The Complete Ballet by John Haskell
A dark-hued, hybrid novel by a writer who delivers our culture back to us, made entirely new (A. M. Homes)
In The Complete Ballet, John Haskell choreographs an intricate and irresistible pas de deux in which fiction and criticism come together to create a new kind of story. Fueled by the dramatic retelling of five romantic ballets, and interwoven with a contemporary story about a man whose daunting gambling debt pushes him to the edge of his own abyss, it is both a pulpy entertainment and a meditation on the physicality--and psychology--of dance. The unnamed narrator finds himself inexorably drawn back to the pre-cell phone world of Technicolor Los Angeles, to a time when the tragedies of his life were about to collide. Working as a part-time masseur in Hollywood, he attends an underground poker game with his friend Cosmo, a strip-club entrepreneur. What happens there hurtles the narrator down the road and into the room where the novel's violent and surreal showdown leaves him a different person. As the narrator revisits his past, he simultaneously inhabits and reconstructs the mythic stories of ballet, assessing along the way the lives and obsessions of Nijinsky and Balanchine, Pavlova and Fonteyn, Joseph Cornell and the story's presiding spirit, the film director John Cassavetes. This compulsively readable fiction is ultimately a profound and haunting consideration of the nature of art and identity.
John Haskell is Assistant Director and Senior Specialist, Government and Finance Division with the Congressional Research Service. Haskell was Senior Fellow with the Government Affairs Institute at Georgetown University from 2000 to 2013 and has taught at Davidson College, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, Drake University, and Claremont McKenna College's Washington Program. He is the author of Fundamentally Flawed, a critique of the presidential nomination process, and Direct Democracy or Representative Government?. He was a Congressional Fellow in 1997-98, during which time he was the Budget Committee liaison for Congressman David Price. He also handled education and tax issues for the Congressman. Haskell received his Ph.D. in American politics from The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Marian Currinder is a Senior Fellow with the Government Affairs Institute at Georgetown University. Before joining GAI in 2006, she was an Assistant Professor of American Politics at the College of Charleston. Marian was an American Political Science Association Congressional Fellow in 2003-04. She worked in DC as a legislative analyst and research associate before earning her M.A. and Ph.D. in American Government from the University of Florida. She has published several journal articles and book chapters on congressional politics and campaign finance, and is the author of Money in the House: Campaign Funds and Congressional Party Politics. Sara A. Grove is professor in the Department of Political Science at Shippensburg University. Prior to her arrival at Shippensburg in 1992, Dr. Grove taught at Frostburg State University, North Carolina State University, and The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. At Shippensburg, she teaches undergraduate and graduate courses that focus on constitutional law, political behavior, and public policy dealing with health care and older adults. Sara took a leave of absence from her faculty position to earn her J.D. at The Dickinson School of Law of The Pennsylvania State University. She worked as a law clerk for the Governor's Office of General Counsel under Governor Tom Ridge and for The Honorable J. Michael Eakin of the Pennsylvania Supreme Court. Dr. Grove received her Ph.D. in American politics from The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.
| SKU | Unavailable |
| ISBN 13 | 9781555977870 |
| ISBN 10 | 1555977871 |
| Title | The Complete Ballet |
| Author | John Haskell |
| Condition | Unavailable |
| Binding Type | Paperback |
| Publisher | Graywolf Press |
| Year published | 2017-09-19 |
| Number of pages | 208 |
| Cover note | Book picture is for illustrative purposes only, actual binding, cover or edition may vary. |
| Note | Unavailable |