13.3.12

Appreciation, Rivka Galchen

Il racconto di Rivka Galchen "Appeciation", uscito questa settimana sul New Yorker (e purtroppo non accessibile su Internet) e molto bello, molto divertente, e nasce da un'idea interessante - raccontare il rapporto di una madre e una figlia in termini di soldi, guadagnati, spesi, prestati, regalati... Ecco quel che dice l'autrice, intervistata da Willing Davidson. 
This story hinges on a pun, or a duality - that "appreciation" can be used in a financial as well as a kind of moral sense. What got you thinking about that? And what made you decide to describe a mother-daughter relationship through the prism of money?
I was reading a lot of Trollope, and also some Dickens, and also re-reading "Madame Bovary." (It was winter.) And all that nineteenth-century literature - often the best shorthand for plot in those novels is just to follow the money. Who has it? Who's gambled it away? Who's marrying into it? How much was spent on silk slippers? Who is surprised with an inheritance, or disinheritance? Money is the prime mover; it explains near on everything. But only near on. Sometimes it seems to fail as an explanation, to fall down into being just a description. newyorker.

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