Oscar GroCar GroCar থেকে Beaucouzé, France
নীল গাইমান ভাবলেন "আরে, আমি লিখেছি যে টেরি প্র্যাচেটের সাথে সবাই পছন্দ করত মজার বই, টেরির দরকার কার? আমি নিজেও মজার হতে পারি!" বাদে সে ভুল ছিল। তিনি নিজে মজাদার হতে পারবেন না, এবং তিনি এই বইয়ের এতটা ব্যয় করে ব্যয় করেছেন যে দুর্বল চরিত্রের বিকাশ এবং আনাড়ি প্যাসিং আমি সাধারণত তার বইগুলিতে উপেক্ষা করি না। গাইমন পৌরাণিক কাহিনীটিতে দুর্দান্ত, তবে তিনি এখানে কখনও এই উপহারের 'বিল্ডিং' অংশটি পেতে পারেন না। পৌরাণিক কাহিনী প্রচুর তবে অল্প বিন্দু বা উদ্দেশ্য নিয়ে।
To say that I've read this book is a little disingenous, since it's a book of photographs taken by the author on a series of road trips winding from New York City, through the heart of Canada to Alaska, and following a circuitous itinerary (California to New Mexico to Wyoming?) back to the Big Apple. I picked this up in the gift shop of the Edward Hopper exhibit at the MFA, and it was unabashedly an impulse buy--it's not the kind of book you think about and think about and put on your Christmas list. I was partly motivated by thinking how weird it will be to look at this book in 5, 10, 20 years, when these interior shots of remote Western outposts will seem even more distant, less placeable, alien. This brings me to the heart of the matter: the photographs. Except for a short essay and listings of the particulars involved (date, name of restaurant, name of waitress, meal, cost, etc.), the book is all full page photographs--food on the verso, waitress who served it on the recto. And they run the gammut--well, the meals are 50% steak and eggs--but the waitresses (and they're all waitresses) are everything from smiling to giving the middle finger. The shots of the meals are well staged--you can tell that the creamer has been set just so and those sugar packets are carefully strewn around the teapot, but an effect is usually achieved without the triumphal staginess of Betty Crocker cookbook shoots circa 1970 ("A Meal Fit for the Man of the House!" "Ready for Company" or simply "Did Someone Say Swedish Meatballs?") or the ornately disheveled table in a Dutch still-life (I was serenely peeling a lemon and cracking nuts when suddenly...). Although this book covers several years of road tripping, it's still amazing that some could eat that much steak eggs. I mean really. All in all, you get a good sense of the slight variances in diners--things like the plates they use, the way the potatoes are fried, how they serve tea--that account for so much of the character of the cheap meals we eat. I love portraiture, largely because it's mysterious to me. A portrait rarely answers questions for me; I just find myself asking more. In this case, the waitresses are contextualized by a whole lot of stuff: what they are wearing (from a dumb tie to a shirt that says SEXY in rhinestones) what the diners look like, what the food looks like.... And in the midst you get a person and an expression, some quiet and dignified, mildly pissed off, or even vacant. While you draw out the personalities of these women, you are also uncomfortably aware that they are all waitresses like any other watiresses. Many of them, however, shine through that role. Others don't. The difference will keep you looking.