Short Stories.
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Book Description
Editorial Reviews
From Publishers Weekly
In the title story of this collection, a man recalls an affair with an unconventional woman (Andre Breton's Nadja) whose history remains veiled to her lover; she instructs him to "invent" it. In "The Tunisian Notebook," Gifford does just that for the Swiss painter August Macke. Using as his source the diary of Macke's traveling companionno comma--there were 2 companions Paul Klee, Gifford sketches a diary for Macke. Those who have read Klee's diary will enjoy comparing the two. The pipe-smoking Klee believed that Macke found this habit "irresistible." Gifford writes, "Macke's unreasonable prejudice against Klee begins with his pipe." According to the author, Klee's attempt at literary style "resulted in . . . certain incidents being exaggerated or manufactured. . . ." Macke's diary is literature--fiction--but both versions are part artifice, part fact. Gifford raises intriguing questions here about the relationships between art, life and lies. The other two stories entertain: an artist recalls his many affairs in "The Brief Confession of an Unrepentant Erotic"; a libidinous Egyptian king in "The Yellow Palace" is described from the perspective of his aide and "procurer." Gifford ( Wild at Heart ) writes with compassion and wit about characters who travel off the beaten track.
Copyright 1991 Reed Business Information, Inc.
Copyright 1991 Reed Business Information, Inc.
From Library Journal
Gifford, author of Wild at Heart (Grove Weidenfeld, 1990) and Sailor's Holiday ( LJ 3/1/91), has a compelling ability to make the reader enter, see, and feel worlds long gone. In this collection of four stories, the title story is related by a man who knew and loved a woman in Paris in the Twenties. She was mad or not mad. He understood her too well or misunderstood her entirely. This shifting but controlled story of love and loss reverberates with surrealist echoes of Andre Breton. "The Tunisian Notebook" is the story of a trip taken in 1914 by Swiss painters Paul Klee, L.R. Moilliet, and August Macke. The third story is related by Julius Mordecai Pincus who reinvented himself and became the incandescent painter of female nudes, Jules Pascin. The fourth story, "Yellow Palace," is an illusionary account of the life of King Farouk of Egypt as related by the man known as Farouk's procurer. This short but brilliantly realized collection is a combination of wild fantasy and straightforward fact. It is touching, amusing, and ironic and a joy to read.
-Marcia Tager, Tenafly, N.J.
Copyright 1991 Reed Business Information, Inc.
-Marcia Tager, Tenafly, N.J.
Copyright 1991 Reed Business Information, Inc.
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