Irwin Shaw is one of the representatives of classic American literature. He was one of the few writers who could put a serious philosophical or moral foundation into a simple and accessible to the reader fiction form. Novels, short stories, plays of the author were reprinted more than once, many were filmed.
On KnigoPoisk you can download The Night Porter in fb2, epub, pdf, txt, doc and rtf - Irvine Shaw.
The Night Porter is a novel published in 1975. In the center of the plot is the fate of retired pilot Douglas Grimes, who is forced to stop his professional career due to illness. Now he is a "little man", a night porter. The hero is fond of betting on horse racing, but even a hobby is not able to revive in him the desire to live. Suddenly, an old man dies in the hotel where Grimes works. Without hesitation, the hero appropriates his money for himself, he decides to run away, because he understands that sooner or later they will come for the money. Douglas flees to Europe, where he hopes to start a new life. He is tormented by two questions: how to protect the proceeds from thieves and how to spend it wisely.
And then a new hero enters the forefront of the novel - Miles. Loving, charismatic, he knows exactly how to enjoy life. Miles hides his past, no one knows how old the hero is and where he comes from. Together with Douglas, they go "in all serious ways." The motto of the heroes is simple: money must be spent. Investing in adult videos, buying racehorses, opening museums, playing cards is the plan of the newly rich.
The book "The Night Porter" by Irwin Shaw is a story not only about human destinies that collided in atypical circumstances. This is also a definite diagnosis of a society that is drowning in gambling, involvement in various pleasures that cannot be refused or stopped. Expensive hotels, champagne, caviar, luxurious women will accompany our heroes throughout the story. The Night Porter is a novel that amazes with its eccentricity, atypical depiction of events and characters.
Subtle humor is also present here, some literary critics call Shaw's work a "comedy of errors." The finale will puzzle and surprise the reader, because it is absolutely impossible to predict where the crazy path of the hero Douglas Grimes will lead. The Night Porter traces the main line of Irwin Shaw's work, namely the motif of fate or fate. You can read The Night Porter online, listen to an audiobook or download the book for free in fb2, epub and pdf at KnigoPoisk.
Irwin Shaw
Night porter
Dedicated to Gerda Nielsen
Night ... I sit alone, surrounded by bulletproof glass in a locked office. Outside New York in the grip of a gloomy January night.
For two years now, six times a week, I have been coming here an hour before midnight and staying until eight in the morning. The office is warm and no one bothers to talk. I don't like my job, but I don't hate it either.
The official duties leave me time for personal studies, the established nightly routine flows as it should. I spend an hour or two studying the Racing Form and thinking about my bets for the next day. This is a very lively program, full of optimism and inspiring new hopes with each release.
Having finished with the calculation of such indicators as the weight of the horse, its agility, distance, expected weather, I take up spiritual food, constantly taking care to have at hand books to my liking. Night grub - a sandwich and a bottle of beer - I buy on the way to work. During the night, be sure to do isometric exercises for the arms, legs and abdomen. Despite sedentary work, I feel better at thirty-three than at twenty. People are surprised that at my height - less than six feet - I weigh one hundred and eighty-five pounds. However, my weight does not upset me. I just wish I were taller. Women say that I still have a youthful appearance, but I do not consider this a compliment. I have never been a sissy. Like most men, I would like to be like TV movie characters like a brave sea captain or an adventurer.
Compiling a report for the past day for the day shift, I worked on a calculating machine. When I pressed the keys, the typewriter buzzed like a big angry insect. At first, this sound annoyed me, but now I'm used to it. Behind the glass of my desk in the lobby it was dark, dark. The owner saved on electricity, as, indeed, on everything else.
The bulletproof glass in the desk came about after the night porter who worked before me was brutally beaten and robbed twice. Forty-three stitches were put on him, and he decided to change his service.
It must be admitted that the only reason I know how to handle numbers is that my mother once forced me to take a year in college in accounting and bookkeeping. She insisted that in four years of college I should learn at least one useful thing, as she said. I graduated from college eleven years ago, and my mother is now dead.
The hotel where I work is called Saint Augustine. It is difficult to say from what motives the first owner gave this name to the hotel. You will not see a crucifix on any wall, not even in the lobby, where some rubber plants of a supposedly tropical look stand in four dusty tubs. From the outside, the hotel still looks solid enough - he knew the best days and the best guests. The fee here is small now, but you can’t count on any special amenities and service.
With the exception of two or three guests who arrive late, I have no one to exchange a word with. But I wasn't looking for a job that required sociability. Often, no lights come on anywhere in the building for the whole night.
They pay me one hundred and twenty-five dollars a week. I live in a one-room apartment, with a kitchen and a bathroom, in East New York on Eighty-first Street.
I was disturbed only once that night, at two o'clock, when a prostitute came down the stairs to the lobby and demanded that I let her out. She arrived at the hotel before I went on duty, so I didn't know what room she was in. Near the front door there was a bell button designed to automatically open the door, but a week ago the bell failed.
When I unlocked the door, the cold night air smelled in my face, and, shivering, I returned with pleasure to my warm office.
The race program for the next day in Hialeah was on my desk. They are in the south now festive and warm. I have already made my choice: in the second run, bet on Gloria. The possible gain in case of her victory would be one to fifteen.
I have been a player for a long time. I spent a good part of my time in college playing poker in our college community. Then working in Vermont, I sat down at the card table every week and won several thousand dollars during my stay there. Since then, I haven't had much luck.
The passion for the game led me to work at the St. Augustine Hotel. When I was first brought to New York, I accidentally met a bookmaker in a bar, 1 who lived in this hotel and paid his customers here. He opened a loan for me, and at the end of the week we summed up the results. I also settled in the same hotel: my funds did not allow me to choose anything better.
When my debt to the bookmaker reached five hundred dollars, he stopped accepting my bets. However, he said that, fortunately for me, the hotel night porter was leaving work and the owner was looking for a replacement. “You give the impression,” said the bookmaker, “of an educated person, graduated from college and, probably, familiar with the rules of addition and subtraction.”
When I took this job, I immediately left St. Augustine's. Being there around the clock was a test that hardly anyone could endure.
From the weekly paychecks, I began to pay off the debt to the bookmaker, and when I paid it off, he again opened a loan for me. But now I owe him one hundred and fifty dollars again.
As we agreed from the very beginning, I indicated in the note my bet on this or that horse, put the note in an envelope and dropped it into the bookmaker's box at the hotel. The bookmaker got up late and did not look into his box before eleven in the morning. That night I decided to bet five dollars. If I had won, I would have received seventy-five dollars, which would have covered half of my debt.
On my desk, next to the racing program, was a Bible open to the Book of Psalms. I grew up in a religious, God-fearing family and occasionally reread the Bible out of habit. My faith in God was no longer the same as it once was in childhood, but I still enjoyed looking into the Holy Scriptures. Immediately on the table perched the novel "Abominable Flesh" by Evelyn Waugh and "The Caprice of Ohlmeyer" by Joseph Conrad. During my two years of night work, I greatly expanded my acquaintance with English and American literature.
Sitting down at the adding machine, I glanced at the open page from the Book of Psalms: “Praise Him according to His might, praise Him according to the multitude of His majesty. Praise Him with the sound of the trumpet, praise Him on the psalter and the harp. Praise Him with tympanum and faces, praise Him on strings and organ.”
It was quite acceptable for Jerusalem, I thought. But where in New York can you find a tympanum?
From the heavenly distance, penetrating through concrete and steel, came the hum of a jet plane flying over New York at that moment. I listened, imagining the flat runway, the silent controllers on the control tower, the flickering of instruments, the radar sweeping the night sky.
“Oh my God,” I said.
When I finished clicking on the adding machine, I pushed back my chair, took a sheet of paper, put it on my knees and looked at the wall calendar. Then he began slowly, inch by inch, to lift the sheet of paper, keeping his eyes on the calendar. Alas, I noticed the paper only when the edge of the sheet caught up with my chin. The miracle didn't happen again.
“Oh, my God,” I repeated, and, crumpling the sheet, angrily threw it into the wastebasket.
Then, neatly folding the bills, I began sorting them alphabetically. I did it mechanically, my thoughts were completely different, and I did not pay attention to the date of the invoices issued. By chance, she suddenly caught my eye. January 15. Anniversary. Kind of, I chuckled sadly. It just happened three years ago.
Clouds covered New York, but as we passed north over Peekskill, the sky cleared and turned blue. The snow sparkled on the hills in the rays of the sun. As I was piloting a small Cessna to a stopover at Teterboro Airport, I overheard passengers behind me congratulating each other on good weather and fresh snow. We flew at a low altitude, about two thousand meters, the fields below us looked like well-lined chessboards, where the trees blackened on a snow-white cover. Short flights at this time of the year were especially to my liking. And it was joyful and somehow comfortable, once there, then here I recognized individual farms, road intersections, rivers and streams familiar to me.
Upstate New York is good in winter, and especially on a nice day at the beginning of winter, when you see it from the air. Once again, I was glad that I was never attracted to work on long-haul airlines, where you spend most of your life at an altitude of more than ten thousand meters, and the earth is hidden from you by a dense layer of clouds or looks like a featureless geographical map.
Irvin Shaw is an extremely famous and popular playwright both during his lifetime and after his death. He lived and created his plays, published books in the United States from 1913 to 1984. It was Irwin Shaw who created such books as "Rich Man, Poor Man" (repeatedly reprinted and filmed) and "Young Lions". He also owns the authorship of the famous work "The Night Porter", which tells the story of Douglas Grimes.
Once this man was a pilot, and a good one, but at some point his luck changed. Douglas had to find himself a simpler occupation, paid very mediocrely. In other words, he got a job at the St. Augustine Hotel, where he was on duty from one in the morning until eight in the morning.
All the duty consisted of a leisurely review of the results of the races and a simple calculation of finances: at night, guests are rarely disturbed. However, at some point, the measured existence of the former pilot abruptly ends. Very serious money falls on his head literally out of nowhere: one hundred thousand dollars.
What would you do if you had such an amount in your hands? And keep in mind that the novel was written in 1975, when a hundred thousand dollars was an even more significant amount than now ... Irving Shaw decides to give his character a second chance and sends him along with a lot of money to another life: bright, unpredictable and rich, full of adventure, chic, danger, beautiful women and unexpected twists.
Even if this scheme seems familiar to you, thanks to the large number of books you read and movies you watched, where big easy money promises exceptionally big trouble, we highly recommend that you read Irwin Shaw's novel The Night Porter, as the ending of this story is absolutely amazing. No matter how sharp, even sophisticated mind, the reader possesses, he will hardly be able to predict the end of the work. See for yourself.
Shaw is known as one of those great writers who is able to present high literature in a deceptively simple style. The author manages to actually dress one of the best prose works in the world in the costume of entertaining fiction, but at the same time retain his talent, investing it to the drop in his own book. The Night Porter is a brilliant proof of this. It should be understood that the film of the same name is quite far from the original in its style and content, so we recommend that you first read the book written by Irving Shaw, and only then decide whether you want to watch the movie. The Night Porter reads like a light detective adventure and certainly doesn't try to bore the reader with philosophical arguments. In which many will find both pleasant, entertaining leisure and rich food for the imagination.
On our literary site, you can download the book The Night Porter by Irving Shaw for free in formats suitable for different devices - epub, fb2, txt, rtf. Do you like to read books and always follow the release of new products? We have a large selection of books of various genres: classics, modern science fiction, literature on psychology and children's editions. In addition, we offer interesting and informative articles for beginner writers and all those who want to learn how to write beautifully. Each of our visitors will be able to find something useful and exciting.
Night Porter Irwin Shaw
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Title: Night porter
About The Night Porter by Irwin Shaw
The life of the protagonist of The Night Porter, Irwin Shaw, changes dramatically when a hundred thousand dollars is in his hands. A fabulous amount for the seventies of the last century. It so happened that on the night when Douglas Grimes, a former pilot, worked in one of the rooming houses in Manhattan, a guest dies in one of the rooms. Douglas found the dead man... and those cherished green papers. Grimes takes the money and gets a chance to start life anew in Europe.
But Grimes is not Tom Ripley. He is a fundamentally decent man, not ready for a life on the run. If you want to figure out what your future will be, you must have a strong connection to your past. For our hero, this means that he will try to find help from an old college friend and respectable older brother. Both men express their willingness to support Grimes, drop everything, give up their jobs and respectable families. This marked the beginning of how money will change the existence of the protagonist. He no longer needs luck. He can't talk about his ill-gotten money, just as he can't stop spending time in bed with glamorous and unexpectedly available women.
On the continent, Grimes finds a mentor that promises nothing good: Miles Fabian discovered in himself the gift of being a bon vivant. He became Grimes' tutor in the art of living well, dragged him into the world of skiing in St. Moritz, underground deals, investing in art porn films. Fabian Grimes' greatest gift is the doctrine of wealth. He will teach him how and what to order. He prescribes a course in the classics for him, telling his student not to worry if he does not understand something right away. Eventually, Grimes, to his surprise, begins to develop his own standards and feelings.
The Night Porter was written in the shadow of Watergate. You will find references to Nixon's crimes in abundance, and the novel itself is permeated with a sense of disappointment due to the fact that the whole game was rigged.
William Goldman called Irving Shaw "one of the great American stylists" praising the "simplicity of his storytelling". Is The Night Porter a deceptively frivolous book full of easy sex and easy money in fabulous places? This appearance only makes the lightness and cynicism inherently more frightening and, if anything, more relevant.
On our site about books, you can download the site for free without registration or read online the book The Night Porter by Irving Shaw in epub, fb2, txt, rtf, pdf formats for iPad, iPhone, Android and Kindle. The book will give you a lot of pleasant moments and a real pleasure to read. You can buy the full version from our partner. Also, here you will find the latest news from the literary world, learn the biography of your favorite authors. For novice writers, there is a separate section with useful tips and tricks, interesting articles, thanks to which you can try your hand at writing.
Quotes from Irwin Shaw's The Night Porter
I don't like my job, but I don't hate it either.
Nothing attracted my attention, I was in that state of complete loneliness that plunges me into philosophical reflections.
Randomness prevails. Will you throw the dice, will you open the card. From now on, you should, like a player, rely only on your luck.
New York is quite suitable for a person who prefers loneliness. The most convenient city in this sense, where without any effort you immediately feel lonely and useless.
Premiere: 04/03/1974
Duration: 01:57:28
1957 A former Nazi and a former prisoner of a concentration camp meet by chance in a Vienna hotel. The awakened memories of both the executioner and the victim kindle a strange, unnatural attraction between them, which the psychoanalyst would call sadomasochism. When the two try to rekindle their sadomasochistic relationship, the Nazi's comrades who served with him in the Waffen-SS begin to harass them.
Interesting Facts:
- In Italy, the persecution of the film stopped only after the verdict of the Supreme Court in Milan: "The Night Porter" is a work of art, and no one under any circumstances has the right to impose on it ...
- In Italy, the persecution of the film stopped only after the verdict of the Supreme Court in Milan: The Night Porter is a work of art, and no one under any circumstances has the right to impose a ban on it.
- As filming drew to a close, producer Robert Gordon Edwards ran out of money. Filming had to be suspended, the group and the actors went home. The fate of the film hung in the balance. The final part (field shooting in Vienna) was completed only a month later.
- The first scene filmed in the film was the scene where Charlotte Rampling dances bare-chested.
- Dirk Bogarde agreed to star on the condition that Liliana Cavani rewrite the script. As a result, one storyline and most of the characters' conversations about politics were thrown out of the original version. In addition, during the course of filming, Dirk Bogarde cut his Max's lines more than once. This always led to heated arguments with Liliana Cavani.
- The film crew was very afraid of the wrath of the inhabitants of Vienna, who could react ambiguously to the Nazi uniform of Dirk Bogarde. But in the end, all fears were in vain. When Bogarde, as he later recalled, “with anxiety and fear” went out into the street in a uniform with a swastika, a crowd of onlookers ... applauded loudly. And someone even shouted: “Heil!”
- In New York, the premiere of the film was furnished in the style of a sadomasochistic orgy. At the dinner party, tables were covered with black vinyl, chains were hung on chairs, black candles were lit, matches were laid out in imitation leather wrappers depicting boots and whips.
- The scene when Charlotte Rampling's heroine dances naked in front of a German officer was included in the 100 best scenes in world cinema. It was removed in one take.
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