An inventor living at the beginning of the enlightenment keeps journals reflecting on everything from his inventive lovemaking to his discovery of the first binary code, plus caffeine stimulation, the insanity defense, and the memory of birds. Tour.
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Book Description
Editorial Reviews
Amazon.com Review
In his debut novel Free City, Eric Dalton has found fertile ground for an exploration of the roles of reason and religion in the fate of men and women. The setting is northern Europe in the 17th century at a time when the Enlightenment was in the throes of an often traumatic birth. At the center of this tale is an unnamed inventor who applies reason and science in experiments with everything from anesthetics to airships. But he is baffled by his lover's undeniable powers, which seem to be rooted in the occult. And he is troubled by the machinations of his patron Roberto, whose schemes turn out to be devious and self-serving. Don't be surprised when reason and progress prevail, more or less. After all, Enlightenment did win out in the end. Didn't it?
From Publishers Weekly
Set in the mid-1600s in an unnamed northern European port much like Antwerp, Darton's seductive fable is a stylistic tour de force, a dazzling parable about the birth of the modern age with its terrors and promise. It unfolds as the diary of a Leonardo-like inventor, scientist, surgeon, memory expert and sexual acrobat whose inventions include explosives, anesthetics, a military airship and humanlike automata. This unnamed polymath, scornful of the city's privileged burghers and full of withering irony as a keen observer of human failings, has made a Faustian pact with his patron, Roberto, a ruthless, grandiloquent merchant and slave trader whose traffic in human cargo morally repulses the narrator. Adela, the inventor's mistress, is a healer and herbalist who lapses into delirium and communes with an entity she calls Master. The plot centers on Roberto's attempt to seize absolute political power and the inventor's devious schemes to foil his patron's tyrannical ambitions. Darton, who teaches media, technology and cultural studies at Hunter College in New York, creates weird symbols of technology run amok, such as Friedrich, Roberto's garrulous talking duck?no mere clockwork mechanism but a multilingual bird that resents its manipulative master. Published in a compact 41/2"x 63/4" format, this short debut novel is reminiscent of Italo Calvino's work in its dashing mingling of history and fantasy. Author tour.
Copyright 1996 Reed Business Information, Inc.
Copyright 1996 Reed Business Information, Inc.
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Outrageous,
By A Customer
This review is from: Free City: A Novel (Hardcover)
It is outrageous that FREE CITY is not in print. The world needs it. There is no other book like it; not only is it hilarious and entertaining, it warps the way one understands our world. Track it down; you will not be disappointed.
4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
A new medieval mystery: fun, suspenseful & thought-provoking,
By A Customer
This review is from: Free City: A Novel (Hardcover)
FREE CITY is a brilliant book. Darton weaves mysticism, science, superstition, and commerce into a mystery that's tragic, funny, and oddly optimistic. His characters are complicated and sympathetic -- even Friedrich, a fowl I found too preposterous at first and then wound up really liking. Darton's medieval inventor writes: "I am hopeful -- though the ingredients commingled within are not uniformly wholesome -- that the reader may draw something of nutritive value from this roiling stewpot." I was thoroughly nourished.
4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
This book stimulates the mind and expands the senses.,
By A Customer
This review is from: Free City: A Novel (Hardcover)
Free City stimulates the mind and frees the senses, thereby expanding them.
Reading, as someone once said, is thinking with another man's [sic] mind. Eric's mind is a great one to think with.
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