Fascist dreams

[rich]

sounds a bit like The Public Burning.

rich


On 11/1/06, Ya Sam <takoitov at hotmail.com> wrote:
>
> I already posted about Leslie Epstein's novel "The Eighth Wonder of the
> World". Here is another review:
>
> "Leslie Epstein opens his panoramic new novel with a cast of thousands
> assembled to watch the conquered Ethiopians paraded through Rome. The
> procession of captured men and animals — elephants, lions, and camels —
> marches under the arch of Titus, which was built to commemorate the
> conquest
> of Jerusalem by the very Jews vanquished in that ancient war. The crowd is
> "singing and chanting and roaring." On the dais sits Pope Pius, fingering
> the "tortured body" on the crucifix around his neck, watching nervously.
> And
> Mussolini in his familiar posture, strutting and puffing, stands above the
> crowd while women weep and offer themselves and their children up to him.
>
> Epstein repeatedly summons a cinematic vision to produce the brand of
> spectacle that Fascism inspired. The result is a sweeping, operatic work,
> its many narratives linked by Hollywood-scale production numbers
> choreographed by his verbal pyrotechnics. But the formidable task of
> knotting together a work that, like Pound's Cantos or Pynchon's novels,
> encompasses just about everything is such that even a writer with
> Epstein's
> control cannot keep his book from at times dissolving into a histrionic
> pageant."
> .....
>
>
> http://www.thephoenix.com/article_ektid26286.aspx
>
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