual. […] The narrow volume by the American Paul Harding has hardly any plot, is contemplative, meditative, of unique linguistic beauty. […] When asked about the lack of plot in his novel, Harding said in the Harvard Book Review that he is not particularly interested in the plot. "When you have a good person, you don't need a lot of action"
"Paul Harding does not dispense with any characteristic of postmodern literary creation, and after reading it one has the feeling of having to digest pure artificiality without innovation. [...] The 'poetry of the text' emphasized by the English-language criticism is exhausted in a few passages. [...] Efforted, strange, helpless twists dominate, with the hair of the renowned, bravely fighting translator Sivia Morawetz standing on end. [...] Paul Harding, who follows the iron rules of his profession and has long been working on the continuation of his first novel still a lot to do. "
In its reasoning, the Pulitzer Prize jury described the novel as "a powerful festival of life in which father and son overcome their trapped life through joy and suffering and perceive the world and death anew."
Individual evidence
- ^ Paul Harding, Tinkers , Luchterhand Literaturverlag, 2011, ISBN 978-3-630-87367-1
- ↑ Michael Braun: Tinkers. In: borromaeusverein.de. Retrieved May 18, 2019 .
- ↑ Stern from August 31, 2011
- ^ FAZ of September 26, 2011
- ^ Pulitzer Prize Fiction 2010 , Pulitzer.org