Theatre of Incest [Paperback]

Alain Arias-Misson (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: December 14, 2007

In normal, everyday tones, a story is told by the perpetrator of triple incest: first with his mother as a child and a young man, then with his daughter as he grows into mature manhood, and finally with his sister in middle age. This primeval fairytale burns with an icy passion as the narrator switches roles along with familial relationships. The quasi-metaphysical lucidity with which he pursues his odd fate is eerie, particularly in light of his apparent innocence as to the perverse nature of his taboo attachments, and the theatrical artifice with which he pursues them. In the end, his passionate desire is so earnest that the reader is left to wonder if he is truly a monster or an innocent: who is directing whom?

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Writer-artist Arias-Misson's fourth novel (after The Return of the Mayan to Manhattan) is recounted by an unnamed narrator in a voice so matter-of-fact that the monstrous taboo of incest becomes almost mundane. After his tender rape by a housemaid at age four or five, an incident he suspects inspires his incestuous yearnings, the narrator revels in the feel of his mother's silk underwear, seeks sex with older women at age 13, and by 16 is his mother's lover. Their feverish relationship lasts for more than two decades, until he beds his daughter (her mother is absent from the narrative) when she turns 16; he later leaves his daughter's boudoir for his sister's, and the reunited siblings settle into sensual middle-age cohabitation in Paris. Arias-Misson and his sexually insatiable narrator detail consensual acts of sodomy, bondage, golden showers, fanciful and sometimes violent role-playing and sex during menstruation with a precision that would make de Sade smile. The graphic sexual intensity is sure to engage readers who like their erotica with a literary bent, but the novel's dispassionate depiction of incest and unrelenting jubilation at perversity for perversity's sake will for many come off as plainly played for shock value. (Dec.)
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Review

"Alain Arias-Misson has lovingly polished his unsettling dark familial jewel until it shines as brightly as those brilliant gems of his precursors, connoisseurs of incest, Fernando Arrabal, Pierre Klossowski, and Mario Vargas Llosa." --Walter Abish

"Arias-Misson is a truly 'mid-Atlantic' literary artist, an heir to both worlds, publishing pieces both verbal and visual, here and broad." --Richard Kostelanetz

"Arias-Misson may be the most innovative writer around today, he is not just innovative. He also happens to be one of the truest mirrors flashing out there." --Eugene Wildman

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Paperback: 120 pages
• Publisher: Dalkey Archive Pr; 1st edition (December 14, 2007)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1564784819
• ISBN-13: 978-1564784810
• Product Dimensions: 7.1 x 6 x 0.4 inches
• Shipping Weight: 4.8 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (2 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #791,261 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Hardly a Book...more a manuscript, December 30, 2009

By 

Jane (Canada) - See all my reviews

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: Theatre of Incest (Paperback)

The 'book' is more a manuscript printed on a very small book size. I found the entire novel less like a novel with a story, but rather more anecdotal. It has a preponderance of excellent desciptions of feelings which seem more like he is analyzing himself as a psychiatrist. He manages to succinctly put down in words the males feelings during sex with his mother, then his daughter and finally his sister.

It was mildly erotic in his sexual forays overlaid heavily with analytical dialogue. It helps describes his feelings, but for me it read more like a small collections of interesting events (which is was) rather than a novel with a beginning, middle and end.

I didn't really feel like I was reading a book. It is a book in the loosest of definitions in my opinion. It has a front and back cover.

I feel if he could have taken what he wrote and expanded it into more of a story of people and feelings with the psychological overlays on it...I would have felt more interested in it. As it was...it was too short and left this reader feeling like I was eavesdropping in a psychiatrists office on a man who had sex with his family.

7 of 10 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Family funhouse, June 8, 2008

By 

A Reader (Lafayette, Colorado United States) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Theatre of Incest (Paperback)

A man plagued by identity issues, not to mention voyeuristic sexual proclivities, finally achieves self-actualization when he gets a real, live participatory audience for his antics. In this universe, in a world where a mirror or doppelganger lurks around every corner, and people have immense amounts of time to lend to coital impulses, the fact that his sexual partners are all nuclear-family members is the least of the problems. This is a novel about power---supposedly feminine power, since at every step this man imagines himself as both victim and perpetrator---let's just say the guy's got some profound concerns with vagina dentata. He's devoured first by his mother, then his daughter, then his sister, even as he acknowledges that he's the one doing the penetrating. While his perception is that he's identifying with his mother, then his daughter, then his sister---becoming them by merging his body with theirs---identity in this world is just another word for alterity, even as the lines between male and female, and gay and straight, fade into obscurity. Life is only real when it happens behind one staging or another---windows, open doors, and finally, theater in the...round.

As in Lolita (although it's worth reminding ourselves here that Nabokov indulges none of the standard, pornographic discourse deployed here), Arias-Misson gives us a damned smart, too smart, narrator, who intellectualizes his experiences and responses, frequently turning back against his own rationalizations, and flat-out lying about his effect on "others" (assuming he can imagine them as separate beings). "Womanness," and otherness, are terrifyingly elusive concepts for him, much as he struggles to grasp (at) them; consequently, his detachment from his fears detaches the reader from the scenarios he concocts to control le feminine---le not-him. That is to say, there is titillation to be had here, but the guy's so brilliantly moronic in his analysis of why titillation is titillating to him that his musings, ultimately entirely narcissistic, kind of wreck the sexy part of the high. The book should also be read alongside The Story of O, and its critique of the location of feminine power in sexual scenes staged by men.

Potential readers may suffer a jerking of the knee when presented with a book about a guy who does his mother, daughter, and sister---your basic `tween-boy, wet-briefs nightmare. But in the end the storytelling has far more to do with the self-obsession that can result from representations of reflexivity, especially when familial roles become performative ones. We've all been to the holiday dinners in which everyone jumps into their family-role of origin. The only difference here is a lot more semen in the gravy. -KF