Si Ethan nulis buku lagi, setelah dulu pernah sukses dengan THE HOTTEST STATE-nya.Tapi sayang. Aku nggak bisa beli buku baru dia, soalnya aku udah bukan bagian
dari kartu kredit papi lagi. Dan bukunya gak mungkin dijual di Indonesia....
Well, Ash Wednesday is a novel of blazing emotion and remarkable grace, a tale that captures the intensity--the excitement, fear, and jo--of being on the threshold of the mysterious country of marriage and parenthood.
Powerful, assured, large of heart, and punctuated by moments of tremendous humor, it represents, for Hawke the novelist, a major leap forward.
A little story of this book:
I was driving a '69 Chevy Nova 370 four-barrel with mag wheels and a dual exhaust. It's a kick-ass car. I took the muffler out so it sounds like a Harley. People love it. I was staring at myself through the window into the driver's-side-mirror; I do that all the time. I'll stare into anything that reflects. That's not a flattering quality, and I wish I didn't do it, but I do. I'm vain as all hell. It's revolting. Most of the time when I'm looking in the mirror, I'm checking to see if I'm still here or else I'm wishing I was somebody else, a Mexican bandito or somebody like that. I have a mustache. Most guys with mustaches look like fags, but I don't. I touch mine too much, though. I touch it all the time. I don't even know why I'm telling you about it now. I just stare at myself constantly and I wish I didn't. It brings me absolutely no pleasure at all.
My fingers were frozen around the steering wheel. Albany in February is a black sooty slab of ice. The woman on the radio announced the time and temperature: eight-forty-two and twenty-three degrees. Christy and I had broken up fifteen hours earlier, and I was in a tailspin. I had my uniform on, the dress one; it's awesome. Military uniforms make you feel like somebody, like you have a purpose, even if you don't. You feel special, connected to the past. You're not just an ordinary person, a civilian-you're noble. The downside of this Walk of Pride is, it's a lie.
This is my story.
My orders were unbelievable, my lieutenant is an out-of-control high-speed prick. This was his job. I had to inform some dude's wife that her husband had been shot in the head. The soldier's name was Private Kevin Anderson, and he'd been killed outside of Paradise the night before. Paradise is a bar where all the black dudes hang: probably drugs or some kind of bullshit high jinks. I didn't know him at all.
Not to mention, I was all cracked up myself. I hadn't been to sleep, doing speed all night: crystal meth. Breaking up with Christy had been a giant mistake; I knew it the minute I walked away.
The army is more lamebrain than you can even imagine. My lieutenant sometimes has me and my men go into town and stand guard over parking spots: securing position. I joined up because I wanted to be of service to something. I'd tried college, Kent State, for two years but screw that. Who wants to pay all that coin just to drink beer and get VD? My dad had been in the army, and I grew up constantly drawing pictures of machine guns and soldiers killing the hell out of one another other-shit like that-so I thought joining the army made sense. I figured it was my destiny, and it was, but just because something's your destiny doesn't mean it's gonna be any good.
I thought maybe someday I'd be in a Dairy Queen and some bonzo lunatic would whip out an automatic and start wasting people, and I'd be the one guy there who'd be able to stop him, who'd show some signs of personal heroism or integrity. There are a lot of people in the world. It's difficult to find a way to set yourself apart. When I was twelve, I built a working crossbow with bolts I could sink into a tree. That's about the coolest thing I've ever done.
Now, the only thing interesting or worthy of remark about me was my car. It was tits: silver with bold black racing stripes straight down the center. I never had any trouble getting laid.
I was hauling ass through north Albany into the "darker" part of town looking for this Anderson kid's address: 23761/2 Hawthorne, apartment B. I had all his information in a folder on the passenger seat. The streets were icy and lined with piles of crusty pollution-stained snow. I found the house easy, a big old place divided up into eight apartments. All the homes on the block were done the exact same way. Once upon a time this was the swank part of town-about eighty trillion years ago.
I sat in my Nova under a tremendous barren old sycamore tree that grew adjacent to the Andersons' driveway. Trees are wonderful. My dad was a tree man. He planted and trimmed trees for a living. Sometimes he'd be 180 feet up in the air rappelling around with a spinning chain saw, dead and sick branches bombing down onto the ground. I loved my dad. If I could give you the sensation of being eight years old watching him up in some magnificent maple singing to himself and talking to the branches-if you could hear him yell down, "Jimmy, when you're thirteen and you come live with me, we'll have ourselves some laughs then, pal, you can bet your sweet ass on that!"-if you could be inside my guts for that moment, you'd know exactly what it is like to be me. Summers, growing up, I worked with the ground crews, chopping and clearing. I was Mr. Know-It-All about landscaping. This sycamore in front of me was close to two hundred years old. Unless some ding-a-ling cuts it down it'll be right there on Hawthorne Drive long after I'm dead. Can't tell you why, but that makes me feel good.
I checked my nose to make sure it wasn't bleeding. Four hours before, I'd blown my last line with Tony, Eric, and Ed. Ed brought the crank. I wasn't gonna do any, but they started chopping 'em down, and like I said I'd just broken up with Christy and-bada-bing bada-bam-next thing you know I've been talking about Patrick Ewing, John Starks, and the rest of the New York Knicks for nine hours. Tony, Eric, and Ed are a bunch of numb-nuts, but I hang out with them all the time anyway. It makes me sad to think I'm like them. "Better to be alone than to wish you were." My father used to say that, but I never listen to anybody. I don't say that with any pride. It's good to listen to people.
In no way did I want to get out of the car. My lieutenant is a motherfucker. When I think about him, my body palpitates with rage.
Only eight-thirty in the morning and already things were going terribly. THE ARMY. WE DO MORE BEFORE NINE O'CLOCK. Isn't that the ad line on TV?
..........bla..bla...bla want to read more, please read the Extract
Ash Wednesday's Site from Bloomsbury
More about HAWKE'S BOOKS
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