≡ Descargar Gratis Louisiana Power and Light John Dufresne 9780452275027 Books

Louisiana Power and Light John Dufresne 9780452275027 Books

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Louisiana Power and Light John Dufresne 9780452275027 Books

This was my first Dufresne book. The characters are rich, unique, and, if they're a bit out of the ordinary, no problem, they're from the south, where unusual characters are accepted by everyone. The main characters all want what most of us want -- a family, a job, a community, stability -- and it's in the telling of how they achieve or fail to achieve these goals that makes the characters so rich and complex. The one word I'd use to describe the "mood" of this book isn't included in your choices, but if I can ever think of one right word I'll let you know. Another fine example of characters made into real people by Dufresne's skills and a book you will not soon forget. It's also a mesmerizing portrait of a southern small community, wherein it is widely acceptable to be a little odd, so we have no problems with that.


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Louisiana Power and Light John Dufresne 9780452275027 Books Reviews

First of all, let me say that I liked the book and highly recommend it. That said, the problem I had with it is that I'm from Louisiana, Shreveport, to be exact, which is due west of Monroe, where Dufresne's novel is set. I've been to and through Monroe several times, and, to my knowledge, it is nothing like what Dufresne has described. Dufresne should have set his story in Gonzales or Napoleonville or some other small town in southwest Louisiana, where the bayous are and Cajuns live. People who are not from Louisiana tend to think of the state in terms of either New Orleans (a country all its own) or Cajun (coonass) country, which is really in the southwest part of the state. Monroe is in the northeast corner.
The book is funny, and having read almost everything John Irving has written, I can see some parallels there. I would just hope Dufresne, an excellent writer, would do his homework a little better--go visit the locale, John! Of course, if Monroe has bayous and Cajuns that I haven't seen in my admittedly brief visits, then I apologize for this review.
Loved this book, tore through it in about two and half days. That's fast, for me. I notice a lot of reviews by readers (not professionals, that is) who seem to think Dufresne is disparaging his characters. Mocking them, one said. I don't see that at all. I wouldn't have finished it, let alone loved it, if I thought that were the case. The book, for me, is about how hard it is to find your way in life, your direction. Do you have a destiny? Are you under a curse? How much is under your power anyway? I thought it was a humble, sometimes funny, look at the human condition. Southern literature tends to take the "our whole damn family is cursed" approach, and for years I avoided this book, despite its reputation, because it sounded like just another Faulkner wanna-be. One reading of Sound and Fury back in high school was enough for me. I've read that story, no interest in reading it again by someone else. But I believe Dufresne is looking at this phenomenon and holding it up to the light. To use the title of his new book on writing, he asks "Is Life Like This?"

This book has me re-thinking my position on mainstream fiction. Though I still don't know why the form always seems to include violent death(s).

Anyway, the author isn't laughing at us. He's laughing with us. Perhaps he's not truly a "Southern" writer. Since he's from Massachusetts, I guess he's disqualified, in the minds of some. But I don't know if that's even the point. It's just a blurb on the back of the book to help the potential buyer pigeonhole the book before him. Marketing, that's all. Pay no mind.
In LOUISIANA POWER & LIGHT, Dufresne wields a mostly light touch to examine whether life is inherently arbitrary and tragic or whether choice makes it so. This issue is encapsulated in the life of protagonist Billy Wayne Fontana who, at the start of this novel, is the final descendent in a line of Fontana losers who, much like Thomas Sutpen in ABSALOM, ABSALOM! , emerged from nowhere in the Delta around 1840.

Billy Wayne was raised by nuns and priests in a convent. While he has no personal connection to his ancestors, the people of Monroe, Louisiana tell many stories about the Fontanas, who, by a quirk of nature, are only male and usually meet comically sad deaths. When people in Monroe tell these Fontana stories, "...we're learning about ourselves, about what it's like to be a human being and how that feels. The Fontanas... are just like us, only more so."

Billy Wayne's contribution to this trove of misfortune starts with his decision to forsake his mission in the priesthood and marry Earlene. Through sheer happenstance, they spend their wedding night at a motel, where they encounter George, Dencil, Angelo, and Hazel, who become major characters in the novel. Long story short, Billy Wayne grows bored in marriage, becomes depressed by a death, has an affair, divorces, marries, and becomes a father of two boys. Then, he becomes bored in marriage.... Anyway, you get the picture but Billy Wayne's story, as it develops, becomes increasingly tortured and confused as he second-guesses himself and wonders whether the quietly reassuring rituals of the church are superior to his life, where, as a Fontana, he has a "gene" for dismal and pointless existence.

Here is Dufresne's overview on Billy Wayne's predicament "...it became the cruel and unavoidable fate of the Fontanas to endure heroically or mindlessly a century or more of misery and affliction and to be ultimately vanquished by this uncompromising and degenerate gene. Or does the responsibility for tragedy rest not with fate and heredity but with a man and his fatal act of will? Perhaps, in the end, it does not matter. A choice is made, a step taken, a stone loosed, the landslide begun."

LP&L is a good novel with minor shortcomings. In its first fifty pages, for example, Dufresne's touch seems somewhat patronizing as he introduces his characters who are, well, trailer trash. Meanwhile, the final twenty pages seem a trifle melodramatic, as Dufresne drops his slightly cartoonish characterizations and Billy Wayne engages with his wives. But in between, this is an involving book, with some great writing, especially when Billy Wayne and his son Duane camp on Davis Island.

Recommended.
This was my first Dufresne book. The characters are rich, unique, and, if they're a bit out of the ordinary, no problem, they're from the south, where unusual characters are accepted by everyone. The main characters all want what most of us want -- a family, a job, a community, stability -- and it's in the telling of how they achieve or fail to achieve these goals that makes the characters so rich and complex. The one word I'd use to describe the "mood" of this book isn't included in your choices, but if I can ever think of one right word I'll let you know. Another fine example of characters made into real people by Dufresne's skills and a book you will not soon forget. It's also a mesmerizing portrait of a southern small community, wherein it is widely acceptable to be a little odd, so we have no problems with that.