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From Romania to France via America Novels ¥ La Traversee du Styx (Crossing the Styx) |
A Marquise of Our Time ÒPilots of tremendous airships and even coarse, smelly
coachmen are known to have been driven insane by a pair of green eyes and a
copper curl.Ó Vladimir Nabokov: Ada or Ardor CONTENTS Lucky Is the Author Who Doesn't Have to InventÉ Jealousy Is a Wildcat from Mars A Walk Along the Flooded Seine Chez Michaux with Russian Femme Fatale and Mint Tea A Phone Conversation Without Being Phony Past Recaptured at CafŽ de Flore Brought to You by the
Flirting Corporation When Life Imitates Art and Vice Versa Like the Seine, Quietly Flows the Verbal Foreplay When I Was to Have the Fun of my Life, a Tourist Dropped
in my SoufflŽ Deconstructing Ida A Fish and the Bicycle Doucement mais sžrement, or A Patient Wolf Never Starves Troubles with the Other Woman The Best Literary Conversations Are Consummated in Bed Breaking Thespian Legs in Paris Monsieur X of Editions Y A Most Inopportune Visit If I Were the Dictator of United StatesÉ Highs or Lows Life Flows or Blows Stilted Life with Marquis, Coat of Arms, and Armagnac Rubbing Knees with the Aristocratic Couple Honesty Never Goes Unpunished No Happy Ending Man Ray's Imaginary Masterpieces My Stalingrad Commences chez King of Expats Take Your Pleasure and Run! When in Doubt Trust your Dirty Mind! Self-Censorship: Literature's Worst Nightmare Never Underestimate Your Last Day in Paris Unexpected Addition to an Unending Story Stalled Angel Ascending Lucky Is the
Author Who Doesn't Have to InventÉ Light of my art, trickster of
my heart, my letters may reach you in Montparnasse, but your real address is MonParnasse.
From the summit of my mythical
mountain, you beckon the tireless climber. Every drop of perspiration is a
river of inspiration, every word echoed down to me -un bon mot. You're my twin mate separated by fate. Zola wrote Nana to condemn the sexual overload of La Belle Epoque,
a turn-of-the-past-century paradise which the French are mourning still. He
gave birth to a snow-white Venus (not on frothy waves but on bubbling
champagne) with a talent for manipulating the bourgeois hounds chasing her,
extracting bullion and anteroom praises with her origine du monde in all its pink glory. An intelligent woman in his
opinion would have been a mistake. The only indulgence granted: she had to be
good-natured. But what if an author wishes to
write about an eye-filling nana (don't
confuse her with a nursemaid!) of substance? A contemporary Nana whose sallies
and follies keep him awake at night? At first he doesn't know what to make of
her, her past shrouded in mystery, her chocolate-coated present, her Slavic
unpredictability, her erotic novel which fuels the flames of adultery in
certain publishers. As he gets to know this Russian beauty from the Biblical
sense to Freudian nonsense, he discovers that he is willing to handle more
than he can fondle, that the Cosmic Joker has answered his prayers and then
some, that he has become a character in a drama with no synopsis and no
foreseeable dash into the sunset. This author has never kept a
journal. Like vintage wine, literature has to mature before reaching the
taste buds of the reader. But this time he's beside himself. He has put all
his other projects on hold in order to write this tale of lust cum love,
curiosity cum recklessness as it began one drizzling February evening in the
year of Our Lord 2001. Pity, this tale bears only my nom
de plume. Our original intention was to
weave our efforts into a novelistic octopus with a ferocious appetite. I
would write a chapter and she would follow up with a chapter of her own. The
fascination lay in the fact that two authors would be describing the same
events as they unfolded with two different voices and gender sensibilities. Reader, this is not a novel in
the ordinary sense of Webster's. I can make an ass of myself, but I cannot
play God. I am at the mercy of an untamable monster: Reality. I can only
promise you this. No matter where the story takes me and how it will end, no
matter the rise and fall of my passion for the Marquise, every chapter vows
to reflect faithfully the state of my heart and moods accordingly. I won't
change a single epithet—even if my heroine turns out to have more fangs
than toes! |