Locos: A Comedy of Gestures (American Literature) - Softcover

Alfau, Felipe

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1564781712 ISBN 13: 9781564781710

Publisher: Dalkey Archive Press, 1997

Synopsis

The interconnected stones that form Felipe Alfau's novel LOCOS take place in a Madrid as exotic as the Baghdad of the 1001 ARABIAN NIGHTS and feature unforgettable characters in revolt against their young 'author' "For them", he complains, "reality is what fiction is to real people; they simply love it and make for it against ray almost heroic opposition" Alfau's "comedy of gestures" -- a mercurial dreamscape of the eccentric, sometimes criminal, habitues of Toledo's Cafe of the Crazy -- was written in English and first published in 1936, favorably reviewed for The Nation by Mary McCarthy, as she recounts here in her Afterword, then long neglected.

About this title

From the Back Cover:

The interconnected stories that form this novel take place in a Madrid as exotic as the Baghdad of the 1001 Arabian Nights and feature unforgettable characters in revolt against their young "author". First published in 1936 and long neglected, this elegantly inventive novel anticipates works like Pale Fire and One Hundred Years of Solitude. In Locos, Felipe Alfau creates a mercurial dreamscape in which the characters - the eccentric, sometimes criminal, habitues of Toledo's Cafe of the Crazy - wrench free of authorial control, invade one another's stories, and even turn into one another.

About the Author:

Mary McCarthy (1912-1989) was a short-story writer, bestselling novelist, essayist, and a social and art critic. A member of the National Institute of Arts and Letters, she was the author of Memories of a Catholic Girlhood, Venice Observed, and Birds of America, among other books.

About this edition

• Publisher: Dalkey Archive Press
• Publication date: 1997
• ISBN 10: 1564781712
• ISBN 13: 9781564781710
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 206