Gasoline
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- $9.99
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- $9.99
Publisher Description
"Monzó delivers drollery on nearly every page, in observations that are incisive and hilarious and horrifying, often all at once."—Publishers Weekly
For the first time in his life, Heribert Juliá is unable to paint. On the eve of an important gallery exhibition, for which he's created nothing, he's bored with life: he falls asleep while making love with his mistress, wanders from bar to bar, drinking whatever comes to his attention first, and meets the evidence of his wife Helena's infidelity with complete indifference. Humbert Herrera, an up-and-coming artist who can't stop creating, picks up the threads of Heribert's life, taking his wife, replacing him at the gallery, and pursuing his former mistress. Heribert is finally undone by a massive sculpture, while Humbert is planning the sculpture to end sculpture, the poem to end poetry, and the film to end film, all while mounting three simultaneous shows.
A fun-house mirror through which he examines the creative process, the life and loves of artists, and the New York art scene, Gasoline confirms Quim Monzó as the foremost Catalan writer of his generation.
Quim Monzó was born in Barcelona in 1952. He has been awarded the National Award, the City of Barcelona Award, the Prudenci Bertrana Award, the El Temps Award, the Lletra d'Or Prize for the best book of the year, and the Catalan Writers' Award; he has been awarded Serra d'Or magazine's prestigious Critics' Award four times. He has also translated numerous authors into Catalan, including Truman Capote, J.D. Salinger, and Ernest Hemingway.
Mary Ann Newman is the Director of the Catalan Center at New York University's Center for European and Mediterranean Studies. She is a translator, editor, and occasional writer on Catalan culture.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
A creative block has ramped up the paranoia of artist Heribert Juli and weakened his already tenuous hold on reality. New mistress Hildegarda bores him already, and wife Helena interests him only in her extramarital intrigues. A Hopper painting, the changing numbers on a digital alarm clock, the international stamps in a shop window, almost anything is apt to send Heribert into an extended free-associative riff in the eclectic Monz s (The Enormity of the Tragedy) novel, first published in Spain in 1983. The twisty tale of sublime self-involvement and self-torture is set in Manhattan and covers a year in Heribert s life. There is a plot, albeit loose, as Helena s lover, Humbert, not only supplants Heribert in bed, but seems to eclipse him as an artist; the ultimate, and perhaps unkindest, cut of all is that in the final chapters Humbert takes over as the protagonist of the novel. Monz delivers drollery on nearly every page, in observations that are incisive and hilarious and horrifying, often all at once.
