"I would like to tell my father the story of the French
revolutionary Jean Lambert Tallien." So writes the unnamed narrator
of this short modernist novel, who - in an opening chapter -
recalls the bitter life-and-death of his long-estranged father, an
"all-American radical, the John Wayne of socialism," who ended up
betrayed and disappointed. As a sort of commentary or sermon on his
father's life, then, the narrator recounts - sometimes
straightforwardly, sometimes with anachronistic irony and
earthiness - the life of Tallien (1772-1820), son of a nobleman's
butler. Intellectually precocious, encouraged in his studies by his
father's aristocratic boss, Tallien shrugged off this patronage
circa 1791, writing and printing inflammatory radical broadsheets.
He rose in power and prestige, despite his protests against the
massacres contrived by Marat and Danton. He eventually joined those
ruthless Jacobins, having been skillfully coopted by Danton - who
"was getting beaucoup heat for the killings in the prisons."
Meanwhile, bookish Tallien endured years of loneliness. ("How did
young people meet one another in the eighteenth century?. . .You
couldn't just go to a movie. . .with your friends and sort of make
eye contact with someone you'd like to take up to the balcony and
try to feel up.") But then he fell hard for Spanish beauty Therese,
widow of a guillotined count. He got her - and many of her friends
- released from prison. Inspired by love ("in a woman's thighs he
had found his life"), he moved center-stage in the Revolution -
leading the Thermidorians in the revolt against Robespierre.
Ultimately, however, Tallien ended up ignored by Napoleon and
scorned by mercenary Therese, "left emptier than the spaces between
the stars - his own metaphor." And the narrator ends up imagining
Tallien as the star of a bloody music-video: ". . .Sing, you
widower of the Revolution, the chant d'amour of when you first
stuffed your radical cock into her perfumed sex - the first shot of
the Year One." Tuten (The Adventures of Mao on the Long March)
extracts some sardonic vitality from a streetwise approach to
political history; moreover, even in offbeat digest form, there's
inherent drama in the Revolutionary chronicle. As a fable of
political activism's futility, however, this is crude,
unpersuasive, faintly adolescent; and most readers will wish that
Tuten had devoted his whole book to the more immediate material -
Bronx childhood, family tensions, American radicalism - on brief
(about 20 pp.), compelling display here. (Kirkus Reviews)
A son seeing his dying father--a radical activist--for the first
time since childhood, decides to tell him the story of a French
revolutionary, Jean Lambert Tallien, in a novel that moves deftly
between past and present. IP.
General
Is the information for this product incomplete, wrong or inappropriate?
Let us know about it.
Does this product have an incorrect or missing image?
Send us a new image.
Is this product missing categories?
Add more categories.
Review This Product
No reviews yet - be the first to create one!
Welcome to Loot.co.za!
Sign in / Register |Wishlists & Gift Vouchers |Help | Advanced search
(2)
bundle available
