Peyton Place

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Em miúdo, lia de tudo. Passava horas a ler (sobretudo as nocturnas). Devorava livros. Em rigor, não lia, voava pelas palavras, em busca do fim. Os escritores americanos e russos eram os preferidos. Li Gorki, Tolstoi, Steinbeck, Falkner, Zola e Lampedusa. Mas também li Robbins, Wallace, para além dos policiais e de ficção científica, que adorava.
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Não me lembro da autora (acho que era uma) de Peyton Place e Regresso a Peyton Place.

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Lembro que a qualidade da escrita não era relevante. Mas tratava de algo que nos incendiava, literalmente.

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Para perceber melhor o que me mais entusiasmou, nesse tempo, pesquisei na Net, e encontrei isto:

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Hypocrisy, social inequities, and class privilege are recurring themes in a tale that includes incest, abortion, adultery, lust and murder. Peyton Place has become an expression used to describe any place with sordid secrets.

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Bom, se isto não é um caldinho de coisas boas, não sei o que será …

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Já agora, a referida autora (que a Net serve, também, para estas coisas):

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Grace Metalious (September 8, 1924 – February 25, 1964) was an American author, best known for the controversial novel Peyton Place.

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She was born into poverty and a broken home as Marie Grace de Repentigny in the mill town of Manchester, New Hampshire. Blessed with the gift of imagination, she was driven to write from an early age. After graduating from Manchester Central High School, she married George Metalious in 1943, became a housewife and mother, lived in near squalor — and continued to write.

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In 1956, she captured the attention of an editor with Peyton Place, which became publishing's second "blockbuster" (following Gone with the Wind in 1936). Reviled by the clergy and dismissed by most critics as "trash," it nevertheless remained on the New York Times bestseller list for more than a year and became an international phenomenon. The dark secrets of a small New England town made juicy reading for millions worldwide. Peyton Place appears to have been a combination of Gilmanton, New Hampshire, the village where she lived (and which resented notoriety), Laconia, New Hampshire, the only nearby town of comparable size to Peyton Place and site of Grace's favorite bar, and Alton, New Hampshire, the town where a few years previously a daughter had murdered her incestuous abusive father. Hollywood lost no time in cashing in on the book's success — a year after its publication, Peyton Place was a major box office hit.

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Metalious died of alcoholism on February 25, 1964. "If I had to do it over again," she once remarked, "it would be easier to be poor." She is buried in Smith Meeting House Cemetery in Gilmanton, New Hampshire.

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Se trago este livro à colação, neste momento, isso resulta do momento que vivo e da memória que me assalta. Mas a memória engana-nos tanto … Ah, e ler é um prazer ... indescritível!.

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