Astoria (Picas Series) - Softcover

Viscusi, Robert

4.5

6 ratings by Goodreads

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1550711008 ISBN 13: 9781550711004

Publisher: Guernica Editions, 2003

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An experiment in what the author terms “speculative history,” this novel tracks the movements of a man haunted by the spirit of his deceased mother and dogged by the notion that Astoria—the Italian neighborhood in Queens where his mother grew up in the 1920s—is the true capital of the world. In 1986, two years after his mother's death, the narrator travels from Paris to New York to Rome, unable to escape the shadow of Napoleon, the historical figure he now associates with his mother. Weaving theory upon theory in an attempt to break the hold of these visions, he finds that she represents the fury, rage, and unappeased desire of migration and the displaced people left in its wake.

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About the Author:

Robert Viscusi is a professor of English at Brooklyn College, where he directs The Wolfe Institute of the Humanities. He lives in New York City.

From Library Journal:

Readers may ask what makes this work a novel; it could be called an autobiographical/philosophical treatise, a reminiscence, or a "voyage of discovery." Viscusi (English and American literature, Brooklyn Coll.) is teaching in Paris when be begins to compare his new environment to his "hometown," Astoria, Queens. Reflecting at length about the past while hoping to explain it in terms of the future, he recalls his childhood days, considering how his early surroundings have affected him. An extremely cerebral work with long, convoluted sentences, this book will appeal to readers who relish extensive philosophical ruminations.?Ellen R. Cohen, Rockville, Md.
Copyright 1995 Reed Business Information, Inc.

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