In These Lowly Objects, Cate McGowan has fashioned one of
the great fictional characters of our time in Jules Lalande,
Dadaist extraordinaire. From his Dickensian childhood
alongside a second cousin (and later, wife), Isobel, McGowan
tracks--in rich, rigorous prose--the Zelig-like Lalande's
wanderings through fin de si cle Paris as he rubs elbows with
Degas and C zanne, fights in World War I, lands in New York
with Breton, becomes a professional boxer, hangs out with
Duchamp, and disappears in Cuba--or does he? Enter this
remarkably imagined, enchanted world and discover the
many delights of McGowan's marvelous creation.
--Robin Lippincott, author of Blue Territory:
A Meditation on the Life and Art of Joan Mitchell
Lyrical, stunning, and deeply strange, Cate McGowan's novel
concerns a shape-shifting protagonist, Jules Lalande. Lalande
disappeared years ago: various people--his estranged wife
Isobel Wright, journalist Titus Pidgeon, and the people
Pidgeon interviews, including historical figures like Andre
Breton and Marcel Duchamp--chase his scent. McGowan's
luminous novel tracks their efforts to conjure this enigmatic
poet-painter-performance artist-thief-con man-duke-trauma
victim-killer-healer. Twisty and original, These Lowly Objects
is fundamentally about self-hood, its precariousness and
perishability, and its surprising capacity for resurrection.
--Kim Magowan, author of Undoing and The
Light Source