Elliot Loves by Jules Feiffer

Elliot Loves by Jules Feiffer

I first read Mikhail Bulgakov's The Master and Margarita on a balcony of the Hotel Metropole in Saigon on three summer evenings in 1971. The tropical air was heavy and full of the smells of cordite and motorcycle exhaust and rotting fish and wood-fire stoves, and the horizon flared ambiguously, perhaps from heat lightning, perhaps from bombs. Later each night, as was my custom, I would wander out into the steamy back alleys of the city, where no one ever seemed to sleep, and crouch in doorways with the people and listen to the stories of their culture and their ancestors and their ongoing lives. Bulgakov taught me to hear something in those stories that I had not yet clearly heard. One could call it, in terms that would soon thereafter gain wide currency, "magical realism". The deadpan mix of the fantastic and the realistic was at the heart of the Vietnamese mythos. It is at the heart of the present zeitgeist. And it was not invented by Gabriel Garcia Marquez, as wonderful as his One Hundred Years of Solitude is. Garcia Marquez's landmark work of magical realism was predated by nearly three decades by Bulgakov's brilliant masterpiece of a novel. That summer in Saigon a vodka-swilling, talking black cat, a coven of beautiful naked witches, Pontius Pilate, and a whole cast of benighted writers of Stalinist Moscow and Satan himself all took up permanent residence in my creative unconscious. Their presence, perhaps more than anything else from the realm of literature, has helped shape the work I am most proud of. I'm often asked for a list of favorite authors. Here is my advice. Read Bulgakov. Look around you at the new century. He will show you things you need to see.

Mikhail Bulgakov (1891-1940) qualified as a doctor but became a professional writer in 1919. He was asked by the Moscow Arts Theatre to turn his novel, The White Guard, into a play. At first delighted, he was subsequently horrified by the cuts and alterations demanded by the company and the censor. Nevertheless he went on to write many more plays, becoming arguably the most important Soviet playwright of the period. Keith Dewhurst was born in Oldham and studied at Cambridge University. In addition to his writing for stage and screen, he has been a yarn tester in a cotton mill, a football journalist (touring with Manchester United during the 1998-99 season), an arts columnist for the Guardian and a Television Presenter. He has written 16 stage pays, including 'Rafferty's Chant', 'Pirates', 'Brecht in 20', 'Corunna!', 'Kidnapped', 'The Miser', 'The Magic Island', 'The Bomb In Brewery Street', 'One Short', 'Luggage', 'Black Snow' and 'Animals of Farthing Wood' many of which were premiered by the English Stage Company at the Royal Court. He has also written 18 TV screenplays and 2 films, 'The Empty Beach' and 'The Land Girls'.

SKU	Unavailable
ISBN 13	9780802150592
ISBN 10	0802150594
Title	Elliot Loves
Author	Jules Feiffer
Condition	Unavailable
Binding Type	Paperback
Publisher	Avalon Travel Publishing
Year published	1994-01-21
Number of pages	82
Cover note	Book picture is for illustrative purposes only, actual binding, cover or edition may vary.