A brilliantly inventive cathedral of a book. No one--and I mean no one--is more deeply in touch with the zeitgeist of this obsessive, lunatic age than Andrei Codrescu. In our culture, in our literature, he is essential. -- Robert Olen Butler
WAKEFIELD is a hilarious - and yet grievously sobering - road-trip told by a maniac and signifying everything. Codrescu made me laugh over and over again, while brilliantly excavating and revealing the dark and absurd underbelly of our crazy global landscape. -- Ariel Dorfman
Perverse, romantic, profound, hilarious, cynical, moving, always surprising, and gorgeously written, "Wakefield" is hell-bent comic poetry, and the best kind of fun: the sort that forever changes the way you look at the world, from picayune details to the meaning of life. -- Elizabeth McCracken
A dazzling book ... the reader emerges at the end of the journey with laughter in his heart and a revitalized sense of the astonishing mysteries of everyday life in the here and now. -- Jonathan Raban
WAKEFIELD plucks you from the circumstances of everyday life and takes you on an exhilarating excursion through time and space, through memory and imagination, and he introduces you to unforgettable characters obsessed with singular follies. -- Eric Kraft
Andrei Codrescu's WAKEFIELD is unremittingly coruscating and immensely subversive, in short, a brilliant comic novel that will give you a fresh look at the homeland. -- Jim Harrison
Andrei Codrescu has joined classical writers Tirso, Goethe, Hawthorne, and Borges as the contemporary master of devil covenants. Like Sinclair Lewis before him, his mainstreet reveals a wildly corrupt, entertaining, loony Odysseus on his picaresque jaunt through popular world culture. Most poignant and darkly compelling in Wakefield is his admixture of madness, cunning, and the ultimate metaphysical sorrow of his journey, worth it, for what alternative exists in a world of diabolical tricksters? Yet life prevails over death, over any pact, in this laughing encyclopedia of Wakefield's wanderings. -- Willis Barnstone
ON
CASANOVA IN BOHEMIA:
From Publishers Weekly
Poet, novelist, essayist and much-admired NPR commentator Codrescu (The
Blood Countess) offers a ribald history of the final years of the infamous
satyr. The novel imagines Giacomo Casanova the son of an Italian actor, who
began his career as a lifelong seducer of women when he was kicked out of
the seminary for dallying with the nuns in the twilight of a lifetime
flamboyantly checkered by peccadillo and achievement. Scarcely a year after
escaping prison and still in his early 30s, he made and lost a fortune when
he introduced the lottery in Paris. At the age of 60, under the nom de plume
Chevalier de Seingalt, he assumes the post of librarian for Count Waldstein
at Dux Castle in the kingdom of Bohemia. Arranged around an outline of
European history from 1785 to the year of Casanova's death in 1798, his
reminiscences evolve in a sequence of nightly visits by an intelligent,
precocious and sexually agreeable maidservant, Laura Brock, and her younger
protege, Libussa Moldau. Codrescu evokes (and takes liberties with) the
historical events of the French Revolution and unblushingly drops the names
of such icons as Franklin, Goethe, Mozart and Marie Antoinette into the mix.
They are put to good, kinky use: Casanova so excites Laura with a story
about an argument that he once had with Voltaire about poetry that she
begins to lactate. Codrescu fans will enjoy this tongue-in-cheek patchwork
of bawdy escapades.
Copyright 2002 Cahners Business Information, Inc.
From Library Journal
As in his earlier novel, The Blood Countess, Codrescu here brings to life a
historical character, depicting Casanova the man, the myth, and his times.
In the 1790s, Giacomo Casanova is an old man living at the castle of Count
Waldstein at Dux near Prague and working as a cataloging librarian in the
count's library. In conversations with a young woman servant he has
befriended, he relates episodes from his past life as he finishes work on a
fantasy novel titled Icosameron and begins writing his mammoth
memoirs. Although Casanova is past his prime, sexual activity of various
styles and combinations still seems to occur whenever he is around. Codrescu
presents Casanova as representative of an old world order that is slipping
away, as the ideas that gave rise to the American and French revolutions are
radically changing the political, social, and cultural landscape of Europe.
Though factually based, the novel also incorporates almost dreamlike
meetings and philosophical discussions between Casanova and Goethe, Hegel,
and even Sartre. Casanova is portrayed as a weakening but still forceful old
man, full of warmth, humor, and intelligence. Very entertaining and well
written, this novel is recommended for all libraries. Jim Coan, SUNY at
Oneonta Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information.
From Kirkus Reviews
Essayist, deadpan NPR raconteur, and too-infrequent novelist Codrescu (The
Blood Countess, 1995, etc.) offers a comedic take on the life of Casanova.
It's all very well being a legendary ladies' man, heralded all across Europe
and doubtless on other continents as well for acts of shocking bravery in
the pursuit of sexual conquests, but what happens when one such as Casanova
grows old? Here we find the Chevalier de Seingalt ensconced in a remote
Bohemian castle by the grace of his sponsor, Count Waldstein, who has
retained Casanova to catalogue his immense library. Giving a mere fraction
of his time to the Count's task, our hero is much more interested in getting
on with his own writing and in telling stories. Fortunately for him, serving
girl Laura Brock is fascinated by his tales and soon willing to take part in
sexual escapades with other servant girls for his observation and enjoyment.
As fully packed as the story is with tales of Casanova's historic
trysts-including rendezvous with Venetian convent girls and the seduction of
a 300-woman harem-it makes a point of illustrating just how exaggerated the
Chevalier's already-impressive exploits had become even in his own lifetime.
The plot is not much more than a thin rigging upon which Codrescu can hoist
a multitude of erotic flashbacks, stories-within-stories, and commentaries
on religion, philosophy, sex, and the changing tides of history in
18th-century Europe. While the author is obviously enamored of his subject,
Codrescu never tries to make Casanova out to be more than he is (unlike, for
example, Doug Wright's worshipful treatment of the Marquis de Sade in the
play Quills). Though the narrative never turns a blind eye to the casual
violence of its day, this is ultimately a fun and sexy romp through a
libertine's freely fictionalized life. Consider it the bastard child of Anne
Rice's erotica and Umberto Eco's philosophical meta-fiction. High-flying but
somehow unpretentious prose, intellectual fireworks, and more steamy
couplings than a shelf's worth of romance novels: altogether, a potent dose
of high-literary eroticism.
ON AN INVOLUNTARY GENIUS IN AMERICA'S SHOES:
From
Publishers Weekly
“The Algeresque story of how Andrei Perlmutter, a bright kid growing up in
the Stalinist backwater of 1950s Romania, manages to vault himself into the
heart of ’60s American counterculture as Andrei Codrescu, Transylvanian
exotic and man of letters. . . . [Written] with enormous verve . . . it is
not only a self-portrait of the future poet, travel writer, NPR broadcaster,
[and] novelist but a thumbnail history of recent American literary
bohemia.
ON POETRY:
"One of our most
prodigiously talented and magical writers."
Bruce Shlain, New York Times Book Review.
"His command of
language is superb, his writing beautifully original, and his insights
piercing."
Frances Taliafero, Harper's.
"The writing is a
celebration, a festive song of gratitude."
Stephen Kessler, San Francisco Review of Books.
"With humor and
grace, wisdom and tenderness, Codrescu transforms the commonplace into the
miraculous. His work is cause for celebration."
Kay Boyle
ON THE HOLE IN THE FLAG:
"A Panorama of life
in post-revolutionary Romania...A work of great complexity and subtlety...
Unsettling... Touching, painstakingly accurate...A gripping political
detective story."
Alex Kozinski, The New York Times Book Review
"The most valuable
work on political manipulation since Orwell's 1984... Codrescu peels
layers of complexity from an important historical event to reveal the
ghastly truths."
George Czicsery San Jose Mercury News
ON THE NPR COLLECTIONS:
"These sweet and
sour satirical gems make for a fine filling between the fragments of our
lives. One at a time or as a whole, they deliver a nice sense of
completion and a large dash of laughter and insight -- a rare combination
these days."
Spalding Gray
"This transplanted
Transylvanian with the bateau-mouche moustache always manages (in his
consideration of All Things) to create a craving for the subversive--
something that is much needed in these days of 'friendly fascism.' "
Lawrence Ferlinghetti
"Codrescu's essays
remind us that brevity is the soul of wit and that imagination doesn't
have to be swaddled in description. If parents, teachers, and politicians
could imitate his style, the time savings alone would make our lives seem
longer and certainly happier."
Max Apple
"Codrescu manages to
be brilliant and insightful,tough and seductive about American
culture..."
The New York Times Book Review.
ON ROAD SCHOLAR:
"Mr. Codrescu is the
sort of writer who feels obliged to satirize and interplay with reality
and not just catalogue impressions...it's a measure of talent..."
Francis X. Clines, The New York Times Book Review
"Codrescu is a
wordsmith par excellence...a modern day DeTocqueville... a wry and
whimsical, pungently idiosyncratic documentary."
Joe Leydon, The Los Angeles Times
"Codrescu's
distinctive perspective makes the trip worth taking."
Variety
"Funny,
exceptionally moving search for Whitman's America."
The Village Voice
"Codrescu is among
the most astute contemporary observers of what William Carlos Williams
called 'the American grain,' while simultaneously joining playwright
Eugene Ionesco as one of Romania's great rememberers of dictatorial things
past."
Houston Chronicle
"Mr. Codrescu, with
the deadpan burlesque of a jaded outsider, rightfully assumes his place
among the keener chroniclers of the American spirit, 1990s style. On film
as on the radio, his work is defined by the tensions at play between humor
and sentiment, between one-liners and aphorism, and between immigrant
optimism and dissident cynicism."
The New York Times
ON THE BLOOD COUNTESS:
"An extraordinary
work of fiction...The Blood Countess is hypnotic and lyrical, with both
the concentrated poetic power of the great fairy tales and the playful
expansiveness of postmodern fiction."
San Francisco Chronicle Book Review
"Beautifully written
and meticulously researched...a book of high gothic drama"
Entertainment Weekly
"The Blood Countess
offers stylish entertainment that starts on Page One...Codrescu is
nervously alert for recurrent patterns of evil and its handmaiden,
absolute authority."
R.Z. Sheppard in Time
ON A BAR IN BROOKLYN: NOVELLAS & STORIES 1970-1978:
"Codrescu’s voice
is assured, funny as a jazz funeral and sharp as ammonia, nailing more
virtuoso turns than a Formula One driver. His prose is so deadpan it goes
through irony and comes out in some undiscovered place on the other
side."
Diane Roberts in St. Petersburg Times
ON THE DEVIL NEVER SLEEPS:
"A charming rascal,
Codrescu coos to his prey, lulling you into a kind of dreamy complicity
before neatly slashing your throat."
Philip Martin in the Oxford American (March-April 2000)
"Codrescu, an
urbanite Walter Benjamin with a sense of humor, remains a poet, a person
who works ‘only at recognizing the awesomeness of the universe, which is
a job, too’."
The Ft. Lauderdale Sun-Sentinel
ON THE EXQUISITE CORPSE ANTHOLOGIES:
"The best aspects of
the spirit of the Beats lives on in this frequently sassy, salty, silly
and ultimately satisfying experience."
Publishers’ Weekly, January 29, 2001
