People note American writer Francis Bret Harte for The Luck of Roaring Camp and Other Sketches (1870), his best-known collection of his stories about California mining towns.
People best remember this poet for his short-story fiction, featuring miners, gamblers, and other romantic figures of the Gold Rush. In a career, spanning more than four decades, he wrote poetry, plays, lectures, book reviews, editorials, and magazine sketches in addition to fiction. As he moved from California to the eastern United States to Europe, he incorporated new subjects and characters into his stories, but people most often reprinted, adapted, and admired his tales of the Gold Rush.
Parents named him after Francis Brett, his great-grandfather. Bernard Hart, paternal grandfather of Francis and an Orthodox Jewish immigrant, flourished as a merchant and founded the New York stock exchange. Henry, father of the young Francis, changed the spelling of the family name from Hart to Harte. Later, Francis preferred that people know his middle name, which he spelled Bret with only one t.
An avid reader as a boy, Harte at 11 years of age published his first work, a satirical poem, titled "Autumn Musings", now lost. Rather than attracting praise, the poem garnered ridicule from his family. As an adult, he recalled to a friend, "Such a shock was their ridicule to me that I wonder that I ever wrote another line of verse". His formal schooling ended at 13 years of age in 1849.
«Голодовая» экзистенция одной семьи! Неужели голод делает нас умнее?! Может ли голод заставить нас есть друг-друга? Вопрос скорее философский, чем «гастрономический». Каннибалы ли мы? Думаю лишь «конройевская» ситуация может дать самый правдивый ответ на столь опасный вопрос.
What happens when Bret Harte, predominately known for his short pieces, writes a novel? You get Gabriel Conroy: an mix of settings, scenarios, and characters familiar from his short fiction. These elements accumulate over a number of plot restarts and reveals, such that the novel feels as if it were constantly spurring itself on with new energy, or as if each chapter were trying to jump into the story, like a short story, from a new angle. Gabriel Conroy is by no means great, but it has a fast-paced plot that covers a fair bit of ground, some features of formal and stylistic interest, and a good dash of witty humor: it by no means deserves the disregard it has received.
Дело происходило в середине XIX века в Калифорнии, сперва пропала группа людей, чудом выжила, после разбрелась по стране. На том бы и заканчивать повествование, поскольку форма рассказа исчерпала себя и не подразумевала продолжения, но Брет Гарт решил развить тему. И развил её в неведомые дебри таинственности, подмены действующих лиц, завязав сюжет на мало кому известной серебряной жиле, существовавшей краткий миг, чтобы внести в людские отношения истинную сущность человеческой натуры. Кто не съел себе подобного на первых страницах, будет это пытаться «сделать» другими способами. Вплоть до судебного разбирательства.