Lost Memory of Skin: A Novel ebook

by Russell Banks

Lost Memory of Skin is proof that Banks remains our premier chronicler of the doomed and forgotten American Male. Lost Memory of Skin is my first introduction to Russell Banks

Lost Memory of Skin is proof that Banks remains our premier chronicler of the doomed and forgotten American Male. Banks’s enormous gamble in both plot and character pays off handsomel. y the end, Kafka is rubbing elbows with Robert Ludlum, and Banks has mounted a thrilling defense of the novel’s place in contemporary culture. Lost Memory of Skin is my first introduction to Russell Banks. I'm not sure how I have avoided him all these years, but I will be going back to check out some of what I missed. Banks certainly didn't pick an easy topic in Lost Memory of Skin.

Lost Memory of Skin is proof that Banks remains our premier chronicler of the doomed and forgotten American Male.

In his 12th novel, Lost Memory of Skin, the formidable Russell Banks bravely explores this specific plight, trying to find humanity in people who are feared and despised, frequently for good reason, and raising questions not only about the often horrendous public treatment of these outcasts but also about the ways the larger culture may contribute to their crimes. As a vehicle he has created a memorable character, known as the Kid, a young man so lost and lonely and deprived it would take a heart of stone not to feel for him even at his most repulsive

In Russell Banks’s Lost Memory of Skin, a young sex offender lives bewildered by the world. Lost Memory of Skin is a major new work by Russell Banks destined to be a canonical novel of its time.

In Russell Banks’s Lost Memory of Skin, a young sex offender lives bewildered by the world. That is not to say it is without problems. It engages the reader in one long wrestling match. It is sometimes marred by condescension. But it delivers another of Mr. Banks’s wrenching, panoramic visions of American moral life, and this one very particular to the early 21st century. It tells of a plugged-in, tuned-out Internet culture lost in the misty zone between reality and imagery, no longer able to tell the difference.

Home Russell Banks Lost Memory of Skin. He looks around the large fluorescent-lit room, scans the long rows of floor-to-ceiling book-lined shelves-it’s like a huge supermarket with nothing on the shelves but books. It smells like paper and glue, a little moldy and damp. Lost memory of skin, . Except for a geeky-looking black guy with glasses and a huge Adam’s apple and big wind-catching ears sitting at a table with half-a-dozen thick books and no pictures opened in front of him like he’s trying to look up his ancestors there’s no other customers in the library. A customer-that’s what he is.

Lost Memory of Skin is the powerfully and consummately written story of. .

Lost Memory of Skin is the powerfully and consummately written story of the Kid and the Professor. This is a painfully contemporary novel about technology, alienation, justice, relationships, identity, and the most uncomfortable social questions. It is about the way a person presents himself and the way a person misrepresents himself.

The perfect convergence of writer and subject, Lost Memory of Skin probes the zeitgeist of a troubled society where zero tolerance has erased any hope of subtlety and compassion - a society where isolating the offender has perhaps created a new kind of victim. Part I Chapter One. It isn't like the Kid is locally famous for doing a good or a bad thing and even if people knew his real name it wouldn't change how they treat him unless they looked it up online which is not something he wants to encourage.

Lost Memory of Skin is a haunting book. товар 4 Lost Memory of Skin: A Novel Banks, Russell Hardcover Used - Very Good -Lost Memory of Skin: A Novel Banks, Russell Hardcover Used - Very Good. Russell Banks really does know how to pull his readers into a dark, dark world only to deliver us into the light. 499,33 RUB. + 638,53 RUB за доставку.

“Like our living literary giants Toni Morrison and Thomas Pynchon, Russell Banks is a great writer wrestling with the hidden secrets and explosive realities of this country.”—Cornel West

“Of the many writers working in the great tradition today, one of the best is Russell Banks.”—New York Times

Lost Memory of Skin is a provocative novel of spiritual and moral redemption from Russell Banks, the author of Affliction, Rule of the Bone, Continental Drift, Cloudsplitter, and other acclaimed masterworks of contemporary American fiction. Uncompromising and complex, Lost Memory of Skin is the story of The Kid, a young sex offender recently released from prison and forced to live beneath a South Florida causeway. When The Professor, a man of enormous intellect and appetite, takes The Kid under his wing, his own startling past will cause upheavals in both of their worlds. At once lyrical, witty, and disturbing, Banks’s extraordinary novel showcases his abilities as a world-class storyteller as well as his incisive understanding of the dangerous contradictions and hypocrisies of modern American society.

Raelin

This is a monumental achievement by one of America's finest writers. The "Lost Memory of Skin" is a book that will linger with you long after you've finished the last sentence. The story tackles tough subject matter, convicted sex offenders, sexual objectification of young people and the digitization of erotic content in a manner that doesn't lecture the reader. It does so with tremendous nuance that make stereotypes and simplistic judgements impossible.

At the heart of the story is the Kid, an early 20s sex offender living in a homeless encampment under a causeway in South Florida (Miami disguised as "Calusa") with other convicted sex offenders. Undoubtedly, the first couple of pages yield the normal disdain for the Kid because how else could you feel about a convicted sex offender. From this initial judgement and associated stigma, Banks slowly peels away the onion around the Kid --- his familial, social and economic circumstances --- until we are left with a far different perspective of a much more complex character. Only someone at the top of their craft could credibly build empathy around this type of character, blurring the lines between guilt and innocence, good and evil.

Shortly into the novel, we are introduced to the Professor, an obese genius with a shadowy and cryptic past, who is now a professor at the local university. There he studies and researches homelessness and more recently homelesses among sex offenders. An uneasy relationship builds between the Kid and the Professor -- is it exploitation, pure research with an eye toward better public consciousness and understanding of cause and effect of these two conditions or something else. Once again, Banks has full command, dropping enough crumbs for the reader without leading them to the meal. The truth is never what it seems for the characters and the reader, revealing more than meets the eye with each passing page while further obscuring other things.

In the last third of the novel, Banks adds an extra element of suspense and drama that had me on the fence for a while. I initially was quite skeptical of the plot twist and convinced myself it was not going to work, resulting in a big letdown and disaster from such a promising and brilliant beginning and middle. Well, I was certainly wrong. Banks effortlessly brings this last plot twist effortlessly back in a way that is remarkably true to the story and larger themes of the story without neatly wrapping a neat bow on each and every difficult question.

There are some parts of the book that left a terrible pit at the bottom of my stomach, one in particular at Benbow's where a video shoot is ambiguous enough but unnerving that I was nervous about where Banks was going to take it. Once again, I'm glad this was from the pen of someone as skilled as Banks.

"Lost Memory of Skin" is what great fiction is all about --- it is so engrossing you cannot put it down, it creates three dimensional characters, evokes a rich tapestry of place and time and tackles tough issues of the day with purpose but without lecturing or suggesting answers are simple.

Marg

Lost Memory of Skin is my first introduction to Russell Banks. I'm not sure how I have avoided him all these years, but I will be going back to check out some of what I missed.

Banks certainly didn't pick an easy topic in Lost Memory of Skin. His focus is on convicted sex offenders who, out of necessity, form a loose-knit community of men living under a Florida causeway. Under Florida law, the men must remain in the county while at the same time remaining 2,500 feet from any school, daycare center or other places where children gather. That leaves the men few options: under the causeway, in a swamp or at an airport terminal.

Among the modern-day trolls beneath a bridge is Kid (few of the characters go by real names in the book, adding to Banks' themes of truth and identity). Kid is a 22-year-old registered sex offender who can pass as a teenager. He was addicted to Internet porn and in his first and only attempt to reach out to what he thought was a real person is swept up in a sting, sent to jail, labeled a sex offender and is forced to wear an ankle monitor for 10 years. Kid is no noble Jean Val Jean, but neither is he truly a monster. The opening chapters of the book that detail Kid's life as a modern pariah are fascinating, despite the often bleak subject matter.

Into Kid's life steps the other main character, a morbidly obese sociology professor who wants to interview the Kid and turn him and his fellow causeway castaways into productive citizens. I'm guessing that many of the people who have problems with the book are more likely to stumble over the Professor than the Kid. For one thing, the Professor's addiction to food are described in more lurid detail than the Kid's addiction to porn. As a result, the Professor comes across as more grotesque than just about any other character.

And then there's the question of agendas. Is the Professor really what he seems? What does he really want from the Kid? Eventually the two build enough of a rapport that the Professor is able to start organizing the men beneath the causeway. They establish rules and choose leaders in the hope that if they can police themselves they can avoid future brutal police raids. But before the changes can fully take effect in the tiny community, disaster in the form of a hurricane strikes.

To say more about the plot would be to give too much away. Suffice it to say that before the story is over we're confronted with the issue of identity and truth and how the two don't always fit together.

I really enjoyed this novel, despite a few eye-rolling moments. Banks sometimes get a bit heavy-handed and pendantic when he writes about America's revulsion to sex offenders despite society's and the media's sexualization of young children. It's a good point, but could have been handled in a less preachy manner. And then there's a new character introduced in the last portion of the book who strains credibility and seems to have been written solely to steer the Kid through some murky moral matters. Overall, Lost Memory of Skin is one of those books that may be uncomfortable to read at times, but makes you confront issues you felt you'd never consider.