Paul West is one of our most acclaimed writers, author of such novels as Rat Man of Paris and Lord Byron's Doctor. This time out, he astounds us with a novel on the nature of creative genius and its nexus with sexuality, a novel at turns erotic, lewd, philosophical mythical, and spiritual Author interviews.
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Editorial Reviews
Amazon.com Review
Readers familiar with the definitive imaginative work on original sin written by the stern, blind 17th-century poet John Milton may be shocked by Paul West's younger version of the man. In Sporting with Amaryllis, West describes a youthful Milton bursting at the seams with sexual curiosity and panting to experience his own personal fall from grace. At turns elegant, vulgar, spiritual, and erotic, this lyrical imagining of Milton's early life presents a mesmerizing portrait of the poet as a young man.
Paul West, author of 16 previous novels, writes in language so vivid and so precise that the streets of 17th-century London leap off the page in all their smelly, filthy ambiance. Even the young Milton is a collection of smells, tastes, and textures over which a thick patina of fevered genius is laid. And Amaryllis herself--prostitute, first love, poetic muse--is more than what she seems, a fact that gives this slim volume an unexpected twist at the end.
From Publishers Weekly
A rich feast for lovers of ornate and stylish prose, West's (The Tent of Orange Mist) latest short novel takes as its protagonist the poet John Milton, although the story is a far cry from a conventional work of historical fiction. The bulk of the narrative concerns a single fantastical encounter between a teenage Milton, sent back to London by his Cambridge tutor, and a mysterious black woman who is possibly one of the classical muses, and whom Milton names Amaryllis after a shepherdess in Virgil. Explicitly linking sexuality and creativity, West has Milton's tryst with Amaryllis serve as the poet's initiation into both realms. Indeed, West's adolescent Milton is so sex-obsessed that he sometimes seems a Renaissance Portnoy, and at times the earthiness of the novel (which also features musings on the plague, castration, and bodily processes and decay) rises to rather uncomfortable levels. Occasionally verging on the surreal, the novel has an allegorical quality while refusing to settle into any straightforward set of meanings. Both Milton and Amaryllis are a little less than fully formed, hovering uneasily between being mythic constructs and well-rounded characters. The real protagonist here is arguably language itself, and the sheer gorgeousness and texture with which West delineates both the artistic and the sensual supplies abundant rewards.
Copyright 1996 Reed Business Information, Inc.
Copyright 1996 Reed Business Information, Inc.
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3.0 out of 5 stars
An "Amaryllis" Not Quite Fully in Bloom,
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This review is from: Sporting with Amaryllis (Hardcover)
I am a huge fan of The Place in Flowers Where Pollen Rests, Paul West's staggeringly inventive novel of the southwest; but I have to say I was disappointed by this book overall. The idea sounds SO fruitful: imagine John Milton, the man who wrote one of the great religious epics of all time, Paradise Lost, as a lascivious undergrad desperate to lose his virginity. But the premise is more enticing in summary than in execution, and I was even more dismayed to find West treating Amaryllis as a LITERAL muse. West's writing is always a pleasure, but this book, sorry to say, leaves one mostly with the impression of a great opportunity lost.
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