Synopses & Reviews
In
Passionate Spectator, memoirist Peter Leroy and his wife Albertine are living in Manhattan-by the skin of their teeth. Casting about for a source of income, Peter purchases a book from a homeless street corner peddler,
Creative Self-Promotion for Taxidermists, hoping he can adapt its techniques to promote his fledgling business:
Memoirs While You Wait, a writing service designed to satisfy the contemporary compulsion for confession and self-revelation.
That book opens into a beguiling journey from fiction to truth and back again, involving Peter, his childhood friend Matthew Barber (a pseudonymous restaurant reviewer who is undergoing emergency heart surgery), and Matthew's witty, urbane alter-ego, Bertram W. Beath-an erotic opportunist and "passionate spectator" of beauty and human folly. As Peter solicits potential clients for his service, he finds that autobiography requires a measure of deception-well, lying-and that his own life depends on fictions he has created and sustained.
Eric Kraft is a novelist like no other, and his books featuring Peter Leroy create an irresistible world where poignancy and nostalgia blend with humor and unbridled invention-a world like our own, but somehow brighter, less predictable, and more fun.
Kirkus Reviews says: Kraft woolgathers with an energy that would shame a sheep-shearer, and overhearing Peter's evening conversations over martinis with the ineffable Albertine is almost as good as listening to Fibber McGee and Molly on the radio again. More of the same, and may it go on forever. Mark Twain and Will Rogers would have felt right at home with the Leroys.
Review
"The only American author since Pynchon to completely erase the line between the literary novel and the spit-out-your-coffee comedy." --
The Washington Post"The novel playfully riffs on Proust and the Nabokov of Pale Fire, and its denouement touches on The Odyssey and 'Jack in the Beanstalk.' That the book also manages to entertain the neophyte is a credit to Krafts colorful incisive prose and off-kilter wit." --Time Out (New York )
“Kraft manages to spin one delicate yarn after another by mixing a dollop of plot with observations, asides, offbeat humor, and an abiding and infectious enthusiasm." --The San Diego Union-Tribune
Synopsis
The acclaimed author of "Inflating a Dog" and "Herb n' Lorna" presents a journey from fiction to truth and back again as he follows the fortunes of a professional memoirist.
Synopsis
Praise for Eric Kraft:
"Lovely...we're hooked. Kraft's erudite asides and abstract musings are what make Inflating a Dog fascinating and sophisticated reading."
- The New York Times Book Review
"Having trouble reading Proust? Forget it. Read Eric Kraft instead...the eight volumes of Kraft's fictional memoirs...constitute perhaps the most ambitious and rewarding literary enterprise of our time."
- San Francisco Chronicle
"Charming but never sappy, droll but never cynical...the literary equivalent of Fred Astaire dancing: great art that looks like fun."
- Malcolm Jones, Newsweek
"A sunny, upbeat American version of the Argentine fabulist Jorge Luis Borges...A masterful tale teller."
- Mark Ciabattari, Washington Post Book World
"Is there a more beguiling writer today than Eric Kraft?"
- Publishers Weekly
"The only American author since Pynchon to completely erase the line between the literary novel and the spit-out-your coffee comedy."
- Andrew Ervin, The Washington Post
About the Author
Eric Kraft's other books include
Inflating a Dog, Little Follies,
Where Do You Stop?, What a Piece of Work I am,
At Home with the Glynns, and
Leaving Small's Hotel. He and his wife live in St. Petersburg, Florida.