Author: Robert Howe

Publisher: Xlibris

ISBN 1-4134-6664-8

The following review was contributed by: SHELDON (SHELLY) WAXMAN & click to view Shelly's reviews.

It’s classified as literary fiction. It certainly is literate. The author is obviously well traveled and has led a privileged life. He has done a lot of research about far-away places, writers and musical composers from the past. It is impeccable, erudite writing and the characters are well formed. 

The main character is a world-renowned writer. He is tripping through Europe at a fast pace. The basic story is about him and his feelings about life, as he prepares to deliver a lecture about Mozart. 

The problem is that there is not much of a story. The book is at times tedious and pedantic. It often appears to be an exercise in intellectuality without aim. There is a paucity of dialogue and many of the narratives are drawn out. It just doesn’t deliver. Perhaps it is not supposed to. I’m a story person; so I have a bias.

I rate it as a buy, however, because of the lovely and often insightful writing. Here is a sample: 

“The writers who had really tried to go it alone, to stick it to the established republic of letters, had generally turned out to be crackpots, not James Joyces. Stuart was not an author. Yet there was something that told Rizler that he was perhaps that rare bird, a genuine nonconformist who somehow—just—managed not to collapse into paranoia, real mental illness, irreversible oddballness. Stuart had delusions of grandeur but he hadn’t ended up screaming out his fantasies in mental wards or public parks or poets’ cafes.”