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A review by bookchew
Moira Orfei in Aigues-Mortes by Wayne Koestenbaum
5.0
Koestenbaum's writing is unlike anything I've read before. Shamelessly raw, he reflects on performance and classical music ("The classical music industry, in which I play a minor part, is the last bastion of whoredom"), sexuality, disease, decay (decay of reputation, of landscape, of body).
This book is surreal, poetic, disturbing. It will take your own obessions and perversions, and reflect them back to you in a way that is more twisted than you could have imagined (your own mind in a distorting funhouse mirror).
"Moira Orfei in Aigues-Mortes" is a collection of private "notebooks" of an ailing, polysexual pianist and his correspondences with a flamboyant, fallen circus star. The two are planning a career comeback in Aigues-Mortes, a medival camarguais town surrounded on all sides by a fortress wall.
After finishing this book, I took a trip to Aigues-Mortes to better understand why Koestenbaum chose this town as the backdrop for his personnages (one of whom never makes it to the town).
He could not have chosen a better locale. The town, enclosed like a circus tent, shelters its kitsch and its freaks. Like Theo Mangrove and Moira Orfei, Aigues-Mortes wants to overcome its failure with attempts at circus, at rodeo, at culture. But its fortress walls impede expansion. Its colors remain faded from Camargue's salt air. Its potential is stale.
"As long as there is cricus, there will be Aigues-Mortes. . . As long as there is Aigues-Mortes, there will be Moira Orfei."
Note: this is NOT a book for those that might be offended by vulgarity, subserviseness, deviant sexuality (or deviant behavior in general), frank discussion of certain body parts, unconventional syntax, absurdity, surrealism, etc.
This book is surreal, poetic, disturbing. It will take your own obessions and perversions, and reflect them back to you in a way that is more twisted than you could have imagined (your own mind in a distorting funhouse mirror).
"Moira Orfei in Aigues-Mortes" is a collection of private "notebooks" of an ailing, polysexual pianist and his correspondences with a flamboyant, fallen circus star. The two are planning a career comeback in Aigues-Mortes, a medival camarguais town surrounded on all sides by a fortress wall.
After finishing this book, I took a trip to Aigues-Mortes to better understand why Koestenbaum chose this town as the backdrop for his personnages (one of whom never makes it to the town).
He could not have chosen a better locale. The town, enclosed like a circus tent, shelters its kitsch and its freaks. Like Theo Mangrove and Moira Orfei, Aigues-Mortes wants to overcome its failure with attempts at circus, at rodeo, at culture. But its fortress walls impede expansion. Its colors remain faded from Camargue's salt air. Its potential is stale.
"As long as there is cricus, there will be Aigues-Mortes. . . As long as there is Aigues-Mortes, there will be Moira Orfei."
Note: this is NOT a book for those that might be offended by vulgarity, subserviseness, deviant sexuality (or deviant behavior in general), frank discussion of certain body parts, unconventional syntax, absurdity, surrealism, etc.