sometimes outstripsâDavid Lynch's Blue Velvet and the contemporary paintings of Lisa. Yuskavage and John Currin. About
Victorine by Maude Hutchins
››› Free download audio book. ‹‹‹ Original Title: Victorine ISBN: 1590172701 ISBN13: 9781590172704 Autor: Maude Hutchins/Terry Castle (Introduction) Rating: 3.6 of 5 stars (2783) counts Original Format: Paperback, 191 pages Download Format: PDF, FB2, DJVU, iBook. Published: August 19th 2008 / by NYRB Classics / (first published 1959) Language: English Genre(s): Fiction- 10 users Literature- 3 users Literary Fiction- 2 users
Literature >American- 2 users Novels- 2 users Sexuality- 2 users
Description: Victorine is thirteen, and she can’t get the unwanted surprise of her newly sexual body, in all its polymorphous and perverse insistence, out of her mind: it is a trap lying in wait for her at every turn (and nowhere, for some reason, more than in church). Meanwhile, Victorine’s older brother Costello is struggling to hold his own against the overbearing, mean-spirited, utterly ghastly Hector L’Hommedieu, a paterfamilias who collects and discards mistresses with scheming abandon even as Allison, his wife, drifts through life in a narcotic daze. And Maude Hutchins’s Victorine? It’s a sly, shocking, one-of-a-kind novel that explores sex and society with wayward and unabashedly weird inspiration, a drive-by snapshot of the great abject American family in its suburban haunts by a literary maverick whose work looks forward to—and sometimes outstrips—David Lynch’s Blue Velvet and the contemporary paintings of Lisa Yuskavage and John Currin.
About Author:
Maude Phelps McVeigh Hutchins was an American novelist born in New York City. She is considered one of the foremost practitioners of nouveau roman in the English language. Hutchins is best known today for her sexual coming-of-age novel Victorine which was republished in 2008 by New York Review Books Classics. Other novels include Blood on the Doves and The Unbelievers Downstairs. She was married to University of Chicago president Robert Maynard Hutchins. They married in 1921 and divorced in 1948. They had three children. Hutchins died in Fairfield, Connecticut.
Other Editions:
- Victorine (Paperback)
- Victorine (Hardcover)
Books By Author:
- A Diary of Love
- Georgiana
- The Memoirs of Maisie
- The Elevator and Other Stories
- Blood on the Doves
Books In The Series: Related Books On Our Site:
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- The Outward Room
- Memoirs of Hecate County
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- The Furies
- A Meaningful Life
- The Stories of J.F. Powers
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- Testing the Current
- Varieties of Exile
- Short Letter, Long Farewell
- Blood on the Forge
- The World as I Found It
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Rewiews:
Nov 17, 2010 Lobstergirl Rated it: did not like it Recommends it for: Hoda Kotb Shelves: nyrb, fiction I was going to say that this novel is a pastiche of Nabokov, Cheever, and Lawrence, but that's not entirely accurate. It takes the worst impulses of those novelists and unsatirically invigorates them with a repugnant and wanton originality. It plumbs new depths of awfulness. One small example: 13-year-old nymphet Victorine wanders down by the railroad tracks, startling a hobo who is frying bacon over a campfire. They have a confused conversation about love and sex, Victorine not really understan I was going to say that this novel is a pastiche of Nabokov, Cheever, and Lawrence, but that's not entirely accurate. It takes the worst impulses of those novelists and unsatirically invigorates them with a repugnant and wanton originality. It plumbs new depths of awfulness. One small example: 13-year-old nymphet Victorine wanders down by the railroad tracks, startling a hobo who is frying bacon over a campfire. They have a confused conversation about love and sex, Victorine not really understanding either. "You are guilty nevertheless," says the hobo. "I saw your guilt when you leaned over the fire with me, I saw it as plainly as if you had lifted your skirt and opened your
legs, but I chose to ignore the invitation, I am not interested." Victorine steers the conversation back to love, but the hobo admonishes her. "You sit there without breasts and dare to speak of love!" Terry Castle's introduction casts Maude Hutchins as an unappreciated, rebellious free spirit, miserably married to precocious wonder boy and education pioneer Robert Maynard Hutchins, unable to fulfill the staid hostessing demands of university life. Bob Hutchins' "emotional focus was entirely on other men, from whom he elicited intense admiration," writes Castle. She quotes one of his protégés: "Bob has made homosexuals of us all." Intriguing. 4 likes
