Darconville's Cat

by Alexander Theroux

Book Overview

Darconville's Cat is a novel about love and hate. Among other matters, it deals with the delicate tensions between Life and Art, the Ideal and the Real, God and Satan, and, above all, with the crises... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 038515951X
• ISBN13: 9780385159517
• Release Date: January 1981
• Publisher: Doubleday Books
• Length: 704 Pages
• Weight: 2.25 lbs.

Customer Reviews

Perfection

I strongly suspect that Professor Theroux somewhere along the way made a Faustian trade with Mephistopheles and was willing to part with the love of his life in exchange for writing the perfect great American novel right at the get-go. Of the latter I can certainly vouche. The former could not have been accomplished without some deep seated experience. After all, this is a novel about love and hate. But it also concerns poles of every variety. As Nietzsche pointed out in "The Birth of Tragedy," the interplay of Appollo and Dionysius give birth to tragedy and fortunately for us in this case also to comedy. "The Trojan Horse has foaled." For in this Proustian synthesis of Theroux, genius clearly resides. Saul Bellow once wrote that fewer than 20,000 people had the intellectual wherewithal to really understand his novels. I suspect that in the case of Theroux the number is roughly half. Hence, booksellers consider this work an "overlooked masterpiece." The vocabulary is fairly daunting --the longest word in the world can be found within this magnum opus. But the pure wit and the rare sagacity and the beauty of the language is absolute paradise: this is one of only a half-dozen novels that I envy to the point that I wish I had written it. This is a novelist's novel. "You will either build a bridge or build a wall." In some cases the rich syntax rivals Proust in length and in other cases it's simply pithy wit. Theroux captures the dialect of the South deftly in his Blue Ridge Faux Eden and then revels in his own element East of Eden in the Hahvid Yahd. There are many places where I just laughed my head off. His primary cast -- Darconville, Isabel and Crucifer -- are memorable and the vitriolic diatribes of the wicked Crucifer must have been good fun to write. Crucifer out-Mephistos Mephistopheles as a worthy arch-demon as purely Satanic as any demon of Milton, Faust or Dante. This Crucifer is Biblical and leads Darconville on a tragi-comic chase through the labyrinth of his soul with an ending that is both original and intriguing in its wisdom. Thus Theroux prophesized his own manuscript going into a tin box to be confiscated by a Philistine doctor to offset his fees. This book takes a while to read properly -- I would advise you not to rush it. The writing is exquisite -- really it's as good as it gets in our day and age -- so just be sure to savour it. I also recommend that you buy this book as an investment: someday soon this genius will be "discovered" as an overnight success a mere 30 years in the making and his first editions will be worth great fortunes. "Darconville's Cat" is a pure joy to read -- it is, honestly, simply perfect.

"Silence [is] the unbearable repartee."

If you do a web search on Alexander Theroux, you won't find much of substance (other than Steven Moore's interview), but you will find the quote I used, because, like all quotes trimmed of the excess fat of context, it shimmers - like raised gold lettering - momentarily arresting the consumer's eyes as they scan the brain candyshop window on a day s/he has decided to splurge and "treat themselves" to a piece of edification. Theroux comes from a family of writer siblings, of which he is the eldest (His brother Peter has translated the Cities of Salt trilogy from the Arabic of Abdelrahman Munif). In true Corvine form (see, and read, Hadrian VII), he is an arch-curmudgeon - seldom leashing his razor-edged tongue which, after flaying his target, typically recoils and takes his nose off (he's lost jobs, the warm and fuzzy ambience typical of family reunions and some - but not I - would argue, any chance of major publication as a result). The Corvo comparison ends there. Though he also shares Rolfe's penchant for intricate phrasing and wild hybrid/archaisms, Theroux is a writer in the a more authentic, Joycean sense. Corvo was more an autodidact and whose "calling" had its source in a monstrous ego that intuited and constantly inveighed against its insubstantiality Theroux is, I think, a believing Catholic - but more so a faithful individual - singular, in love with literature and a living incarnation of the English language. No one alive (no one since Joyce or Beckett) writes as he does. He spent time in a Trappist monastery. He was a monk of academia: his doctoral thesis is a several hundred paged monster on the language of Samuel Beckett. He is in that line of intellectual-artistic priesthood that began more or less with Augustine and passed on through Dante, ..., Flaubert,... Joyce and otherwise terminated with Beckett. I say priesthood, because to those named writing was not a way to make a living or to sing the same old blues, but a moral obligation, something one is compelled or called upon to do. As I said, no one writes like Alexander Theroux today. And this is why he is unread. In doing it his way, he sins against canned sensibility and entrenched homogeneity. Publishers are aware of, cultivate (because it keeps their bland bread buttered) and share our attenuated attention spans and our immeasurable vanity. We want to feel intelligent, but we want adventure, something shiny, mainly - and certainly no more that 300 pages, tops (thank you Dan Brown!). When something like Darconville's Cat appears - it is as though a person emerged out of the 19th century into our broad-daylight, in full-period garb, and education. While a curious spectacle, books like Darconville's Cat are daunting and not likely to fit in to our fast-paced, "multi-tasking", non-reflective environment. So 6 months after a not exactly heavily marketed publication, this book is a remaindered item, and its author remains uncelebrated genius moldering away in the stingy wastes

Absolutely engrossing, immersive, and rich..!

Having thumbed through this book at a bookstore, I was immediately intrigued: flipping through the chapters, I encountered poems, catalogues, a dialogue in the form of Greek tragedy, essays, rich descriptions, hilarious excerpts from a naughty novel, even a page that was completely black. If this makes the novel sound fractured and confusing, that is far from the case--the perspectives are woven together in a beautiful and engrossing synthesis, and each voice that he speaks in adds a new (and typically extremely enjoyable) facet to his story.As another reader said, its kernel is a love story, and it is a beautiful and lovingly-crafted tale of the relationship between Darconville and his young love, Isabel. It is a romance, completely, and dwells a great deal on the beautiful winging idealism that lovers share, but at the same time, it is continually and alternately varied through Theroux's unbelievable and skillful array of voices and beautiful, poignant description.This book is a masterpiece, but it's not everyone's masterpiece. He does get carried away from time to time on his vast lists (most notably the library of misogynistic literature and "The Unholy Litany"). His thoroughness and vocabulary used in description often requires a more rigorous attention. Finally, I encountered many a suspected hapax legomenon whilst reading his book, words that Theroux has coined by drawing from his multi-linguistic mastery: "gynotikolobomassophile?" Well, he could have said something to the extent of "woman's earlobe-lover," but that wouldn't be Theroux, and that wouldn't have made his book better: it is the differences I savor, the unconventionality, and the color and richness with which he can imbue a scene, an emotion, or (especially!) a person. If you have a little patience and a great love for the English language, or given Theroux, language in general, give this book a read: I envy you, on the brink of discovering a nigh-perfect novel!

Powerful love story and portrait of Virginia society

The first two-thirds of Alexander Theroux' Darconville's Cat constitute one of the most powerful love stories I know of, on an equal plane with Sons and Lovers and Wuthering Heights. It is also a very penetrating, witty, yet passionate portrayal of an insanely aristocratic, self-preoccupied Virginia academic community. Unfortunately, the last third of the book, set in Harvard, is mostly an anticlimactic, sesquipedalian sort of verbal showing-off, much out of keeping with what precedes it. The ending, however, regains some of the power of the earlier parts of the narrative.

Finnegan Wakes Up American Letters

Alexander Theroux is America's greatest living author, but you would never know it by listening to him speak of his own work. It is not that he is particularly modest, although he maintains a comport you come to expect from PhDs in English. It is, rather, the unshakable, low-Boston accent that gives his speech a "Tweety Bird" sort of twang, and may tend to throw you off the fact that the man is a veritable OED of literary and etymological integrity. It could well be argued that the reason he is not currently lauded as being our greatest treasure is the fact that he does open his mouth, and some of what he has to say strikes the ear strangely. And some of those whose ears are so stricken have the power to keep the man's deserved reputation from full-dazzling. Time, however, will give him a thousand tongues. And it will be this work, at least to date, that will be most remembered. Of all his works, Darconville's Cat is the one where his imagination is allowed its most full expression, and the results are Joycean in their sheer intensity, breadth and color. His mastery of language is most apparent in this, his best work. If you get this book, hang on to it. It has a way of finding its way into other's hands. . . and never making its way back. That is because it is so much like candy. You want to relish it. Coddle it. Bring it into a salad with a good dictionary and revel in this most entertaining way to expand one's vocabulary while expanding one's philosophy. If you enjoy words and well-constructed sentences, paragraphs and chapters -- you will find much to keep you satisfied in this great work which deserves a place on your top shelf, along with Joyce, Shakespeare, Sterne, Rabelais, Erasmus, Voltaire and Dante. Some of the wide-ranging stylistic devices may stretch one's concentration, but even this is not necessarily a blemish. As you read and re-read this engaging tour de force, you will find these difficult areas becoming your favorite little watering holes. Dring deep!