Arcadio - Softcover

Goyen, William

3.8

66 ratings by Goodreads

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1852421452 ISBN 13: 9781852421458

Publisher: Serpent's Tail, 1989

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Half man, half woman, half Mexican, half Texan, Arcadio?s tale is extraordinary. Mixing rural Texas vernacular with Spanish and street slang, it tells the story of deserted child sold to a brothel, who becomes a sideshow freak in a travelling circus, a youth relentlessly searching for his family. Goyen?s last book, it is a moving finale to his life and work.

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Review:

?This is a work of profound sympathy for the lost, the displaced, the crazy, the loveless, all the turned away, whose light we tend to put out by our fear of them... The work of a master fabulist, it is one more courageous foray into fiction unlike anyone else?s, haunting the reader with its tenderness and ferocity? New York Times Review ?A novel of astonishing originality and literary magic, blending reality and myth, humor and pathos, substance and dreams. It will be read long after some of the puffed-up books of today have faded. It is a book one dares call ?perfect,? sculpted with breathtaking care, like a jewel... Arcadio is unforgettable? John Rechy ?Arcadio virtually pulses with life; it is both audacious and wise; a timeless fable that manages to be boldly contemporary as well? Joyce Carol Oates

From the Back Cover:

Completed while he was dying, William Goyen's Arcadio is one of the most affecting and imaginative farewells to life ever written. Arcadio, whose voice is inimitably Goyenesque, is a creature from beyond the normal walks of life. Half man, half woman, raised in a whorehouse and for years the veteran exhibitionist in an itinerant circus sideshow, he has escaped from the show and has been wandering in a quest for his lost family. Speaking intimately to the reader, he tells the bizarre and fantastic tale of his life. This unforgettable novel is the crown of Goyen's exploration of the forms and feelings that could be compassed within fiction.

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