 |
Fiction |
 pas de la
récherche du temps
present... Julian Semilian’s A
Spy
in Amnesia
NEW YORK, NY, June 30, 2003
— Reason itself is threatened and vanquished in A Spy in Amnesia,
the new fictional memoir by acclaimed author and poet Julian
Semilian. The book is now available
courtesy of
independent New York literary house Spuyten Duyvil. A Spy in Amnesia takes the form of a
two-year correspondence with the writer’s muse/ex-lover, referred to as
Imogen. Full of philosophical
wanderings, erotic prose, and provocative thoughts on literature and
life, A
Spy in Amnesia chronicles one man’s longing to shut out modern
society and
reside in a world of myth and desire; he is a secret agent whose
assignment is
to write his way back to his personal Eros. Various literary figures
are summoned throughout the work, from the multi-spirited Borges to the
lost-yet-found seeker Nietzsche to the absinthe-seasoned hell of
Rimbaud, during
the narrator’s quest to not be “tarred and feathered by meaning.” Yet Semilian’s multifarious and compelling
first-person narration makes Amnesia a place worth residing in
and
remembering long after departure. In addition to author
Semilian’s recent Spuyten Duyvil poetry collection Transgender
Organ Grinder
and the publication of his own work in a variety of magazines, he is
one of the
world’s foremost translators of Romanian avant-garde poetry, renowned
for his
translations of Paul Celan (Julian’s translation of Celan’s Romanian
Poems was
just published by Green Integer), Tristan Tzara, and Gellu Naum, among
others. Semilian is also known for his
twenty-four year career as a film editor, during which time he worked
on over
fifty films and television shows. Some notes on A Spy in Amnesia
by the
author A
Spy in Amnesia is an
experimental
novel. It was completed between 1998
and 2001 in Winston-Salem, North Carolina. It is
a philosophical novel written for the most part in epistolary form. It accesses a territory that Freud
approached in “Civilization and its Discontents” and Herbert Marcuse
further
developed in “Eros and Civilization.” The
philosophical issues are weaved inside letters written
by “the
author” to an ex-lover: the personal and societal, the universal and
the
intimate are placed under the moral microscope and mirrored against
larger
issues, prevalent at the turn of the millennium, of societal constraint
versus
fulfillment of desire. The novel takes
a vigilant look at the alienation of desire and the marketplace and
ultimately
attempts to locate the nature of desire itself. The
language of the novel is baroque and surrealistic, in keeping with its
attempt
to delve into inner dreamlike territories. _______________ “Julian
Semilian’s book is a mysterious poem. It
is also a celebration of the subconscious challenged to
become a
speaker, a writer, or a witness of the hallucination passing from words
to
images. It is also a journey through
cultures, languages, imageries, and dreams transferred with all their
fantasies
from an elevated spirit to Imogen, his alter ego. There
is a joy of confession in this book. And
the author confesses everything he
knows, he doubts, he guesses, he dreams or he invents, twisting senses,
playing
ad infinitum with the projections of parallel words, minds, and
thoughts. Written at the frontier of the
postmodernism, this book is a splendid hymn to the intellectual revolt
and also
a smooth odyssey of love.” —Carmen Firan author of The First Moment After Death “Julian’s
experience as a film editor has enabled him to import some novel
techniques to
his fiction. There is a hypnotic and
magical continuity between sequences that are as well defined as scenes
in a
film. A Spy in Amnesia is
neither taxing nor boring, but it is an intellectual tour-de-force. After I abandoned myself to it, I raced
along for the sheer pleasure of it. He
mentions Cioran, Jabes, and Goytisolo among his influences, and I also
agree. He speaks about mystery and
mirrors, and these are clearly present. But
there are also elements that Semilian may be too
modest to point
out: a masterly manipulation of textual time and space that bring to
mind also
Witgenstein and Lacan. The publication
of this book will inject a fresh and hopeful note into our literary
cacophony. There may even be a brief,
dreamy silence.” —Andrei Codrescu author of Casanova in Bohemia |
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