A Faker's Dozen; Stories
New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 2003. First Edition [Stated], First Printing [Stated]. Hardcover. 268, [4] pages. Signed by the author on the title page. Stories include Squeak, Memory; Splinters, The Return of Eros to Academe, Paper Hero, The Suburbiad, The Swap, Filophilia, But, Microsoft! What Byte Through Wonder Windows Breaks?, Tongue of the Jews, The Two Franzes, and The War Lovers. Ranging from turn-of-the-twentieth-century Prague to the site of a Central American rebellion to the home of a certain Seattle software magnate to the roof of an urban skyscraper, each of these outrageous (though occasionally tender) stories offers keen insight into human nature. The wicked exploits of an assortment of louts and losers occupy Bukiet's latest collection hints at the deceitful nature of its multiple protagonists. An aspiring writer talks Vladimir Nabokov across midtown Manhattan one afternoon in the summer of Watergate. A young co-ed's seduction of her elderly history professor delivers her an A and him lasting happiness. Max, "a liar and a voyeur, like any true artist,' wanders the East Village taking photographs of murder victims. Melvin Jules Bukiet, MFA, Columbia University, is an author and literary critic. He has written a number of novels, including Sandman's Dust, After, While the Messiah Tarries, Signs and Wonders, Strange Fire, and A Faker's Dozen. He edited the collections Neurotica: Jewish Writers on Sex, Nothing Makes You Free, and Scribblers on the Roof. He won the 1992 Edward Lewis Wallant Award and other prizes; stories published in Antaeus, Paris Review, and essays published in The New York Times, Washington Post, and Los Angeles Times. Derived from a Kirkus review: Eleven stories in a third collection from Bukiet focus on the complicated lives of the renowned and disingenuous. In the opener, “Squeak, Memory,” a writer stalks Nabokov in New York during the Watergate season. A Humbert Humbert’s figure to Vladimir, the unnamed narrator delights in extracting hidden meanings from every mundane gesture of the great writer and lepidopterist. In “Splinter,” a seriously funny rumination on collectible relics, a science-fiction hack turned media-mogul bids for the centerpiece completing his reconstruction of the True Cross, only to be upstaged by a mysterious woman in green. “The Return of Eros to Academe” will provoke the ire of campaigners who thought Mamet’s Oleanna tackled the seductive student/teacher relationship genre unrealistically. “Paper Hero” trails a literary wannabe who’s convinced that in order to publish his book and usurp Rushdie on the Islamic most wanted list, he needs to be shot. ““The Swap” is a Borgesian tale of a Nobel laureate and his Faustian deal with a cab driver. Next comes “Filophilia,” as a homicidal mother’s soliloquy before a judge shows the extent to which a mother can love her son. “Tongue of the Jews” toys with a delicate matter. Gentile Ned, obsessed with Judaism and the Holocaust, confronts his idol, Keeper, a writer and survivor who has been sleeping with Ned’s wife and publishing the details. Keeper decides to help Ned convert, symbolically, using a sharp letter opener. In “The Two Franzes,” a young Kafka roams the streets of Prague delivering absurd correspondences between a playwright and an aristocrat, while “The War Lovers” chronicles a perverse homicide/genocide photographer whose end comes at the hands and teeth of mechanical bunnies. Intelligent and amusing: a tour de force for the literate enthusiast. Condition: Very good / Very good.
Keywords: Vladimir Nabokov, Circumcision, Jews, Eros, Seduction, Nobel Laureate, Faust, Cab Driver, Collectible, Mother, Homicidal, Love, Holocaust, Writers, Survivor, Infidelity, Playwright, Aristocrat, Photographer, Watergate
ISBN: 0393058166
[Book #83505]
Price: $175.00