A tie-in to the new documentary, Roy's World, directed by Rob Christopher narrated by Lili Taylor, Matt Dillon and Willem Dafoe, these stories comprise one of Barry Gifford's most enduring works, his homage to the gritty Chicago landscape of his youth Barry Gifford has been writing the story of America in acclaimed novel after acclaimed novel for the last half-century. At the same time, he's been writing short stories, his "Roy stories," that show America from a different vantage point, a certain mix of innocence and worldliness. Reminiscent of Mark Twain's Huckleberry Finn and Ernest Hemingway's Nick Adams stories, Gifford's Roy stories amount to the coming-of-age novel he never wrote, and are one of his most important literary achievements--time-pieces that preserve the lost worlds of 1950s Chicago and the American South, the landscape of postwar America seen through the lens of a boy's steady gaze. The twists and tragedies of the adult world seem to float by like curious flotsam, like the show girls from the burlesque house next door to Roy's father's pharmacy who stop by when they need a little help, or Roy's mom and the husbands she weds and then sheds after Roy's Jewish mobster father's early death. Life throws Roy more than the usual curves, but his intelligence and curiosity shape them into something unforeseen, while Roy's complete lack of self-pity allow the stories to seem to tell themselves.

バリー・ギフォードが放つ本作は、戦後アメリカの喧騒を少年の澄んだ瞳で切り取った、切なくも強靭な叙情詩です。ヘミングウェイを彷彿とさせる乾いた文体は、大人の世界の悲劇を感傷抜きに描き出し、読者の胸に生の根源的な手触りを残します。少年の揺るぎない視座が、暴力や喪失が渦巻くシカゴの風景を、比類なき文学的遺産へと昇華させているのです。 ドキュメンタリー映画版では、名優たちの語りが活字に命を吹き込み、映像の叙情性が原作の余白を鮮やかに補完しています。テキストの深い思索と映像が呼び覚ます記憶が共鳴するとき、読者は普遍的な「成長」の神話に立ち会うことになります。メディアを越境して深まる物語の熱量に、ぜひ身を委ねてください。