«She arrived in Gloversville with two suitcases and an official narrative.»
Richard Russo, Elsewhere. A Memoir, New York, Vintage Books, 2012, 246 p., p. 75.
(Une définition du zeugme ? Par là.)
L’art du portrait à rallonge
«Four more men filled out the audience. One had a round face and a high forehead and looked like a small-town banker in a television commercial, eager to lend you money so that you could fix up your home and make it an asset to the community you lived in. His name was Barnett Reeves. The second was bearded and booted and scruffy, and he looked like someone who’d approached the banker and ask for a college loan. And be turned down. His name was Richard Jacobi. The third was a bloodless man in a suit as gray as hiw own complexion. He had, as far as I could tell, no lips, no eyebrows, and no eyelashes, and he looked like the real-life banker, the one who approved mortgages in the hope of eventual foreclosure. His name was Orville Widener. The fourth man was a cop, and he wore a cop’s uniform, with a holstered pistol and a baton and a memo book and handcuffs and all that great butch gear cops get to carry. His name was Francis Rockland, and I happened to know that he was missing a toe, but offhand I couldn’t tell you which one.»
Lawrence Block, The Burglar Who Painted Like Mondrian. A Bernie Rhodenbarr Mystery, New York, HarperCollins, 2005. Édition numérique. Édition originale : 1983.
Accouplements 154
(Accouplements : une rubrique où l’Oreille tendue s’amuse à mettre en vis-à-vis deux œuvres, ou plus, d’horizons éloignés.)
L’Oreille tendue, se remettant (enfin !) au sport télévisé, découvre une publicité d’abord diffusée en anglais en 2019. Une femme y déguste une bière après avoir réussi à retirer son soutien-gorge (sa brassière en français populaire du Québec) sans retirer son chemisier.
Au même moment, l’Oreille relisait le premier roman de Nicholson Baker, The Mezzanine. On y trouve le même geste :
Here was where I made a discovery. An image came to me — Ingres’s portrait of Napoleon. Displacing my tie, I undid a single middle button. Yes, it was possible to get at your underarm by entering the shirt through the gap made by one undone button and then working the stick of antiperspirant up the pleural cavity between T-shirt and shirt until you were able to snag the sleevelet of the T-shirt with a finger and pull it past the seam where your shirtsleeve began, thereby exposing the area you needed to cover. I felt like Balboa or Copernicus. In college I had been amazed to see women take off bras without removing their sweatshirts, by unfastening the rear bra-catch through the material, pushing one sleeve up far enough to slip off one strap, and, after a few arousing shrugs of their shoulders, pulling the whole wriggling thing nonchalantly out of the opposite sleeve. My own antiperspirant discovery had some of the topologically flavor of those bra removals (p. 51-52).
On peut préférer le roman à la publicité.
Référence
Baker, Nicholson, The Mezzanine. A Novel, New York, Vintage Books, coll. «Vintage Contemporaries», 1990, 135 p. Paru en français sous le titre la Mezzanine, Paris, Julliard, 1991. Traduction d’Arlette Stroumza.
L’oreille tendue de… Tucker Coe
«J’étais seul dans le couloir. Je tendis l’oreille mais, n’entendant personne dans l’escalier, je sortis mon portefeuille pour y prendre ma carte d’achat d’essence à crédit, la seule carte de crédit que je possède. C’est un mince rectangle de plastique et, depuis quelques années, ces cartes de crédit sont devenues l’outil le plus précieux des cambrioleurs.»
Tucker Coe, le Poster menteur, Paris, Gallimard, coll. «Carré noir», 573, 1986, 246 p., p. 174. Traduction de R. Fitzgerald. Édition originale : 1972.
L’oreille tendue de… Tucker Coe
«Je restai debout, près du poste de télévision, les yeux fixés sur la porte du salon, l’oreille tendue pour entendre, malgré la musique du du film, le son des voix dans l’entrée.»
Tucker Coe, le Sang des innocents, Paris, Gallimard, coll. «Série noire», 1235, 1968, 250 p., p. 55. Traduction de J. Hérisson.