After the Moonwalk : A fiction

Rating:
Summary: Proustian decadence in Manhattan
Review: Davis-Vautrin has given us a gift, a novel composed of exquisite moments and glimpses. When the waitress asks the "visitor" if he's from out of town, he replies, "Not yet." A fashion model assures us that "behind every man a woman lies." Much hinges on a misprint in an antique copy of Bullfinch's Mythology. Myth isn't something far away in After the Moonwalk; it's a familiar guest, joining the characters in cocktail bars and in the backseat of limos. The author has read deeply into classic and forgotten texts, and rather than shoving his knowledge down our throats, he sprinkles it liberally over every setting, making the reader feel smarter and more sensitive than he or she was before starting this slim and subtle volume.

Rating:
Summary: Invisible cities
Review: Like Charlie Parker, Henry Miller, Woody Allen, and Bartleby the Scrivener, this work of art enriches our city, rather than borrowing from it for some forgettable scope. If nothing else, that's got to be worth the retail price, but there's more. Interesting choice of pseudonym.

Rating:
Summary: After the Moonwalk after September 11.
Review: Vautrin's effulgent volume is a "dig", is a rare, archeological find. To be sure, Vautrin's New York, I mean post September 11, no longer exists even for quaint, ill at ease visitors. And any Moonwalk compels us to revisit lower Manhattan crater. The net result, as with any archeological artifact, After the Moonwalk is a collector's item, more valuable precisely because of its scarcity or likely to be reproduced in the future.

There are no siblings, or even distant cousins in the literary landscape. Fewer still, I suspect, in the future ghastly populated by anthrax visitors and the antrax letter writer(s). Our concerns will impel us toward the study of literary forensics rather than literary esthetics.

After today, after the television regaled us the brawling exploits of New York heroes, or the Bravest against the Finest, the fire department posturing as the department of archeology chiefs or ritual burial chiefs, the noble exploits of Vautrin's Achilles Brayk offer a far more refined version of the urban mythical hero. Are we, in the stories we make out of our lives, imitate Kafka or Gogol?

Vautrin, bibliophile that he is, is equally comfortable with both masters, and countless others, though his deepest allegiance seems to be running to Proust. There is little doubt of his avidity to recount things past and his nostalgia bears witness to an acute scrutiny of longing for matters past, doubtful, problematic. Are our memories, vivid though they seem to be, reliable? As narrative? As interpretation? Vautrin does not say, but After the Moonwalk is evocative and lyrical, not at all argumentative manifesto.

Having said all this, Vautrin's book is highly therapeutic in the post September 11: at a time punctured by the staccato, shrill cacophony of a bin Laden or of phony Antrax letter writers, ( of course he knows how to spell "penicillin"; only fine native spellers would know how to use a variation of the IPA, "penacilin") it is consoling to rest or coddle to bed with the elegant, soothing intoxication of After the Moonwalk.

Are you saying that that the old New York exists no more after September 11? Perhaps so. But then, Vautrin's book, if not a panacea, remains a powerful bedtime palliative. Along with an oversized pillow or stuffed bear, take After the Moonshine to bed with you. This is my prescription: it won't change the next morning call for alerts diligence; but you will surely sleep better, alerted to the immutable treasures of literature.