Volume 28, Number 8 · May 14, 1981
Sailors Have More Fun
By James Wolcott
Darconville's Cat
by Alexander Theroux
Doubleday, 704 pp., $15.95
Never kiss off a wooing author, that's the lesson of Alexander Theroux's sly and resourceful new novel, Darconville's Cat. Dressed in pious black, a twenty-nine-year-old academic princeling named Alaric Darconville hauntingly wanders about the campus of Virginia's Quinsy College, a romantic apparition out of the pages of Hawthorne or Washington Irving. In his room, Darconville spins out his neomedieval ruminations on angels and archangels, 'marching across the page a newly commissioned army of words-on-maneuvers, all decorated in loops, frets, and arrowlike flourishes.' Like Lord Byron, Darconville keeps a human skull on his desk, its noseholes filled with pencils; and ever vigilant at the windowsill is his beloved cat, Spellvexit. One September evening, a discreet admirer leaves a pomander ball on Darconville's doorstep. In a tiny envelope attached to the gift is a note which says, 'For the fairest.' Notes Theroux: 'They were the three words which had started the Trojan War.'
Review, 1935 words
To read the full text of this piece, please choose one of the following options:
|
If you are already a subscriber to the Review's electronic edition, please sign in: |
To subscribe to the electronic edition, please press the button below. |
To purchase access to this article for $3, please press the button below. |