Rose Alley [Paperback]

Jeremy Davies (Author)

Book Description

ISBN-10: 1933996137 | ISBN-13: 978-1933996134 | Publication Date: June 1, 2009

Rose Alley maps the creation of a blue movie about Restoration poet John Wilmot (Second Earl of Rochester), a movie filmed during the May 68 Paris riots. It is a behind-the-scenes cataloging of actors and filmmakers, yet it is also a fantastical and venomous love letter to French film and literature, the Restoration, obsessive collectors, pornography, language, revolution, the joys of cross-cultural misunderstanding, and other more or less disparate objects of affection. As Harry Mathews writes: you have no excuse not to read this book.

Editorial Reviews

Review

Jeremy M. Davies has written a literally overwhelming book: the historical Rose Alley was the scene of Dryden s brutal ambush by hirelings of the Earl of Rochester, and each chapter of Davies s book appropriately ambushes the reader, not with brutality but with wit, irresistable ingenuity, and a stupefying narrative abundance that propels us from one sizzling and often hilarious surprise to the next. You have no excuse for not reading this book. --Harry Matthews

About the Author

Jeremy M. Davies was born in Brooklyn. He is an editor at Dalkey Archive Press in Urbana-Champaign, Illinois.

Product Details

• Paperback: 192 pages
• Publisher: Counterpath Press (June 1, 2009)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1933996137
• ISBN-13: 978-1933996134
• Product Dimensions: 7.3 x 5.2 x 0.7 inches
• Shipping Weight: 4 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (3 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,923,056 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A verbal bounce house, June 28, 2009

By 

Matthew R. Dube (Columbia, MO) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Rose Alley (Paperback)

Jeremy M Davies Rose Alley reconstructs the shooting of the film Rose Alley, filmed in the midst of the Paris student revolutions of 1969, each chapter (but two) telling us the movements and gestures, erotic, literary, personal, of one person connected with the film--starlet-cum-ingenue-cum-nudie-cutie Evelyn Nevers to cinematographer-gone-recluse Selwyn Wexler. These are very funny people, and their antic adventures only underscore the level of almost indescribable verbal play in the novel, which really is a phantasmagoric riot of sound. Here's a sample sentence, genuinely culled at random, throwing the book open with as much deliberateness as the I ching: "Big Michael Krause took the maestro out of the piano and put his thumbs into the Russian's Adam's apple" (39). The whole book is like this, clotted with words you can chew and sounds you'll want to sing. Leaving aside the erudition of the novel, fill as it is with English Restoration history and that of the French student revolutions, or film making, this novel serves a feast of readerly pleasure.

5.0 out of 5 stars Review, December 26, 2009

By 

M. Wilson - See all my reviews

This review is from: Rose Alley (Paperback)

When writing a review, I am forced to consider the criteria I use to judge a book. I am forced to boil down, evaporate perhaps, concentrate into a few hundred words my reaction to a work. And because I understand that every reader will have a very different experience and judgment of the same book, I present my review in the most selfish light--not making determinations based on popular criteria of what makes good or bad fiction, but primarily on my own experience of the book.

There are some readers who prefer to read books that are like major motion pictures, ones that require little thought, that paint the picture entirely for the reader. I happen to prefer books that resemble an art gallery. Disparate, each chapter is akin to viewing a portrait. But when viewed together, the connections appear: here you notice the same building (although executed somewhat differently in each), or the profile of a character showing a new feature. From the underbelly, the under-story, the reader creates the connections, the sinews which hold it together.

There is a moment when I fall in love with a book (although I do admit once I did experience love at first page). It happens sometimes on a page, or in a paragraph, or from a sentence (but mostly, not at all). In this book, this occurred on page 77 and continued into page 78.

So often, upon picking up a work of great literature, I have hoped (futilely) that upon perusal, that I would find, tucked deeply within, folded and unexpected, a page or two torn from a dirty magazine, perhaps so faded that one is not even sure of the exact nature of the image, as if the mag had been thrown into the woods for awhile, and in this book, unexpectedly, a few were there.

I judge a book, in part, by how much I linger in the sentences, not just the clauses and phrases, but the wit, by how likely it is that I would pick the book up again just to read a few sentences, as if dissolving a very small piece of chocolate on the tongue...and then, on the likelihood that I would read the book again. On both counts, the book passes, more than passes, succeeds.

0 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Subtlety? No not that!, September 2, 2009

By 

Victor Cresskill (New York, NY) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Rose Alley (Paperback)

Rose Alley is an intersection where at least three things meet: the infamous street in London, the novel I'm reviewing, and the fictional film with which the novel's narrator is obsessed. What's Rose Alley's claim to infamy? Back in the days when poets had patrons and court intrigues weren't merely the stuff of historical novels, the Earl of Rochester hired a passel of lowlifes to ambush John Dryden (artistic jealousy and dueling patrons seemed to have set the event in motion). Though he survived, the Poet Laureate reputedly took a fair beating.

Davies's novel, set in Paris during the 1968 student riots, reminds me of nothing so much as the prologue to Chaucer's Canterbury Tales ... at least the way it's arranged. Except that each character sketch (13 in all) is also the tale. Each one is great fun, and Davies is astonishingly adept at concocting thoroughly unique histories full of delightfully quirky details for each portrait. There's no plot racing toward some climax at breakneck speed; there is a skein of observations, events, and connections that will stimulate the literary palate that has a penchant for subtlety. It's a triumph of voice and wit, of wonderfully formed sentences and sure-footed rhythms. Take a look at the following phrase: "a bird whose hateful call was akin to a reel-to-reel rewound at speed ..." Perfectly balanced syllabically, it "comes beautifully to the ear" (as the Turks say ... kula'a hosh geliyor). Do note: assonance abounds but it's so deft you hardly notice that it is assonance until you go back to see what tickled your ear. There are dozens and dozens of sentences of this ilk. Oh ... and Davies is funny in his understated way. Often very funny.

I can't tell you what a welcome alternative Rose Alley is to say ... Preston Falls by David Gates, which I am at the moment being forced to read by an insistent friend. Gates, a critic whom critics like to praise, is heavy-handed when making his points, has a gift for choosing just the word to ruin an otherwise perfectly good sentence, his humor is over the top or forced or both, and his novel of domestic ennui hardly qualifies as a novel; it's a long-winded complaint by a posturing narrator that one gets the impression is basically a slightly cruder alter ego for the author. So, while mediocre writers such as Gates get a lot of hype and attention and hefty advances, really superb authors like Davies have to rely on discerning readers (that's you!).

If you love language, if you don't need a linear this-happened-then-that-happened plot, if you don't want to be bored by another Oprah panoply of domestic issues, pick up Rose Alley. You won't be disappointed.