A Floating Life will delight lovers of Kafka, Murakami, and the magic realism of Gabriel García Márquez. A nameless narrator awakens to the muddle of middle age, no longer certain who or what he is. He finds himself at a party talking to a woman he doesn't know who proves to be his wife. Soon separated but still living in the same apartment, he is threatened by a litigious dachshund and saddled with a stubborn case of erectile dysfunction in a world that seems held together by increasingly mercurial laws and elusive boundaries. His relationship deepens with an elderly Dutch model maker named Pecheur whose miniature boats are erratically offered for sale in a hard-to-find shop called The Floating World. Enlivened by Pecheur's dream to tame the destructive forces of nature, the narrator begins to find his bearings. With quiet humor and wisdom, A Floating Life charts its course among images that surprise and disorient, such as a job interview in a steam room with a one-eyed, seven-foot-tall chef, a midnight intrusion of bears, and the narrator's breast feeding of the baby he has birthed.
"Equal parts science fiction, magic realism, and hard-boiled detective story, A Floating Life is a dizzying journey . . . a seamless, spellbinding narrative in the lineage of Borges, Castaneda, and Philip K. Dick."?Kenneth Goldsmith, author of Uncreative Writing
Autorentext
Tad Crawford grew up in the artists' colony of Woodstock, New York. He is the author of many nonfiction books and his writing has appeared in venues such as Art in America, the Café Irreal, Confrontation, Communication Arts, Family Circle, Glamour, Guernica, the Nation, and Writer's Digest. The founder and publisher of Allworth Press, he lives in New York City.
Zusammenfassung
This novel of magic realism, blended with quirky, surreal humorshould appeal to readers with a taste for the literary and the strange.Booklist In A Floating Life, a novel in the lineage of Borges, Castañeda, and Philip K. Dick (Kenneth Goldsmith), a nameless narrator who has reached a certain age is not quite consigned to leaving his youthful illusions behind. In fact, his reality is starting feel a little fractured. Following a harrowing job interview in a steam room, he finds himself at a party with a complete stranger who happens to be his wife. Soon, he is threatened by a litigious dachshund, and finds himself occupying the penthouse of a building buried underground and saddled with a stubborn case of erectile dysfunction. In a world that seems held together by increasingly mercurial laws and elusive boundaries, he finds work in an out-of-the-way shop called The Floating World. Here, an elderly Dutch model maker named Pecheur toils over model ships. And here, enlivened by Pecheur's dream to tame the destructive forces of nature, the narrator begins to find his bearings. Written with ominous humor and fearless invention, this tale of a midlife crisis takes readers through [a] fantastical sagalike Odysseus's voyage without homecoming, like Dante's tour without a guide or a Beatrice, Crawford's narrator recounts his amazing adventures in a mesmerizing diction of long-suffering cool(Nelson W. Aldrich Jr.).