ISBN: 9781628973570
Editorial: Dalkey Archive Press
Autor: Darton, Eric
Año de edición: 2020
N° Paginas: 176
Tipo de pasta: Pasta blanda
Descripción: About the Author Eric Darton was born in New York City in 1950. His books include Divided We Stand: A Biography of New York’s World Trade Center (Basic Books, 1999, 2011), and Free City, a novel. He teaches at Global College of Long Island University, Harry Van Arsdale Center for Labor Studies (Empire State College) and New York University. Previously, he has been an editor of Conjunctions, American Letters & Commentary and Frigatezine. An inventor living at the beginning of the Enlightenment keeps journals reflecting on everything from his inventive lovemaking to his discovery of the first binary code, caffeine stimulation, the insanity defense, and the memory of birds.First published in 1996 to international acclaim, Eric Darton’s Free City is the fictional journal of L., a seventeenth-century inventor caught in a precarious love triangle, even as his beloved northern European port town teeters on the brink of catastrophe.In a tale laced with bawdy humor and elements of the fantastical, L. must balance the demands of his patron―a rapacious entrepreneur―against those of his sorceress lover. As L. attempts to avert calamity, he finds himself joined by the most unlikely of allies.Weaving together historical, political and absurdist elements, Free City resonates more profoundly today than ever. Review "Witty and ingenious." ―Michael Harris, Los Angeles Times"Darton's seductive fable is a stylistic tour de force, a dazzling parable about the birth of the modern age with its terrors and promise. It unfolds as the diary of a Leonardo-like inventor, scientist, surgeon, memory expert and sexual acrobat whose inventions include explosives, anesthetics, a military airship and humanlike automata . . . reminiscent of Italo Calvino's work in its dashing mingling of history and fantasy." ―Publishers Weekly"A peculiar novel written in diary form, putatively by a famous doctor-inventor in a northern European city at the beginning of the Enlightenment. . . . readers . . . will enjoy the sheer inventiveness of the faux period language and the intellectual challenges of the narrative." ―Booklist"Darton's first novel, a curious little dip into history and fantasy, is about the fall of a European city in the Enlightenment period―told through the diary of an aging scientist . . . Tongue-in-cheek historical tale that's intelligent, learned, and of good cheer . . ." ―Kirkus Reviews Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved. FIRST DAY That someone rearranged the furniture during the night, I have no doubt. This is how I came by the egg-sized lump above my left eye socket―my collision with the remarkably accurate clock young Christiaan sent me―it is a lucky thing its pendulum caused no laceration. Or perhaps I forgot that I’d hung it from the seventh rafter. Do advancing years conspire to subvert my Art? The works sent off to Emmerich for refitting, so great was the impact. Adela must have sensed something amiss, for she arrived early and with a poultice already prepared. This temporary indisposition prompted some belated calculations. My progressed Mars opposes my Natal Saturn and the Dragon’s Tail is transiting, yet my work proceeds unhindered.SECOND DAY A welcome diversion. Roberto’s pebbles rattling against the transom just as my wandering imagination foundered on the unforgiving shoals of chemistry. Truth to tell, I’d sacrificed just the tip of my most inessential digit to an exploding beaker shard―I fear I have lost some portion of my former skill. Glad of help with the bandaging, during which Roberto informed me that he had caught a duck to speak.“It is important,” I told him with gravity, “now that you have made him the gift of language, that you give your fowl to understand that whatever form we may take, we are all stuff of the Creator’s essence.”Roberto paid scant attention to my injunction. Either he thought its triteness beneath comment or was, perhaps, too enmeshed in h
- Idioma: Inglés
- Envío: Desde EE. UU.
- Libro Impreso y Nuevo
