This last year, Chris went to the infamous Folsom Street Fair in San Francisco. Of it, he said “I think I scorched my eyeballs.” I think this book did the same to mine. It is postmodern erotica (I think, I really don’t know for sure), and each chapter is an adventure in which the protagonist Desiridero invokes wish fulfillment of various needs or desires (finding his ancestral people, finding his true love named Albertina, meeting the sadistic and vampiric Count, finding Professor Hoffman) which then disintegrates into disturbing sexual descriptions written in beautiful, poetic metaphor, which then decompose into a deadly scenario, and finally ends with an implausible rescue that also propels Desiridero into his next adventure. Again, this may be another Faust-inspired tale.
Although not a huge fan of it overall, I think postmodernism was the perfect style for this book, because sexual fantasies are, like postmodern writing, innately pretentious and silly at the same time. And Angela Carter is a lauded British writer – she died in 1992 – and her lush imagination and to-die-for similes and metaphors were truly inspired: it made it emotional and so very readable. I am glad I read the book, but I don’t know if I’m up for another in the same vein… because my eyeballs need calamine lotion, now.
Lessons: As with Mr. Attanasio, descriptions should strain to be as poetic as possible, different than what you have ever read before so it sticks in your head forever, and as perfect as you can possibly make them.