Astoria (Prose Series) - Softcover

Viscusi, Robert

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0920717934 ISBN 13: 9780920717936

Publisher: Guernica Editions,Canada, 1994

Synopsis

Astoria is an original and powerful vision of the Great Migration, full of startling angels and unexpected daggers of truth. The narrator is a man deranged by history and grief. For him, the real capital of the world is a place called Astoria, the Italian neighborhood in Queens where his mother was a child in the 1920s. Now it is 1986, two years after her death. He has gone to teach literature at the University of Paris. At the tomb of Napoleon, he discovers she has not left him. For the narrator, she is Napoleon. No matter where he goes, he finds himself still in Astoria, her revolutionary empire. From Paris to New York to Rome, he meets her monuments at every turn. To break her hold on him, he weaves theory after theory, writes one history after another. His struggle reveals her as the will, the incest, and the magic of the Great Migration, its fury, its rage, its unappeasable desire. Astoria is an experiment in what Robert Viscusi calls speculative history. In his first book, Max Beerbohm or The Dandy Dante (1986), Viscusi developed the theory of a history of what might be, rather than what has actually been.

About this title

Synopsis:

An experiment in what the author terms "speculative history", this novel tracks the movements of a man haunted by the spirit of his deceased mother and dogged by the notion that Astoria - the Italian neighbourhood in Queens where his mother grew up in the 1920s - is the true capital of the world. In 1986, two years after his mother's death, the narrator travels from Paris to New York to Rome, unable to escape the shadow of Napoleon, the historical figure he now associates with his mother. Weaving theory upon theory in an attempt to break the hold of these visions, he finds that she represents the fury, rage, and unappeased desire of migration and the displaced people left in its wake.

About the Author:

Robert Viscusi is Professor of English at Brooklyn College of The City University of New York, where he has directed The Wolfe Institute for the Humanities since 1982.

About this edition

• Publisher: Guernica Editions,Canada
• Publication date: 1994
• ISBN 10: 0920717934
• ISBN 13: 9780920717936
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 313