L’Oreille tendue est sortie émerveillée de la lecture de Nemesis (2010) de Philip Roth. En général, les sentiments, bons ou mauvais, la touchent peu en littérature, mais elle fait volontiers une exception pour ce très grand roman.
Elle y lit ceci :
«The ten-year-old Kopferman boy, Danny, had a cap gun made of metal and modeled to look like a real revolver which he carried in his pocket, even when he was in the field playing second base. The cap gun produced a small explosive sound and smoke when the trigger was pressed. Danny liked to come up behind the other boys and try to frighten them with it. Mr. Cantor tolerated these hijinks only because the other boys were never really frightened» (p. 57).
Du passé (linguistique) de l’Oreille surgit alors une expression : ce «cap gun» est, bien sûr, un gun à pétards.
Référence
Roth, Philip, Nemesis, Toronto, Penguin Canada, 2011, 280 p. Édition originale : 2010.
