The Cloud Sketcher; A Novel
New York: Perennial [An Imprint of HarperCollinsPublishers, 2002. First Perennial edition [Stated]. First Printing [Stated]. Trade paperback. [14], 412, [6] pages. Acknowledgments and Sources. Cover has spine tear, wear and soiling. Staining at bottom edge. Ink marks on pages 411 and 412. Richard Rayner (born 1955) is a British author who now lives in Los Angeles. He has worked as an editor at Time Out Magazine, in London, and later on the literary magazine Granta. Rayner is the author of nine books. His first, Los Angeles Without A Map, was published in 1988. Part-fiction, part-travelogue, this was turned into a movie L.A. Without a Map. In 1996, Rayner published The Blue Suit, a memoir about his early life that won an Esquire Non-Fiction Award in the UK, and was described as 'a beguiling portrait of the artist as a writer' by the New York Times. Novels like The Cloud Sketcher and Devil's Wind followed. Murder Book, another novel, grew out of a time that Rayner spent riding with the Los Angeles Police Department. In 2009, Rayner published A Bright And Guilty Place, a non-fiction historical narrative set in Los Angeles in the late 1920s and early 1930s, featuring various true-life tabloid crimes of the era. He has published in The New Yorker, The Los Angeles Times, Esquire, The Times, The Guardian, The Observer and Granta Magazine among others. His work has been translated into more than twenty languages. Rayner co-wrote 'The Rift', the first episode of the Steven Spielberg produced reboot of 'Amazing Stories' for Apple TV, aired in April 2020. Rayner has taught creative writing at King's College Cambridge and the University of Southern California. Currently he teaches in the Theater, Film and Television Department at UCLA. In a tiny village in Finland, Esko Vaananen is at the brink of despair -- he loves a woman he can never have. Suddenly, in the magical light of the aurora borealis, he has a vision of an impossibly tall building rising gracefully from the frozen lake and disappearing into the clouds above him. This pilvenpiirtaja -- "cloud sketcher" or skyscraper -- sparks a lifelong quest for beauty in Esko. He will pursue and protect these two passions -- his vision and his love -- no matter how great the cost, for the rest of his life. It is a journey that leads him into the Bolshevik revolution and the Jazz Age nightclubs of New York City and to strike a Faustian bargain with a ruthless gangster -- all in the pursuit of artistic perfection and impossible, unattainable love. Condition: Fair / No dust jacket issued.
Keywords: aurora borealis, Finand, Esko Vaananen, Love, Skyscraper, Architect, pilvenpiirtaja, Russian Revolution, Bolshevik, Jazz Age, Nightclubs, Gangster, Artistic Perfection, New York City
ISBN: 0060956135
[Book #85038]
Price: $10.00