The Passion Artist - Hardcover

John Hawkes

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0060118083 ISBN 13: 9780060118082

Publisher: Harper & Row, 1979

Synopsis

A classic of dark eroticism from one of the great American writers of the twentieth century.

Set in an imaginary European city, The Passion Artist takes us into the dream-like interior world of Konrad Vost, a middle-aged widower grieving for his dead wife, devoted to his schoolgirl daughter, and obsessed with the memory and the fate of his mother, who is an inmate in the cityâ s prison. When Vost discovers that his daughter has become a prostitute, and that the women prisoners are in revolt, he embarks on a fantastic series of violent and erotic encounters, exploring the shifting balance of power between the sexes, and the limits of human perversity.

About this title

About the Author

John Hawkes (1925-1998) was one of the most innovative and widely regarded novelists of the twentieth century. Born in Stamford, Connecticut, and educated at Harvard University, Hawkes taught at Brown University for thirty years. Praised by Leslie Fiedler, Flannery O'Connor, and William H. Gass, who wrote, "when it comes to the engravement of the sentence . . . no one can match him," Hawkes was the author of numerous acclaimed novels, including The Lime Twig, The Beetle Leg, Second Skin, Adventures in the Alaskan Skin Trade and The Passion Artist.

Review

“What an ambitious undertaking! The Passion Artist is a symbolic journey of the familiar territory men and women dispute between them, a rich philosophical observation of the differences in our sexes—and the overwhelming need for compassion and love. It is a lush, poetic, dark work, but it is also comic and true—and everywhere it is touched with the erotic power of John Hawkes’s language. He and Kurt Vonnegut are simply the most original first-rate writers in this country.” (John Irving, author of The World According to Garp)

“John Hawkes writes with dizzying brilliance.” (Charles Nicol - National Review)

“His sentences are themselves ‘events.’” (William Gaddis, author of The Recognitions)

Edition details

• Publisher: Harper & Row
• Publication date: 1979
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0060118083
• ISBN 13: 9780060118082
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 185