Peter Owen Modern Classic
5 total works
A Parisian actress in her late 70s, with an active stage and sex life, is held for questioning after the murder of a barkeeper. What follows is a superbly imaginative, often hilarious vivification of Paris in the late 1940s. "Without Cendrars, neither Miller nor Burroughs would have existed.
In January 1848 John Augustus Sutter, 'the first American millionaire' was ruined by one blow of a pickaxe. That blow revealed gold in one of the streams in Sutter's Californian estate, triggering the Gold Rush that brought hordes of greedy miners from every corner of the world to Sutter's vast domain. GOLD, Blaise Cendrars' first novel, is the story of this bankrupt Swiss papermaker who abandoned his family and made his way to America to seek his fortune. From New York he pushed westward, eventually acquiring a huge tract of land of which he was virtually an independent ruler and which was on the point of making him 'the richest man in the world' when the Gold Rush brought disaster. For the last thirty years of his life Sutter tried vainly to get compensation from the US government. He died in 1880, a broken old man. Cendrars spent fifteen years translating Sutter's life-story into fiction, departing (often radically) from the known historical facts to reshape the story of one of the great American pioneers with the pure gold of his own imagination.
Published in 1924 GOLD is a work of breathless pace, fantastic humour and soaring invention: an extraordinary story extraordinarily told. In 1936 Cendrars went to Hollywood to work on the movie version, 'Sutter's Gold'.
Published in 1924 GOLD is a work of breathless pace, fantastic humour and soaring invention: an extraordinary story extraordinarily told. In 1936 Cendrars went to Hollywood to work on the movie version, 'Sutter's Gold'.
At once truly appalling and appallingly funny, Blaise Cendrars's Moravagine bears comparison with Naked Lunch—except that it's a lot more entertaining to read. Heir to an immense aristocratic fortune, mental and physical mutant Moravagine is a monster, a man in pursuit of a theorem that will justify his every desire. Released from a hospital for the criminally insane by his starstruck psychiatrist (the narrator of the book), who foresees a companionship in crime that will also be an unprecedented scientific collaboration, Moravagine travels from Moscow to San Antonio to deepest Amazonia, engaged in schemes and scams as, among other things, terrorist, speculator, gold prospector, and pilot. He also enjoys a busy sideline in rape and murder. At last, the two friends return to Europe—just in time for World War I, when "the whole world was doing a Moravagine."
This new edition of Cendrars's underground classic is the first in English to include the author's afterword, "How I Wrote Moravagine."
This new edition of Cendrars's underground classic is the first in English to include the author's afterword, "How I Wrote Moravagine."
Dan Yack is an eccentric English millionaire shipowner, a notorious hell-raiser, and the envy of all St Petersburg. He is also the alter ego of his creator, Blaise Cendrars. This strange travel yarn begins with Dan Yack fiding out that he is no longer wanted by his lover, Hedwiga. Rejection letter in hand, he is completely drunk and sitting in the middle of the street in a pool of horse's urine. Eventually he wanders in to 'The Stray Dog' nightclub to fall asleep under a table. Sitting around the table are three hard-up young artists drinking vodka. One is Arkadie Goischman, a Jewish poet; the second is Ivan Sabakov, a peasant sculptor; and the third is Andre Lamont, a puny French musician. Regaining consciousness, Dan Yack impulsively invites them to accompany him on a world voyage via the Antarctic. All three accept the offer and they set off in a schooner called The Green Star. Unfortunately, as the voyage progresses, the weather gets worse and they enter pack-ice. Impatient, Dan Yack orders the crew to land him and his three companions while they wait for a clear passage. They have have enough provisions for a long dark polar winter. But things do not run smoothly.
The musician destroys their watches. The poet drifts off into serious daydreams. The sculptor starts making statues of Dan Yack in ice. And Dan Yack himself is worried: about time, about breaking his monocle and about having no-one to love. But when the sun finally returns after the polar winter, no-one could predict the surreal disaster that is about to unfold; a scenario involving a plum pudding, whales, women and World War One.
The musician destroys their watches. The poet drifts off into serious daydreams. The sculptor starts making statues of Dan Yack in ice. And Dan Yack himself is worried: about time, about breaking his monocle and about having no-one to love. But when the sun finally returns after the polar winter, no-one could predict the surreal disaster that is about to unfold; a scenario involving a plum pudding, whales, women and World War One.
CONFESSIONS OF DAN YACK continues the adventures of the eccentric English millionaire Dan Yack. Yack is Blaise Cendrar's alter ego and the CONFESSIONS represent the distilled riches of the author's picaresque life, purportedly spoken into a Dictaphone and divided into nine 'cylinders' which constitute the book's chapters. He tells the story of his tender love for the young Mireille (daughter of one of many mistresses) whom he meets in a crowded tabac in a Paris gone mad on Armistice night, 1918. This love transforms Dan Yack's life: he abandons his women, gives up his fast cars and debauchery to marry this convent-educated girl of his dreams. To indulge Mireille's fantasies he launches her as a film star by creating films for her and casting her in wraith-like roles inspired by Edgar Allen Poe. But before long Mireille is struck by a mysterious and fatal illness, the psychological origins of which raise disturbing questions about the nature of their relationship.
Whereas Dan Yack's previous memoir celebrated Yack's exploits with malicious bravado, the CONFESSIONS is a bittersweet memoir of love and loss in which the typically earthy, reckless Cendrars surface is shot through with profound melancholy and a palpable sense of psycho-sexual disburbance.
Whereas Dan Yack's previous memoir celebrated Yack's exploits with malicious bravado, the CONFESSIONS is a bittersweet memoir of love and loss in which the typically earthy, reckless Cendrars surface is shot through with profound melancholy and a palpable sense of psycho-sexual disburbance.