南方纪事《All over but the Shoutin'》

リック・ブラッグがニューヨーク・タイムズ紙の特集記事でピュリツァー賞を獲得した理由のひとつは、彼が自分のルーツを決して忘れなかったことだ。貧困が人生をゆがめることを身をもって知り、貧しい人々にも尊厳があるという個人的な信念にもとづいて、彼は都市のスラムにおける暴力と死について書いている。貧しさにあえぐ南部の若者であった時代を回想する本書で、ブラッグは不屈の精神を持つ彼の母親に心からの敬意を捧げ、酒飲みの父を許そうと苦闘する。『All over but the Shoutin'』は、こればかりでなく他の多くの要素をも見事に描き尽くした作品だ。（Amazon.com）

One reason Rick Bragg won a Pulitzer Prize for his feature articles at the New York Times is that he never forgets his roots. When he writes about death and violence in urban slums Bragg draws on firsthand knowledge of how poverty deforms lives and on his personal belief in the dignity of poor people. His memoir of a hardscrabble Southern youth pays moving tribute to his indomitable mother and struggles to forgive his drunken father. All Over but the Shoutin' is beautifully achieved on both these counts--and many more.

The life story of Pulitzer Prize winner Rick Bragg until recently with the New York Times who reported on numerous real-life stories of tragedy from Susan Smith's murder of her own children to the Oklahoma City bombing to tales of poverty crime strife . . . all said to have been excellently covered because the man knew the lives of these people he reported on because he had risen from similar if not worse circumstances.

The prose is never flowery. In fact it is full of I's. But it is never self-centred in the negative sense--it is simply lucid in its unembellished description of his life of his parents especially his hero of a mother his less-than-ideal father his siblings his town and his rise in the profession.

Too bad he has had to resign from the Times in late-May 2003 when--following the Jayson Blair scandal and with the Stephen Glass affair years back--he was made to take responsibility for having failed to grant a byline to a minor correspondent who did much of the site checks and interviews for a story. In his defence but without making excuses he says it has always been the senior editors who make it next to impossible for the underlings to get a byline at the Times that it has always been their policy. Nonetheless Bragg is set to take a break to fulfill his two-book deal with Random House and I look forward to reading his works again.