From the lesbian bars of New York City to the back streets of Fez, from the S&M scene in Los Angeles to the calm ocean depths off a Caribbean island, the heroine of Don Juan in the Village is ever on the prowl. In search of the longed-for, idealized lover, she finds instead a series of wrenching, sometimes hilarious encounters with an array of women, among them a movie star, a moroccan prostitute, and a high school dropout who works as a grocery store clerk. Hip, sardonic, yet painfully self-conscious and often deluded, she is convinced that no matter where she goes or whom she is with, she is doomed to perpetual solitude and estrangement.
| ||||||||||||||||||||||||
Book Description
Editorial Reviews
From Publishers Weekly
In these 14 tales of lesbian relationships, journalist and novelist ( Real Estate ) DeLynn brings a distinctive, eloquent and discerning voice--by turns diffident, bold, self-mocking, biting--to the universal quandaries of love. The stories make the rounds of bars in Morocco, Ibiza, Puerto Rico or Greenwich Village, affording a kind of cultural/erotic tour of women in different societies. Bars themselves acquire significance as places of self-knowledge and a necessary sadness, where one might learn "magic words." Funny and wry, "Fame" tells how the narrator, a writer, lures a famed film actress back to her pad and seduces her, meanwhile worrying about how the bathroom looks and, in her nervous exhilaration, feeling like Woody Allen, Norman Mailer, Donald Trump. "Night Diving" contrasts the mystique and dangers of scuba diving with an unsatisfactory seduction on a Caribbean holiday. "The Duchess of L.A." is a spoof of the S/M scene. Sexual descriptions are explicit, the literary quality is high.
Copyright 1990 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.
Copyright 1990 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.
From the Back Cover
"The thing about sex-as this novel demonstrates in relentless (and riveting) detail-is that it's hardly ever just about sex. DeLynn has created a tough yet vulnerable antihero."-Village Voice
"If Woody Allen were a lesbian, he might have written something like Jane DeLynn's Don Juan in the Village."-The Observer (London)
"A fascinating, funny, and intense world tour of lesbian lust. . . . Bold, brash, frank, risqué, engaging, and at times borderline brilliant."-Lambda Book Report --This text refers to an alternate Paperback edition.
Product Details
Would you like to update product info or give feedback on images?
|
More About the Author
Author Jane DeLynn has been compared to an astonishingly diverse group of writers-from Aristophanes and Euripedes and Rabelais to Jane Austen, Edgar Allen Poe, Jonathan Swift, Marcel Proust, Virginia Woolf, Helene Cixous, JD Salinger, and Woody Allen. Her first-person trilogy of "In Thrall" (a teenager in love with her teacher in the pre-Stonewall '60s), "Don Juan in the Village" (cruising for love in the US and abroad), and "Leash" (tedium of Capitalist excesses leads the narrator on an adventure which leads her to renounce being "human") is considered the definitive portrait of lesbian life in the last half of the 20th century. Also a journalist-she spent two months in Saudi Arabia and Kuwait during the first Gulf War-- and librettist-- "The Monkey Opera: The Making of a Soliloquy" was produced at the Brooklyn Academy of Music--she currently resides in Long Island and Los Angeles. Her aim in writing is to "think the Unthinkable and speak the Unspeakable."
Customer Reviews
|
Share your thoughts with other customers:
|
||||||||||||||||||||||
|
Most Helpful Customer Reviews
3 of 5 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
A first-rate collection of sharply observed un-love stories,
By A Customer
This review is from: Don Juan in the Village (Hardcover)
These interconnected stories follow the (lesbian) narrator's search forlove in New York and overseas; De Lynn's minimalist style is a marvel, and she is a thematic cousin to Mary Gaitskill and Denis Johnson.
Share your thoughts with other customers: Create your own review
|
|
Tag this product(What's this?)Think of a tag as a keyword or label you consider is strongly related to this product.
Tags will help all customers organize and find favorite items. |
Sell a Digital Version of This Book in the Kindle Store
If you are a publisher or author and hold the digital rights to a book, you can sell a digital version of it in our Kindle Store.
Learn more
