American Rust (Philipp Meyer)

Isaac English a décidé de ne plus s'occuper de son père handicapé et s'enfuit de la maison familiale en volant 4000 dollars à son père. Il veut aller en Californie et quitter cette vallée sinistrée de la région de Pittsburgh, depuis la fermeture des aciéries. Il espère que son seul ami, Poe, partira avec lui. Celui-ci qui a décidé de rester, malgré les universités qui l'ont contacté pour jouer au football, malgré les boulots qu'on lui a proposés, accepte de l'accompagner pendant quelques kilomètres. Mais une tempête éclate et ils sont obligés de se réfugier dans l'atelier d'une usine abandonnée. Là, ils font une mauvaise rencontre.

http://www.randomhouse.com/acmart/catalog/display.pperl?isbn=9780385527521&view=print

Set in a beautiful but economically devastated Pennsylvania steel town, American Rust is a novel of the lost American dream and the desperation—as well as the acts of friendship, loyalty, and love—that arise from its loss. From local bars to trainyards to prison, it is the story of two young men, bound to the town by family, responsibility, inertia, and the beauty around them, who dream of a future beyond the factories and abandoned homes.

Left alone to care for his aging father after his mother commits suicide and his sister escapes to Yale, Isaac English longs for a life beyond his hometown. But when he finally sets out to leave for good, accompanied by his temperamental best friend, former high school football star Billy Poe, they are caught up in a terrible act of violence that changes their lives forever.

Evoking John Steinbeck’s novels of restless lives during the Great Depression, American Rust takes us into the contemporary American heartland at a moment of profound unrest and uncertainty about the future. It is a dark but lucid vision, a moving novel about the bleak realities that battle our desire for transcendence and the power of love and friendship to redeem us.

Premier roman : oui, ça se voit. Je ne sais pas pourquoi la bibliothèque le classe dans Mystery.

Et là, je vais jouer les mesquines. Et je ne pense pas dévoiler l'intrigue, puisque dès les premières pages, je savais que ce qui suit allait se passer. Isaac est le plus intelligent de tous, mais il part alors qu'il fait encore froid. S'il avait vérifié la météo, il n'y aurait pas d'histoire. Il vole de l'argent à son père, mais il décide de se la jouer hobo dans les trains de marchandises. S'il s'était acheté un billet d'avion ou même un billet de Greyhound, il n'y aurait pas d'histoire. (OK, on me dira qu'il ne veut pas qu'on le retrouve.) Il se méfie du type avec qui il voyage, mais quand il a l'occasion (pas une, mais deux fois) de lui fausser compagnie, il ne le fait pas. (OK, on me dira qu'il est trop fatigué.) S'il avait fait un effort… Et le plus beau, il part se nettoyer dans les toilettes mais ne pense pas à mettre des billets dans son porte-feuille. Et qu'on ne me dise pas qu'en fait, Isaac ne voulait pas vraiment quitter sa vallée. Si on veut décrire la situation de cette région sinistrée, inutile de prendre comme prétexte quelqu'un qui veut en partir.

Pour conclure, je dirai : ça se laisse lire. Intrigue : pas ahurissante. Style : sans plus. La ponctuation est très basique pour refléter le dialogue intérieur (sort of) des protagonistes. Mais j'avais choisi ce roman (après avoir lu sa présentation dans le France Antilles) surtout pour sa description de la vie dans une région abandonnée, de ce fatalisme très américain, pour la critique sociale. Cet aspect n'est malheureusement qu'évoqué car l'auteur a voulu ajouter une intrigue. Soit.

Quelques extraits :

Réalité de l'emploi dans ces anciennes régions industrielles

The work was all in the Midwest now, taking down the auto plants in Michigan and Indiana. And one day even that work would end, and there would be no record, nothing left standing, to show that anything had ever been built in America. It was going to cause big problems, he didn't know how but he felt it. You could not have a country, not this big, that didn't make thinks for itself. There would be ramifications eventually.

As for Mike DeLuca's uncle, he'd spent twenty years working in steelmills and then twenty years taking them apart, scrapping them, it was like revenge against the steemills, against getting laid off, but it was not really revenge, it was not a job anyone would want, the lies he had to tell when he visited the small towns and some waitress asked him so what're you in town for?

Des révélations surprenantes (?)

The bar was busy for a Sunday, nearly all faces she knew from high school, or at least the older and younger siblings of people she'd known. She was struck by how big all the men were, more than weight-room big, it was steroid big, sitting in overlarge T-shirts with the sleeves cut off, their arms crossed, muscles on display. But what else was there to do? Many of the women, it seemed, were starting to soften, barely into their twenties, maybe they weren't welcome at the gym. Lee was glad she'd worn a sweatshirt and no makeup.

Quelques stéréotypes (?) sur la France

(...) he told Lee he'd moved to the Valley to bring socialism to the mills, he'd been a steelworker for ten years, lost his job and become a teacher. Graduated from Cornell and became a steelworker. There were lots of us, he'd told her. Reds working right alongside the good old boys. But there had never been any revolution, not anything close, a hundred and fifty thousand people lost their jobs but they had all gone quietly. It was obvious there were people responsible, there were living breathing men who'd made those decisions to put the entire Valley out of work, they had vacation homes in Aspen, they sent their kids to Yale, their portfolios went up when the mills shut down.(...) no one lifted a hand in protest. There was something particularly American about it – blaming yourself for bad luck – that resistance to seeing your life as affected by social forces, a tendency to attribute larger problems to individual behavior. The ugly reverse of the American Dream. In France, she thought, they would have shut down the country. They would have stopped the mills from closing. But of course you couldn't say that in public, especially not to her father.

Occupy Wall Street

"Well you do know there was ten, fifteen smaller plants that closed around here just in the past year or so. I mean, you can't smell it from your place in Seven Springs, but it's still happening. Our time might have been the big bloodbath, but they're still shooting the survivors. There's gonna be fallout to it, just like there was in our time and hangin some kid out to dry doesn't do shit for anyone."

Titre français : Un arrière-goût de rouille