Larva: A Midsummer Night's Babel Contributor(s): Rios, Julian (Author), Francis, Richard Alan (Translator), Levine, Suzanne Jill (With) |
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ISBN: 1564783685 ISBN-13: 9781564783684 Publisher: Dalkey Archive Press OUR PRICE: $14.36 Product Type: Paperback Published: November 1990 |
Additional Information |
BISAC Categories: - Fiction |
Dewey: FIC |
LCCN: 2004053769 |
Physical Information: 1.66" H x 5.48" W x 8.5" (1.55 lbs) 545 pages |
Descriptions, Reviews, Etc. |
Publisher Description: A striking reassessment of the Don Juan myth. A literary tour de force, this extraordinary novel is told in single-minded pursuit of double meanings, but it is serious play. Larva is a rollicking account of a masquerade party in an abandoned mansion in London. Milalias (disguised as Don Juan) searches for Babelle (as Sleeping Beauty) through a linguistic funhouse of puns and wordplay recalling Joyce's Finnegans Wake. A mock-scholarly commentary reveals the backgrounds of the masked revellers, while Rios' allusive language shows that words too wear masks, hiding an astonishing range of further meanings and implications. Larva revives a Hispanic tradition repressed for centuries by introducing the English tradition of puns, palindromes and acrostics (a word puzzle in which certain letters in each line form a word or words) and establishes Rios as the most accomplished successor (in any language) to Joyce. |