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Decoy
Decoy, the concluding novella of Allan Gurganus’s hugely acclaimed Local Souls, was hailed as the standout of that work. Like Kazuo Ishiguro’s The Remains of the Day it is a haunting lyrical portrayal of a life half-led.
Set in mythical Falls, North Carolina, this mysterious and compelling tale maps the lifelong eroticized friendship between two married men. When Doc Roper, the town’s beloved physician, announces he is retiring from practice to carve exquisite duck decoys, he triggers an epidemic of catastrophes. His dependent patient and next-door neighbor, Bill Mabry, feels cut loose. Then the close-knit town is devastated by a flood of near-biblical proportions.
Decoy ―already emerging as an essential work of American literature―charts the tender border between life and death.
Set in mythical Falls, North Carolina, this mysterious and compelling tale maps the lifelong eroticized friendship between two married men. When Doc Roper, the town’s beloved physician, announces he is retiring from practice to carve exquisite duck decoys, he triggers an epidemic of catastrophes. His dependent patient and next-door neighbor, Bill Mabry, feels cut loose. Then the close-knit town is devastated by a flood of near-biblical proportions.
Decoy ―already emerging as an essential work of American literature―charts the tender border between life and death.
160 pages, Paperback
First published March 2, 2015
2 people are currently reading
90 people want to read
About the author
Allan Gurganus
68 books139 followersSince 1989, Allan Gurganus’s novels, stories and essays have become a singularly unified and living body of work. Known for dark humor, erotic candor, pictorial clarity and folkloric sweep, his prose is widely translated. Gurganus’s stories, collected as “Piccoli eroi”, were just published to strong Italian reviews. France’s La Monde has called him “a Mark Twain for our age, hilariously clear-eyed, blessed with perfect pitch.”
Fiction by Gurganus has inspired the greatest compliment of all: memorization and re-reading. The number of new critical works, the theatrical and film treatments of his fiction, testify to its durable urgency. Adaptations have won four Emmy. Robert Wilson of The American Scholar has called Gurganus “the rightful heir to Faulkner and Welty.” In a culture where `branding’ seems all-important, Gurganus has resisted any franchised repetition. Equally adept at stories and novels or novellas, his tone and sense of form can differ widely. On the page Gurganus continues to startle and grow.
Of his previous work “The Practical Heart”, critic Michiko Kakutani wrote in the New York Times, “Masterly and deeply affecting…a testament to Mr. Gurganus’s ability to inhabit his characters’ inner lives and map their emotional histories.” The Atlantic called the same work, “An entertaining, disturbing and inspiring book—a dazzling maturation.” Of “Local Souls”, Wells Tower wrote: “It leaves the reader surfeited with gifts. This is a book to be read for the minutely tuned music of Gurganus’s language, its lithe and wicked wit, its luminosity of vision—shining all the brighter for the heat of its compassion. No living writer knows more about how humans matter to each other. These are tales to make us whole.”
Gurganus’s first published story “Minor Heroism” appeared in theNew Yorker when he was twenty six. In 1974, this tale offered the first gay character that magazine had ever presented. In 1989, after seven years’ composition, Gurganus presented the novel Oldest Living Confederate Widow Tells All (Sue Kaufman Prize from the American Academy of Arts and Letters). This first book spent eight months on theNew York Times bestseller list; it became the subject of a New Yorkercartoon and remains a clue on “Jeopardy” (Names for $400). The novel has been translated into twelve languages and has sold over two million copies. The CBS adaptation of the work, starring Donald Sutherland and Diane Lane and won and a “Best Supporting Actress” Emmy for Cecily Tyson as the freed slave, Castalia.
Along with Oldest Living Confederate Widow Tells All, Gurganus’s works include White People, (Los Angeles Times Book Prize, Pen-Faulkner Finalist) as well as the novel Plays Well With Others. His last book was The Practical Heart: Four Novellas (Lambda Literary Award). Gurganus’s short fiction appears in the New Yorker, Harper’sand other magazines. A recent essay was seen in The New York Review of Books. His stories have been honored by the O’Henry Prize Stories, Best American Stories, and The Norton Anthology of Short Fiction. Gurganus was a recent John Simon Guggenheim Fellow. His novella Blessed Assurance: A Moral Tale, from White People, has become part of the Harvard Business School’s Ethics curriculum. The work is discussed at length in Questions of Character (Harvard Business School Press) by Joseph L. Badaracco.
Born in Rocky Mount, North Carolina in 1947 to a teacher and businessman, Gurganus first trained as a painter, studying at the University of Pennsylvania and the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts. His paintings and drawings are represented in private and public collections. Gurganus has illustrated three limited editions of his fiction. During a three-year stint onboard the USS Yorktown during the Vietnam War, he turned to writing. Gurganus subsequently graduated from Sarah Lawrence College where he’d gone to work with Grace Paley. At the Iowa Writers’ Workshop, his mentors were Stanley Elkin and John Cheever. Mr. Gur
Fiction by Gurganus has inspired the greatest compliment of all: memorization and re-reading. The number of new critical works, the theatrical and film treatments of his fiction, testify to its durable urgency. Adaptations have won four Emmy. Robert Wilson of The American Scholar has called Gurganus “the rightful heir to Faulkner and Welty.” In a culture where `branding’ seems all-important, Gurganus has resisted any franchised repetition. Equally adept at stories and novels or novellas, his tone and sense of form can differ widely. On the page Gurganus continues to startle and grow.
Of his previous work “The Practical Heart”, critic Michiko Kakutani wrote in the New York Times, “Masterly and deeply affecting…a testament to Mr. Gurganus’s ability to inhabit his characters’ inner lives and map their emotional histories.” The Atlantic called the same work, “An entertaining, disturbing and inspiring book—a dazzling maturation.” Of “Local Souls”, Wells Tower wrote: “It leaves the reader surfeited with gifts. This is a book to be read for the minutely tuned music of Gurganus’s language, its lithe and wicked wit, its luminosity of vision—shining all the brighter for the heat of its compassion. No living writer knows more about how humans matter to each other. These are tales to make us whole.”
Gurganus’s first published story “Minor Heroism” appeared in theNew Yorker when he was twenty six. In 1974, this tale offered the first gay character that magazine had ever presented. In 1989, after seven years’ composition, Gurganus presented the novel Oldest Living Confederate Widow Tells All (Sue Kaufman Prize from the American Academy of Arts and Letters). This first book spent eight months on theNew York Times bestseller list; it became the subject of a New Yorkercartoon and remains a clue on “Jeopardy” (Names for $400). The novel has been translated into twelve languages and has sold over two million copies. The CBS adaptation of the work, starring Donald Sutherland and Diane Lane and won and a “Best Supporting Actress” Emmy for Cecily Tyson as the freed slave, Castalia.
Along with Oldest Living Confederate Widow Tells All, Gurganus’s works include White People, (Los Angeles Times Book Prize, Pen-Faulkner Finalist) as well as the novel Plays Well With Others. His last book was The Practical Heart: Four Novellas (Lambda Literary Award). Gurganus’s short fiction appears in the New Yorker, Harper’sand other magazines. A recent essay was seen in The New York Review of Books. His stories have been honored by the O’Henry Prize Stories, Best American Stories, and The Norton Anthology of Short Fiction. Gurganus was a recent John Simon Guggenheim Fellow. His novella Blessed Assurance: A Moral Tale, from White People, has become part of the Harvard Business School’s Ethics curriculum. The work is discussed at length in Questions of Character (Harvard Business School Press) by Joseph L. Badaracco.
Born in Rocky Mount, North Carolina in 1947 to a teacher and businessman, Gurganus first trained as a painter, studying at the University of Pennsylvania and the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts. His paintings and drawings are represented in private and public collections. Gurganus has illustrated three limited editions of his fiction. During a three-year stint onboard the USS Yorktown during the Vietnam War, he turned to writing. Gurganus subsequently graduated from Sarah Lawrence College where he’d gone to work with Grace Paley. At the Iowa Writers’ Workshop, his mentors were Stanley Elkin and John Cheever. Mr. Gur
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Displaying 1 - 5 of 5 reviews
June 22, 2021
Very very overwritten at times, but in the way that is so uniquely Gurganus. Dry first half. Beautiful 2nd. I give it 14 mallards out of 20.
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April 10, 2024Andare in pezzi
I tre personaggi maschili protagonisti di questo romanzo- l'io narrante, suo padre Red ed il 'divino' Doc- sono tutti vittime inappagate delle loro ossessioni, bozzetti, frammenti di uomini in cerca, senza sapere bene di cosa.
Red, morto a poco più di cinquant'anni perché il suo cuore malato non sa metabolizzare il colesterolo, anela alla rivalsa sociale, rappresentata qui dal trasferimento nello spocchioso quartiere di Riverside- Falls (e 'Caduti' è il nome con cui si è deciso di tradurre nell'edizione italiana gli abitanti).
Suo figlio, che ne ha ereditato il male- reduce dalla visione dell' 'Edipo re' di questa mattina, ci ho letto il feroce determinismo della tragedia classica, più che il razionale lascito della genetica- è un uomo medio, che aspira ad essere come Doc, il dottore della comunità, oggetto di culto da parte di chicchessia: bello, colto, intelligente, elegante, talentuoso. Io l'ho trovato insopportabile fin dalle prime pagine, come sempre mi succede con personaggi simili, per i quali non provo compassione neppure quando rovinano inevitabilmente a terra.
E qui la disfatta è feroce e prende le sembianze di un fiume che tutto travolge e della malattia, la peggiore, quella che annebbia la mente e ti fa dimenticare chi sei.
La prima parte del romanzo mi ha appassionato; non così la seconda, che mi è parsa frammentaria, compiaciuta del dolore e come realizzata a distanza dalla prima.
Dopo la lettura di un piccolo ma significativo campione dell'opera tradotta di Allan Gurganus, mi sembra che i racconti siano decisamente il suo forte: 'Il mio cuore è un serraglio' rimane ad oggi uno dei libri migliori di questo 2022.
I tre personaggi maschili protagonisti di questo romanzo- l'io narrante, suo padre Red ed il 'divino' Doc- sono tutti vittime inappagate delle loro ossessioni, bozzetti, frammenti di uomini in cerca, senza sapere bene di cosa.
Red, morto a poco più di cinquant'anni perché il suo cuore malato non sa metabolizzare il colesterolo, anela alla rivalsa sociale, rappresentata qui dal trasferimento nello spocchioso quartiere di Riverside- Falls (e 'Caduti' è il nome con cui si è deciso di tradurre nell'edizione italiana gli abitanti).
Suo figlio, che ne ha ereditato il male- reduce dalla visione dell' 'Edipo re' di questa mattina, ci ho letto il feroce determinismo della tragedia classica, più che il razionale lascito della genetica- è un uomo medio, che aspira ad essere come Doc, il dottore della comunità, oggetto di culto da parte di chicchessia: bello, colto, intelligente, elegante, talentuoso. Io l'ho trovato insopportabile fin dalle prime pagine, come sempre mi succede con personaggi simili, per i quali non provo compassione neppure quando rovinano inevitabilmente a terra.
E qui la disfatta è feroce e prende le sembianze di un fiume che tutto travolge e della malattia, la peggiore, quella che annebbia la mente e ti fa dimenticare chi sei.
La prima parte del romanzo mi ha appassionato; non così la seconda, che mi è parsa frammentaria, compiaciuta del dolore e come realizzata a distanza dalla prima.
Dopo la lettura di un piccolo ma significativo campione dell'opera tradotta di Allan Gurganus, mi sembra che i racconti siano decisamente il suo forte: 'Il mio cuore è un serraglio' rimane ad oggi uno dei libri migliori di questo 2022.
September 23, 2019
This was a nice book that I enjoyed. It is a story of a young boy’s life through his later years in small town America. It is slow moving but in a good way, as he reflects on life and relationships, particularly his relationship with the neighborhood physician, who is close to his age. Very pleasant story about who people are versus who you want them to be. Despite being close, not being close at all. Wanting to be understood but never fully knowing. Very nicely written. Not a book that will likely stick with me forever but left me thinking about who we are today versus who we become with the passing of time and experiences.
September 27, 2016
In Decoy, Allan Gurganis' narrator reminisces on a lifetime of interactins with a much-idolized and sociable small-town doctor - a friend and neighbor now aloof in retirement after having cared for three generations of the protagonist's family. Ruminations become questions, which become the faintest acknowledgement of regret.
Per the back-cover synopsis, "Like Ishiguro's The Remains of the Day, Decoy creates a vivid portrait of a comfortable life only half-led." It's a reasonable analogy, though the exploration of place in the small-town world of Falls, North Carolina adds a depth to the book's characters that is quite different from Ishiguro's works. And of course, the folksy writing style is on the other end of the spectrum from the writing of the more renown British author.
Gurganis' reviews reflect highly variable opinions on his works, and Decoy is no exception. In a way, I can understand - it's tough to say what Decoy is "about," its slight melancholy pervasive through the pages. That said, I found much to contemplate in the novella, and would recommend it.
Per the back-cover synopsis, "Like Ishiguro's The Remains of the Day, Decoy creates a vivid portrait of a comfortable life only half-led." It's a reasonable analogy, though the exploration of place in the small-town world of Falls, North Carolina adds a depth to the book's characters that is quite different from Ishiguro's works. And of course, the folksy writing style is on the other end of the spectrum from the writing of the more renown British author.
Gurganis' reviews reflect highly variable opinions on his works, and Decoy is no exception. In a way, I can understand - it's tough to say what Decoy is "about," its slight melancholy pervasive through the pages. That said, I found much to contemplate in the novella, and would recommend it.
September 14, 2015
Delightful.
Displaying 1 - 5 of 5 reviews