Overview
Eclipse Fever is as complex as Abish's avant-garde masterpiece, the PEN/Faulkner Award-winning How German Is It. Set in Mexico today, in a high-gloss world of intellect and society, Eclipse Fever explores the reaches of corruption and the limits of power in politics, in business, in culture. A constant course of suspense and psychological tension underlies its concern with art, emotional attachment, and the differing needs of men and women.The people whose lives interlock: Alejandro, one of Mexico's most respected literary critics; his estranged wife, Mercedes, whom he longs for and suspects of openly conducting an affair with a celebrated American writer; Bonny, the writer's 17-year-old daughter, a runaway, who is made witness to a sequence of calamitous events that culminates in murder; Preston, an American industrialist, and his sexually frustrated wife, Rita; and Pech, the unscrupulous art dealer who is the source of Preston's illegitimate collection of pre-Columbian artifacts.
As the lives and emotional fates of these people press together, as they buckle and collapse, the novel holds up a mirror to the moment in which we live: the end of a century, the end of a millennium, the perils, the temptations, the hysteria just below the surface. With the publication of Eclipse Fever, Walter Abish, already the recipient of great critical acclaim, establishes himself as a major American writer.
Synopsis
Eclipse Fever is as complex as Abish's avant-garde masterpiece, the PEN/Faulkner Award-winning How German Is It. Set in Mexico today, in a high-gloss world of intellect and society, Eclipse Fever explores the reaches of corruption and the limits of power in politics, in business, in culture. A constant course of suspense and psychological tension underlies its concern with art, emotional attachment, and the differing needs of men and women.
The people whose lives interlock: Alejandro, one of Mexico's most respected literary critics; his estranged wife, Mercedes, whom he longs for and suspects of openly conducting an affair with a celebrated American writer; Bonny, the writer's 17-year-old daughter, a runaway, who is made witness to a sequence of calamitous events that culminates in murder; Preston, an American industrialist, and his sexually frustrated wife, Rita; and Pech, the unscrupulous art dealer who is the source of Preston's illegitimate collection of pre-Columbian artifacts.
As the lives and emotional fates of these people press together, as they buckle and collapse, the novel holds up a mirror to the moment in which we live: the end of a century, the end of a millennium, the perils, the temptations, the hysteria just below the surface. With the publication of Eclipse Fever, Walter Abish, already the recipient of great critical acclaim, establishes himself as a major American writer.
Publishers Weekly
Abish's best-known work, How German Is It (which won the PEN/Faulkner Award in 1980), was hailed for its complex portrait of modern German society -- its slick, rational surfaces and aggressively antiseptic architecture built upon a terrain shifting with historical and pyschological doubt. In his first novel since then, Abish applies the same aesthetic to modern Mexico with equally beguiling if less momentous results.
Alejandro is a Mexican literary critic, urbane and sophisticated; his estranged wife Mercedes, a translator, leaves him, ostensibly to teach in the U.S., but Alejandro believes she is actually having an affair with Jurud, a Jewish-American novelist in New York. Alejandro's crisis unfolds against a backdrop of art theft, political chicanery and pernicious intellectual gossip-mongering among the cultural elite of Mexico City. As with most of Abish's work, the dramatic qualities of the plot are mildly diverting, but what fascinates most is its dynamic: the overall narrative structure (representative of history?) is dependent upon individuals solemnly pursuing the satisfaction of their own needs (capitalism?). How this comes to resemble art and story -- and how it eclipses the reality of historical forces -- is underscored by the purposefully melodramatic ending.
Editorials
Publishers Weekly -
Abish's best-known work, How German Is It (which won the PEN/Faulkner Award in 1980), was hailed for its complex portrait of modern German society -- its slick, rational surfaces and aggressively antiseptic architecture built upon a terrain shifting with historical and pyschological doubt. In his first novel since then, Abish applies the same aesthetic to modern Mexico with equally beguiling if less momentous results.Alejandro is a Mexican literary critic, urbane and sophisticated; his estranged wife Mercedes, a translator, leaves him, ostensibly to teach in the U.S., but Alejandro believes she is actually having an affair with Jurud, a Jewish-American novelist in New York. Alejandro's crisis unfolds against a backdrop of art theft, political chicanery and pernicious intellectual gossip-mongering among the cultural elite of Mexico City. As with most of Abish's work, the dramatic qualities of the plot are mildly diverting, but what fascinates most is its dynamic: the overall narrative structure (representative of history?) is dependent upon individuals solemnly pursuing the satisfaction of their own needs (capitalism?). How this comes to resemble art and story -- and how it eclipses the reality of historical forces -- is underscored by the purposefully melodramatic ending.