Calvert Casey: The Collected Stories (Latin America in Translation) - Softcover

Casey, Calvert

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0822321653 ISBN 13: 9780822321651

Publisher: Duke University Press Books, 1998

Synopsis

Hailed as a literary relative of Kafka and Poe by his Italian and Cuban contemporaries, Calvert Casey and his enthralling work have until now remained eclipsed in the United States. This collection brings all of Casey’s powerful short stories and a fragment of an unfinished novel to an English-speaking audience for the first time. Exploring the human condition through poetically unique yet torturous views of the mind, Casey was a renegade artist whose work perceives reality as a smoke screen behind which Truth is hidden. He intended his fiction to disturb and subvert standard, plot-driven views of life.
Born in the United States, Casey was raised in Cuba and spent most of his life there and in Europe. He chose Spanish as his primary artistic tongue. A member of the intelligentsia surrounding Castro in the early years of the revolution, he was eventually exiled—and in 1969 committed suicide in Rome at the age of forty-five. Although most of his luminous stories are set in Havana, his is not a touristy, picturesque landscape but an often strange and nightmarish theater of human passions, inhabited by figures—silhouettes, really—that live on the edge of normality. This volume, which showcases Casey’s mastery of the skill of indirect and gradual revelation, is the most complete to appear in any language and includes a biographical and critical introduction written by Ilan Stavans, the noted novelist and scholar of Hispanic culture.
Readers interested in the art of fiction and in the complexities of the human psyche will find Casey’s work irresistible.

About this title

From the Publisher

Other reviews of Calvert Casey: The Collected Stories

"With Kafka and Poe as his literary godfathers, the fall of the Batista regime as the reason for his relocation to Havana, and ultimately, his fear of Fidel Castro as the cause of his wanderlust-he traveled through Europe and eventually settled in Rome-Casey wrote about alienation and loners on the fringes of society, about hopelessness and social disenchantment, about guilt, and about sexual ambivalence. . . . After reading [these stories] one readily understands why fellow writers like Guillermo Cabrera Infante and Italo Calvino have campaigned to keep Casey's work in print and available. Polt's translations are masterful, the English vibrant and alive, and Stavans's introduction places Casey and his work in the context of modern literature while providing thoughtful, lucid commentary on the stories."-Choice

"The collection contains all of Casey's known fiction (sixteen stories and one novella). However, this brief sample encompasses a vast world; it gives us a glimpse into the mind of a visionary stylist. . . . [This book includes] powerful works of the imagination that should be read, reread, and included in prominent anthologies. Let's not lose Calvert Casey again."-Review of Contemporary Fiction

"As a renegade artist, Calvert Casey explores the human condition through poetically unique views of the mind, creating fiction in which reality serves as a smoke screen to hide Truth. His fiction is intended to disturb and subvert standard plot-driven narratives. This collection brings all of his short stories to an English-speaking audience for the first time, with the exception of 'The Walk' (1954) and a fragment of the aborted novel Gianni, Gianni, both of which were written by Casey in English. Also included are a biographical and critical introduction and a Translator's Note."-Translation Review

"Calvert Casey, a man of almost pitiful gracelessness and alienation who found a home neither in any country or city where he resided nor within himself, managed to produce from his anguish a handful of brilliant stories. . . . These stories are richly detailed, fascinating, claustrophobic, and faintly repellent. The volume benefits from translations of vivid clarity and fluency by John H. R. Polt."-The Commercial Appeal (Memphis)

From the Back Cover

"Out of Havana arrives one of the most significant Hispanic American writers . . . Calvert Casey, nourished by the Western literary tradition, yet, obstinately, almost obsessively, 'local.' . . . With memories of Havana as a colony and of slavery, of the brothels and black witchcraft and uninterrupted sensuality in an uninterrupted dialogue with the dead, Casey . . . began to write far from Cuba out of nostalgia. It led him to return to Cuba and to submerge himself anew in the old city known rock by rock, ghost by ghost, ensuring never to be separated from her again."--Italo Calvino, written in 1966, reprinted in Quimera no. 26 (Dec. 1982)

About this edition

• Publisher: Duke University Press Books
• Publication date: 1998
• ISBN 10: 0822321653
• ISBN 13: 9780822321651
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 224
• Editor: Stavans Ilan