Losing Beck: A Triptych [Paperback]

Losing Beckis the story of Jennie Silver, who is trying to get over a man who was greatly influenced by the renowned Hungarian emigr? novelist Avigdor Element. Spanning a hundred years of history from when Nijinsky danced The Afternoon of the Faun in Paris in 1912, through World Wars I and II, to very close to the present, Jennie keeps a diary, writes a play and a novella in her attempt to control her desperate, high-pitched emotions focused on a man she is uncontrollably drawn to and at the same time finds repugnant. A man who is one of the keepers and part of the legacy of Elements bad behavior.When Avigdor Elements hundred year legacy falls into the hands of the writer Jennie Silver, she creates a diary, a play and a novella in an attempt to psychologically escape a man who has imprisoned her mind and who was very much influenced by Elements bad behavior.A diary of amour fou; a two-act play featuring Nijinsky as an apparition of art and madness; a novella largely about the sexual politics of poetry publication. This triptych of narratives contains a plenitude of characters driven by overpowering emotions and dark motives. Each section is energized by a story-line of repetition compulsion arising from the desire to enjoy bodily pleasure, to have and hold the power to make others lustful about the physical beauty of oneself and ones mastery as an artist. It isnt always pretty to watch page by page, but the frottage of scene after scene of shame and desire, rage and submission, forms Susan Hahns testament, her repertoire of horrors. I was especially fascinated by the meticulous scrutiny of family relations, especially mother-daughter attachments, often dramatized against a backdrop of twentieth-century Jewish history. Admirers of Susan Hahns poetry will recognize some of the motifs, and some of the gorgeous language, woven throughout these Strindbergian plots. This work is the poets urgent gift to her devoted readers, who will be thankful,l£$