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Ошибка мертвого жокея (Эксклюзивная классика)
Повести и рассказы, включенные в этот сборник, были написаны Ирвином Шоу в разные времена и относятся к самым разным жанрам — от ставшего его фирменной маркой психологического реализма до почти остросюжетной «Ошибки мертвого жокея» и забавной, остроумной притчи «Неслышные голоса». Одни из них задумчивы и печальны, другие задорны и веселы, некоторые отмечает добродушный юмор, а некоторые — злая ирония. Однако все они отличаются глубочайшим знанием человеческой природы и человеческой души, характерным для автора "Богача, бедняка" и "Ночного портье".
- GenresShort StoriesFiction
272 pages, Kindle Edition
First published January 1, 1957
About the author
Irwin Shaw
211 books440 followersShaw was born Irwin Gilbert Shamforoff in the South Bronx, New York City, to Russian Jewish immigrants. Shaw was a prolific American playwright, screenwriter, novelist, and short-story author whose written works have sold more than 14 million copies. He is best known for his novels, The Young Lions (1948) and Rich Man Poor Man (1970).
His parents were Rose and Will. His younger brother, David Shaw (died 2007), became a noted Hollywood producer. Shortly after Irwin's birth, the Shamforoffs moved to Brooklyn. Irwin changed his surname upon entering college. He spent most of his youth in Brooklyn, where he graduated from Brooklyn College with a Bachelor of Arts degree in 1934.
Shaw began screenwriting in 1935 at the age of 21, and scripted for several radio shows, including Dick Tracy, The Gumps and Studio One.
Shaw's first play, Bury the Dead (1936) was an expressionist drama about a group of soldiers killed in a battle who refuse to be buried. During the 1940s, Shaw wrote for a number of films, including Talk of the Town (a comedy about civil liberties), The Commandos Strike at Dawn (based on a C.S. Forester story about commandos in occupied Norway) and Easy Living (about a football player unable to enter the game due to a medical condition). Shaw married Marian Edwards. They had one son, Adam Shaw, born in 1950, himself a writer of magazine articles and non-fiction.
Shaw enlisted in the U.S. Army and was a warrant officer during World War II.He served with an Army documentary film unit. The Young Lions, Shaw's first novel, was published in 1949. Based on his experiences in Europe during the war, the novel was very successful and was adapted into a 1958 film.
Shaw's second novel, The Troubled Air, chronicling the rise of McCarthyism, was published in 1951. He was among those who signed a petition asking the U.S. Supreme Court to review the John Howard Lawson and Dalton Trumbo convictions for contempt of Congress, resulting from hearings by the House Committee on Un-American Activities. Falsely accused of being a communist by the Red Channels publication, Shaw was placed on the Hollywood blacklist by the movie studio bosses. In 1951 he left the United States and went to Europe, where he lived for 25 years, mostly in Paris and Switzerland. He later claimed that the blacklist "only glancingly bruised" his career. During the 1950s he wrote several more screenplays, including Desire Under the Elms (based on Eugene O'Neill's play) and Fire Down Below (about a tramp boat in the Caribbean).
While living in Europe, Shaw wrote more bestselling books, notably Lucy Crown (1956), Two Weeks in Another Town (1960), Rich Man, Poor Man (1970) (for which he would later write a less successful sequel entitled Beggarman, Thief) and Evening in Byzantium (made into a 1978 TV movie). Rich Man, Poor Man was adapted into a highly successful ABC television miniseries in 1976.
His novel Top of the Hill, about the Winter Olympics at Lake Placid in 1980, was made into a TV movie, starring Wayne Rogers, Adrienne Barbeau, and Sonny Bono.
His last two novels were Bread Upon the Waters (1981) and Acceptable Losses (1982).
Shaw died in Davos, Switzerland on May 16, 1984, aged 71, after undergoing treatment for prostate cancer.
His parents were Rose and Will. His younger brother, David Shaw (died 2007), became a noted Hollywood producer. Shortly after Irwin's birth, the Shamforoffs moved to Brooklyn. Irwin changed his surname upon entering college. He spent most of his youth in Brooklyn, where he graduated from Brooklyn College with a Bachelor of Arts degree in 1934.
Shaw began screenwriting in 1935 at the age of 21, and scripted for several radio shows, including Dick Tracy, The Gumps and Studio One.
Shaw's first play, Bury the Dead (1936) was an expressionist drama about a group of soldiers killed in a battle who refuse to be buried. During the 1940s, Shaw wrote for a number of films, including Talk of the Town (a comedy about civil liberties), The Commandos Strike at Dawn (based on a C.S. Forester story about commandos in occupied Norway) and Easy Living (about a football player unable to enter the game due to a medical condition). Shaw married Marian Edwards. They had one son, Adam Shaw, born in 1950, himself a writer of magazine articles and non-fiction.
Shaw enlisted in the U.S. Army and was a warrant officer during World War II.He served with an Army documentary film unit. The Young Lions, Shaw's first novel, was published in 1949. Based on his experiences in Europe during the war, the novel was very successful and was adapted into a 1958 film.
Shaw's second novel, The Troubled Air, chronicling the rise of McCarthyism, was published in 1951. He was among those who signed a petition asking the U.S. Supreme Court to review the John Howard Lawson and Dalton Trumbo convictions for contempt of Congress, resulting from hearings by the House Committee on Un-American Activities. Falsely accused of being a communist by the Red Channels publication, Shaw was placed on the Hollywood blacklist by the movie studio bosses. In 1951 he left the United States and went to Europe, where he lived for 25 years, mostly in Paris and Switzerland. He later claimed that the blacklist "only glancingly bruised" his career. During the 1950s he wrote several more screenplays, including Desire Under the Elms (based on Eugene O'Neill's play) and Fire Down Below (about a tramp boat in the Caribbean).
While living in Europe, Shaw wrote more bestselling books, notably Lucy Crown (1956), Two Weeks in Another Town (1960), Rich Man, Poor Man (1970) (for which he would later write a less successful sequel entitled Beggarman, Thief) and Evening in Byzantium (made into a 1978 TV movie). Rich Man, Poor Man was adapted into a highly successful ABC television miniseries in 1976.
His novel Top of the Hill, about the Winter Olympics at Lake Placid in 1980, was made into a TV movie, starring Wayne Rogers, Adrienne Barbeau, and Sonny Bono.
His last two novels were Bread Upon the Waters (1981) and Acceptable Losses (1982).
Shaw died in Davos, Switzerland on May 16, 1984, aged 71, after undergoing treatment for prostate cancer.
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Displaying 1 - 9 of 9 reviews
October 18, 2018
Dimenticato nella mia libreria di aNobii. Ora aggiunto anche in questa. Copio qui il commento del 10 novembre 2008, relativo alla lettura del 1974:
"Un libro trovato non so più dove, dimenticato da non so chi. Tanti anni fa. Sei racconti: letti con piacere e col sorriso per una lettura... imprevista!"
Oggi non saprei aggiungere di più. E mi fa continuare a sorridere... per il continuum di dimenticanze.
Lo rileggerei volentieri, se ricordassi dove l'ho messo.
"Un libro trovato non so più dove, dimenticato da non so chi. Tanti anni fa. Sei racconti: letti con piacere e col sorriso per una lettura... imprevista!"
Oggi non saprei aggiungere di più. E mi fa continuare a sorridere... per il continuum di dimenticanze.
Lo rileggerei volentieri, se ricordassi dove l'ho messo.
September 2, 2026
Si no me falla mi memoria es el primer libro de relatos que leo o él que leo completo. Diez relatos cortos, uno mejor que otro que presenta distintas situaciones vividas por personajes interesantes sobre vivencias de la primera mitad del siglo pasado, muchos de ellos ambientados en la Europa de la posguerra con situaciones que te mantienen en vilo sobre su resolución y que en algunos casos dejan en el final lo decidas tú al dejar el escritor en tu mente que tomes la decisión de cómo cerrar el relato al no terminarlo. Irwin Shaw posee una escritura agradable y que te mantiene en la expectativa de cada uno de sus relatos que motiva leer más de sus obras y también seguir leyendo este tipo de literatura de relatos cortos
May 28, 2024
A selection of 10 short stories by Irwin Shaw.
Americans are the main characters. The story locations are the US and Europe. Though they are short stories, they are full with the characters, their behaviour and their dealing with situations, daily and special.
“The Sunny Banks of the River Lis one that hit a couple of buttons for me.
Hugh Forester is a rememberer. Historical dates and happenings, sports stats, Poetry lines, scientific facts, history dates and events, he can quote them all; a walking encyclopedia.
He works at a company that puts out a specific encyclopedia in pocket size. His exceptional memory is a big help in the researching and recording of historical events for the company’s Pocket Encyclopedia.
He is married to Narcisse, a woman easily given to weeping over pretty much everything. It has slipped his mind. He has nothing for his wife in the morning and she is weepy. He isn’t sure why. Today is their 24th wedding anniversary and he has forgotten.
He grown daughter, Clare, is married to young man who has no money smarts. She meets Hugh at the office to go out to lunch, where she proceed to tell him of the financial problems the couple are experiencing and asks Hugh to talk to her husband. Over the last few years, Hugh has bailed them out a few times.
His son, Morton, is away at college and has written a letter requesting money due to a car accident with a friend’s car and the expenses incurred. Morton is barely getting through college.
Emotions, expectations of others, wants and desires, they start taking a toll….
Each story is different, well written, and a good read.
Americans are the main characters. The story locations are the US and Europe. Though they are short stories, they are full with the characters, their behaviour and their dealing with situations, daily and special.
“The Sunny Banks of the River Lis one that hit a couple of buttons for me.
Hugh Forester is a rememberer. Historical dates and happenings, sports stats, Poetry lines, scientific facts, history dates and events, he can quote them all; a walking encyclopedia.
He works at a company that puts out a specific encyclopedia in pocket size. His exceptional memory is a big help in the researching and recording of historical events for the company’s Pocket Encyclopedia.
He is married to Narcisse, a woman easily given to weeping over pretty much everything. It has slipped his mind. He has nothing for his wife in the morning and she is weepy. He isn’t sure why. Today is their 24th wedding anniversary and he has forgotten.
He grown daughter, Clare, is married to young man who has no money smarts. She meets Hugh at the office to go out to lunch, where she proceed to tell him of the financial problems the couple are experiencing and asks Hugh to talk to her husband. Over the last few years, Hugh has bailed them out a few times.
His son, Morton, is away at college and has written a letter requesting money due to a car accident with a friend’s car and the expenses incurred. Morton is barely getting through college.
Emotions, expectations of others, wants and desires, they start taking a toll….
Each story is different, well written, and a good read.
Read
February 28, 2023What a title! Expulsive yet memorable.
All the stories set in Europe crackle with displaced libido. (The feeling is: adolescents who’ve run away from home.) The ones set in the USA lack MELODY.
Are you fascinated by the world you were born into? I am. I was three when this book came out: August, 1957. (This is a first edition, paperback, and the pages are so old that they felt out as I turned them – but only up to page 62. The center of the spine is stronger, if you know what I mean.)
“Irwin Shaw wrote for the movies,“ my new friend Douglass told me, and these stories seem like a little 25 minute movies, with clever, goading 50s dialogue. You can almost see the slanting hats.
Opening at random:
“Narcisse asked if Hugh wanted fish for dinner and he said yes, and Narcisse said that fish was criminally expensive, too, and he said yes, and she asked if anything was the matter and he said no and kissed her and walked out of the apartment to the 242nd Street subway station and stood all the way down to the office, reading the morning newspaper.”
All the stories set in Europe crackle with displaced libido. (The feeling is: adolescents who’ve run away from home.) The ones set in the USA lack MELODY.
Are you fascinated by the world you were born into? I am. I was three when this book came out: August, 1957. (This is a first edition, paperback, and the pages are so old that they felt out as I turned them – but only up to page 62. The center of the spine is stronger, if you know what I mean.)
“Irwin Shaw wrote for the movies,“ my new friend Douglass told me, and these stories seem like a little 25 minute movies, with clever, goading 50s dialogue. You can almost see the slanting hats.
Opening at random:
“Narcisse asked if Hugh wanted fish for dinner and he said yes, and Narcisse said that fish was criminally expensive, too, and he said yes, and she asked if anything was the matter and he said no and kissed her and walked out of the apartment to the 242nd Street subway station and stood all the way down to the office, reading the morning newspaper.”
January 25, 2025
"Troppo tardi per il feudalesimo, troppo presto per la democrazia...".
Questa è una delle tanti frasi indimenticabili di questo grande drammaturgo e scrittore di dialoghi. Tutti i racconti hanno qualcosa, ma alcuni di essi hanno un qualcosa in più.
"Scommessa su un fantino morto"
"Una storia cattiva"
"Eravamo in tre"
"Le rive soleggiate del fiume Lete"
Questa è una delle tanti frasi indimenticabili di questo grande drammaturgo e scrittore di dialoghi. Tutti i racconti hanno qualcosa, ma alcuni di essi hanno un qualcosa in più.
"Scommessa su un fantino morto"
"Una storia cattiva"
"Eravamo in tre"
"Le rive soleggiate del fiume Lete"
December 12, 2017
Na povídky zas tak nejsem, ale tyhle určitě patří mezi ty lepší.
August 28, 2026
I was not a fan of these stories but some of them were good.
December 7, 2008
This collection let me down a bit. I read Evening in Byzantium a few years ago and loved the dry depiction of Hollywood, aging, and film culture. This much earlier collection of short stories, mostly appearing originally The New Yorker - by about 20 to 25 years - falls considerably short of that later novel. Shaw sticks too many adverbs in his otherwise terse prose. He strips things down so much that instead of showing any qualities of his characters and the worlds that surrounds them, with get a bunch of vague indistinct descriptors. Much of it is boring writing, but not of it so much so that I couldn't bear reading on. His prose is still readable, but weak, nothing special, at this point in his career.
Tip on a Dead Jockey
A generic rainy Paris tale of lost opportunity, where naive Richardson makes out like a bandit. John O'Hara could have written this tale of subverted expections. Barber's shrewd until the end of the story, when he gets morals and loses out. Smith is a fat femme. Shaw should have given him small feet.
A Wicked Story
A New York theater jibe with characters complaining about $4.80 tickets on Broadway. Oh, the expense. A 'Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf' rant against paranoid wife, this tale has Albee in its sights, surely the young New York playwright mentioned. Shaw pits fat women versus skinny, and fat win. Hooray.
In the French Style
This typical Paris breakup story, involves a world old man finally losing a pretty young American he's pulling along for years. Shaw picks nice details at the cafe, the tea. Beddoes is a blank slate philanderer, center of a nothing minor tale.
Peter Two
A highlight of this collection, this endearing story about a boy trying to be fearless, but realizing everyone's afraid and just forces themselve to forget, takes place on Albee/Salinger's Upper West Side. Peter's pushups and his grape seeds save this story from the banality of the rest of this book. 'Peter Two' reminded me of the episode of Freaks and Geeks that follows a day in the life of Bill, but with gunshots and tweed, and no gym teachers.
Age of Reason
This goofy Hitchcock paranoia play shows the wretched machinery of airplanes and marriage, the main character distrusting both. The story loses steam as the main character's superstition doesn't work. Does the plane carrying his wife and child across the continent crash? Do we care?
The Kiss at Croton Falls
This dreamy tale writhes like the best of Joyce. The dead Mull visits his wife in dreams. He's an interesting drunk out The Dubliners, an asshole train car conductor who, even in death, overshadows the rat fink Smalley, a claims adjuster who is marrying his daughter.
Then We Were Three
Three's a crowd in this European summer. Shaw writes more lyrically hear than in most of the other tales, about the veiled sex of cold chicken on a wine picnic, Munnie baring himself, naked, but failing to accomplish anything, just getting himself wet and sad. Shaw's writing still drowns with adverbs, but I'll forgive him in this case.
The Sunny Banks of the River Lethe
Hugh Forester forgets everything in his life, because it's all so unmemorable, in this duller Kafka nightmare of Encyclopedia writers and father and husband to lame women and children.
The Wedding of a Friend
Ronny is an idiot stuck on bitch French Virginie, then feigns fagginess to dodge his military duty, in this tale that could have been written by Hemingway with a dictionary and thesaurus, but without the dedication.
Voyage Out, Voyage Home
This best story of the collection builds slowly from a trip to France into a lustful tale of cashmere and ski slopes. Constance's quiet development and respectfulness and yearning is dashed by Pritchard, then his death in this slow steady tale with spot on dialogue.
Tip on a Dead Jockey
A generic rainy Paris tale of lost opportunity, where naive Richardson makes out like a bandit. John O'Hara could have written this tale of subverted expections. Barber's shrewd until the end of the story, when he gets morals and loses out. Smith is a fat femme. Shaw should have given him small feet.
A Wicked Story
A New York theater jibe with characters complaining about $4.80 tickets on Broadway. Oh, the expense. A 'Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf' rant against paranoid wife, this tale has Albee in its sights, surely the young New York playwright mentioned. Shaw pits fat women versus skinny, and fat win. Hooray.
In the French Style
This typical Paris breakup story, involves a world old man finally losing a pretty young American he's pulling along for years. Shaw picks nice details at the cafe, the tea. Beddoes is a blank slate philanderer, center of a nothing minor tale.
Peter Two
A highlight of this collection, this endearing story about a boy trying to be fearless, but realizing everyone's afraid and just forces themselve to forget, takes place on Albee/Salinger's Upper West Side. Peter's pushups and his grape seeds save this story from the banality of the rest of this book. 'Peter Two' reminded me of the episode of Freaks and Geeks that follows a day in the life of Bill, but with gunshots and tweed, and no gym teachers.
Age of Reason
This goofy Hitchcock paranoia play shows the wretched machinery of airplanes and marriage, the main character distrusting both. The story loses steam as the main character's superstition doesn't work. Does the plane carrying his wife and child across the continent crash? Do we care?
The Kiss at Croton Falls
This dreamy tale writhes like the best of Joyce. The dead Mull visits his wife in dreams. He's an interesting drunk out The Dubliners, an asshole train car conductor who, even in death, overshadows the rat fink Smalley, a claims adjuster who is marrying his daughter.
Then We Were Three
Three's a crowd in this European summer. Shaw writes more lyrically hear than in most of the other tales, about the veiled sex of cold chicken on a wine picnic, Munnie baring himself, naked, but failing to accomplish anything, just getting himself wet and sad. Shaw's writing still drowns with adverbs, but I'll forgive him in this case.
The Sunny Banks of the River Lethe
Hugh Forester forgets everything in his life, because it's all so unmemorable, in this duller Kafka nightmare of Encyclopedia writers and father and husband to lame women and children.
The Wedding of a Friend
Ronny is an idiot stuck on bitch French Virginie, then feigns fagginess to dodge his military duty, in this tale that could have been written by Hemingway with a dictionary and thesaurus, but without the dedication.
Voyage Out, Voyage Home
This best story of the collection builds slowly from a trip to France into a lustful tale of cashmere and ski slopes. Constance's quiet development and respectfulness and yearning is dashed by Pritchard, then his death in this slow steady tale with spot on dialogue.
April 21, 2012
Tip on a Dead Jockey is a collection of stories that are all of a piece in tone and theme and character. Each of them is humorless, unhappy, concerned with failure. For Shaw the salt seems to have lost its savor. For the most part, he here is writing about Americans in Europe where Shaw himself has been living for the past few years. But Europe is only a picture postcard backdrop before which his escapist Americans trail out thin and dreary lives. Two of the stories are very good, indeed. "A Wicked Story" is reminiscent of Shaw's most acid vein. "And Then There Were Three" is as good as his very best. It's the one story in which Shaw allows Europe an integral part, shows what it can mean to Americans, in this case two best friends and a girl. The better boy loses the girl, his friend, Europe and youth, but his failure is through strength not weakness. But almost everywhere else Shaw leads through weakness, not strength. He has given us petty, selfish, disenchanted men and women, motivated by flimsy hunches and superstitions, incapable of action, without any sort of values, without dignity. Technically, the stories are effortlessly able. But they used to be planes peeling off at high altitudes for a sheer dive toward the ground, to be pulled out only at the last split second, and all the excitement and thrill of "how would it come out" rode with them. In most of these stories Shaw levels off too soon, before the issue is in doubt and not only communicates the indifference of his characters but his own.
Hubert Saal, "Disenchanted Men," in Saturday Review, August 3, 1957, pp. 12-13.
http://www.enotes.com/irwin-shaw-crit...
Hubert Saal, "Disenchanted Men," in Saturday Review, August 3, 1957, pp. 12-13.
http://www.enotes.com/irwin-shaw-crit...
Displaying 1 - 9 of 9 reviews