基本信息出版社：Hyperion
页码：304 页
出版日期：2004年05月
ISBN：0786869178
International Standard Book Number：0786869178
条形码：9780786869176
EAN：9780786869176
装帧：精装
正文语种：英语

内容简介 在线阅读本书

art parable, part fantasy novel, part laugh-out-loud satire, American Desert is the story of Theodore Street, a college professor on the brink of committing suicide. When the decision is taken out of his hands-he's hit by a car and his head is severed from his body-he must come to terms with himself. At his funeral, he sits up in his own coffin with the stitches that bind his head to his body clearly visible. Everyone is horrified by this resurrection. He becomes a source of fear and embarrassment to his daughter, and an object of derision and morbid curiosity to the press and the scientific communities, and is anointed as a sort of devil by an obscure religious cult. In the process, Theodore manages to reestablish his relationship with his estranged wife and family and to rediscover the value of his life. In this experimental, satirical, and bizarre novel, critically acclaimed author Percival Everett once again takes on the assumptions of a culture whose priorities have gone out of whack. He lampoons the press, religion, and academia while offering, ultimately, an existential meditation of what constitutes being alive.
作者简介 Percival Everett is a professor of English at the University of Southern California and the author of 14 previous novels, including Glyph, Frenzy, The Body of Martin Aguilera, Watershed, and Walk Me to the Distance. He is a recent recipient of the Academy Award in Literature from the American Academy of Arts and Letters and the Hurston/Wright Legacy Award for Fiction. He lives outside Los Angeles and in British Columbia.
媒体推荐 "High-gloss satire and fast-paced adventure."? -- Kirkus Starred Review

"Hilarity ensues . . . in this sharp, well-written satire of conventional social values." -- Gotham Magazine
专业书评 From Publishers Weekly

When UCLA professor Ted Street sits up in his coffin at his own funeral, mayhem ensues in this smart, satirical and engrossing novel by prolific Everett (Glyph; Erasure; etc.). Ted had been planning suicide, but a car accident conveniently sliced off his head. With reattached noggin, no pulse and a few strangely sharpened senses, Ted rejoins his stunned family, feeling "like a monster, a re-animated ghoul." But his wife, Gloria, takes him to bed for newly gratifying sex, and he has other heightened powers-of understanding and even telepathy. TV vans besiege their house, and preteen daughter Emily is briefly taken by Protective Services. Venturing out for groceries with his family, Ted is kidnapped by a religious cult led by menacing Big Daddy, who's convinced Ted's the anti-Christ. After being shot numerous times, Ted escapes into the desert, only to be caught by the Feds, who whisk him away to a reanimation laboratory outside Roswell, N.Mex., to study him (they remove his organs while he's awake and put them back "much as one might stuff a turkey"). These varied confinements give Ted time to reflect on his frustrating, untenured status at the university, the birth of his beloved children, his philandering ways and his troubled marriage. Escaping yet again, this time with help from a man who makes Jesus clones, Ted rescues a group of children held hostage by Big Daddy before returning home to a family that has been forever changed. Thoughtful, darkly comic and full of heart, the novel offers a wonderfully unusual story about retrospection and forgiveness.
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