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A novel
by Jonathan Galassi
Book Reviewed by:A first novel, at once hilarious and tender, about the decades-long rivalry between two publishing lions, and the iconic, alluring writer who has obsessed them both.
From the publisher of Farrar, Straus and Giroux: a first novel, at once hilarious and tender, about the decades-long rivalry between two publishing lions, and the iconic, alluring writer who has obsessed them both.
Paul Dukach is heir apparent at Purcell & Stern, one of the last independent publishing houses in New York, whose shabby offices on Union Square belie the treasures on its list. Working with his boss, the flamboyant Homer Stern, Paul learns the ins and outs of the book trade—how to work an agent over lunch; how to swim with the literary sharks at the Frankfurt Book Fair; and, most important, how to nurse the fragile egos of the dazzling, volatile authors he adores.
But Paul's deepest admiration has always been reserved for one writer: poet Ida Perkins, whose audacious verse and notorious private life have shaped America's contemporary literary landscape, and whose longtime publisher—also her cousin and erstwhile lover—happens to be Homer's biggest rival. And when Paul at last has the chance to meet Ida at her Venetian palazzo, she entrusts him with her greatest secret—one that will change all of their lives forever.
Studded with juicy details only a quintessential insider could know, written with both satiric verve and openhearted nostalgia, Muse is a brilliant, haunting book about the beguiling interplay between life and art, and the eternal romance of literature.
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The Fair
The modern-day Frankfurt Book Fair was a postwar phenomenon, a vehicle for easing the readmission of Germany into the company of civilized Western societies. Originally, it had been a phenomenon of the Renaissance, Frankfurt being the largest trading center near Mainz, where Johannes Gutenberg and his fellows had invented movable type in the late 1430s. The fair had been established again in 1949 and had grown into the most important annual gathering in international publishing. Every October, tens of thousands of publishers from all over the world scurried like so many ants among the warehouse-like halls of the fair's bleak cam- pus on the edge of the city center, rushing to appointments with their counterparts.
But books weren't sold at the modern-day Frankfurt. Authors were—by the pound and sometimes by the gross. What the publishers did at Frankfurt was hump the right to sell their writers' work in other territories and languages, often pocketing a...
At first glance, with none of the traditional love-story cues, Muse does not appear to be a classic example of the form. But the theme of love is omnipresent: Ida's poems detail her myriad trysts, including with both Wainwright and Homer. Paul's own path to love is a quiet search. Each character's pursuit of a satisfying love is a rough journey. This idea is underscored toward the end when Ida entrusts Paul with the responsibility of publishing her last and most powerful work which includes unexpected details about her love life. Love is indeed, as Galassi warns, "a terrible pain."..continued
Full Review
(536 words)
(Reviewed by Darcie R.J. Abbene).
Gary Shteyngart, author of Super Sad True Love Story and Little Failure
A witty, elegant, tons-of-fun debut novel. Jonathan Galassi has got all the dirt on the publishing industry and he is ready to dish. But he also takes us from Union Square and a hideaway country cottage to Venice, for a love story all his own.The title of Jonathan Galassi's novel Muse, refers to the fictional poet that the story centers on, Ida Perkins, who provides inspiration to the literary world.
A set of Ida's narrative poems is titled "Mnemosyne," whom Paul quickly recognizes as "the Titaness Mnemosyne, goddess of memory and mother of the Muses." The powerful goddess Mneymosyne (pronounced nee-mo-see-nee, source of the word mnemonic) is known as the creator of language and words, the goddess of time and memory, one of the three elder muses. The ability to remember was perhaps most important of all given that everything - all stories and lessons of life - had to be remembered before the advent of the written word.
The ancient Gnostics (in Ancient Greek the word...
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