Partita in Venice - Softcover

Leviant, Curt

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5 ratings by Goodreads

Softcover

ISBN 10: 094297963X ISBN 13: 9780942979633

Publisher: Livingston Press, 1999

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Fiction. In Curt Leviant's new tragic-comic novel, PARTITA IN VENICE, "we follow Tommy M., who has written speeches for some Very Important People, in his so-suave, so-certain sophistication toward his so-boorish, so-certain downfall. As Tommy becomes more uncertain...we become more certain. A doom stretching straight from Grecian times is after you, Tommy, isn't it? And all your male nonchalance and coy humor won't help the least when its lone, fine talons grab hold.Rarely will you read the heavy hand of tragedy played so lightly. It's as if Leviant were a transmigrated Vivaldi whose strains had dipped into Venice's canals to find--surprise!--both Wagner and Sophocles."

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From the Back Cover:

Two sensual women in a romantic, watery city-can they both be after Tommy Manning? If so, it's nearly a Hollywood script. The only trouble is this: one of them acts suspiciously like a guilty memory, or even a ghost. And she may be the latter. After all, hasn't Jack Benny just shown up as a Venetian godolier, complete with outdated, whining jokes, to pole Tommy along glistening canals?

In this comic-tragic novel, we follow Tommy M., who has written speeches for some very important people, in his so-suave, so certain sophistication toward his so-boorish, so-certain downfall. As Tommy becomes more uncertain; as he encounterstall Aunt Maria and her gypsy potions; as he is physically tripped-no less-by the "chief rabbi of Venice," who claims to have posed for a canvas by Antonio Canaletto; as he watches faces dissappear and reappear along the Venetian calle and waterways directly from Grecian times is after you, Tommy, isn't it? And your fine male nonchalance and coy humor won't help in the least when its long, fine talons grab hold...

Rarely will you read the heavy hand of tragedy played so lightly. It's as if Leviant were a transmigrated Vivaldi whose strains had dipped into Venice's canals to find-surprise!-both Verdi and Sophocles.

About the Author:

Curt Leviant is the author of three critically acclaimed novels: The Yemenite Girl, awarded the wallant prize, translated into Hebrew and Spainish, and recently reprinted as part of modern Jewish Literature; Passion in the Desert, for which Mr. Leviant won a New Jersy Arts Council Writing Fellowship; and The Man Who Thought He Was Messiah, which was a Nominee for the National Jewish Book Award.

Curt Leviant was also a Writing Fellow of the National Endowment for the Arts and won Fellowships from the internationally competitive Rockefeller Foundation and the Jerusalem Foundation. His stories and novellas have appeared in Midstream, Zoetrope, Confrontation, American Literary Review, North American Review, Ascent, Missouri Review, Tikkun, and many other magazines. They have also been reprinted in Best American Short Stories, Prize Stories: The O. Henry Awards, and other anthologies. His new novel, Diary of an Adulterous Woman, will be published in autum of 2000.

He has also translated several books by Sholom Aleichem and is working on translations of Issac Bashevis Singer.

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