Passacaglia

By David O. Scaer

Passacaglia is an analytical novel, an expedition into history, love and memory, at once a meticulously-knit narrative woven of multi-colored threads, at once a poetic feat of strength-a uniquely readable and virtuosic work. Passacaglia is a tapestry woven of five different strands, organized rhythmically by the mathematics of site-shifting (the same mathematics that governs juggling, gearing patterns and musical canon). Passacaglia's narrative threads, thematically diverse, interrelate to each other mysteriously... and the site-shifting function itself-9-1-4-7-3-4-9-1-4-7-3-6 etc.-becomes a musical leitmotif throughout the novel, simultaneously coloring it and governing it. Time-bending, poetically stylized, passionate, quirky and erudite, Passacaglia promises to combine popular appeal with critical acclaim, skillfully shifting between the many sites and modes of memory and love, a tightly-structured airspace crisscrossed with five distinct, crisp trajectories:* The boy-king Philippe-Auguste, the world arrayed against him, embarks on a baroque path of inspired statecraft and blind brinksmanship to retake Aquitaine and his beloved Eleanor; historically precise and tirelessly researched, this is the untold story of one of history's greatest underdogs.* Distant in time and place, Vicus' mind escapes his failed marriage and plunges into a maze of memory, the darkly-lit and depopulate theater of his past, navigating as if it were a wide cold city, indifferent and dark.* Failed patriot Perugia escapes the capital, carrying the Mona Lisa away in his suitcase. Fallen in now among thieves and poets, the deep past haunts him; a phantasmagoria of absinth, sex andjustice for a heretic queen confronts him; he is as besotted with the -idea- of his mission as he is with the mission itself, as enamored with his suitcase as with the masterpiece it contains.* The present-day Lover (the one possible salvation for the hapless Vicus) finds his ageless Eleanor, singing love, desire and loss, the Poet of a lost tradition transposed to the modern day and, wading into a sea of words both sensuous and timeless, makes her immortal.* Weaverwoman Havoise is altogether too entangled in time, encumbered by memory. Married off as a child to William the Conqueror's chief advisor Torsten, she is the mute witness to triumph and atrocity alike. Passacaglia's Norn, she weaves the threads of memory-doom, longing, awe, horror, the acts of men and the fates of nations-into a single, unified tapestry.Passacaglia is lit with the contrary refractions of retrograde- and future-memory, bounded by frames without paintings, peopled by beings who cross over without hope of ever crossing back-cinematic in scope, tender, wicked, heartrending, shot through with breathtaking wordplay and death-defying numerology. It is the definitive hymn to the Fanatic: the thief, the dispossessed king, the ancient worthy matron, the inspired paramour. Passacaglia is a multiverse haunted by loners and lovers, lunatics and visionaries, each driven to "redouble their efforts when they have forgotten their aim" (Santayana).

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 1499702302
• ISBN13: 9781499702309
• Release Date: December 2014
• Publisher: CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform
• Length: 544 Pages
• Weight: 1.99 lbs.
• Dimensions: 9.0" x 1.2" x 6.0"