Hold Fast Your Crown
A Novel
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4.0 • 1 Rating
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- $9.99
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- $9.99
Publisher Description
“A story of madness, art, alcohol and creativity…elegantly translated…vivid.”New York Times
An exasperated writer obsessed with American cinema embarks on an increasingly bizarre journey in this heady, engrossing novel.
A man writes an enormous screenplay on the life of Herman Melville. Not a single producer is interested in it. One day, someone gives him the phone number of the great American filmmaker Michael Cimino, legendary director of The Deer Hunterand Heaven's Gate. A meeting is arranged in New York, and Cimino reads the manuscript. What follows is a series of crazy adventures through Ellis Island, the Musée de la Chasse in Paris, a lake in Italy.
We run into Isabelle Huppert, Diana the hunting goddess, a Dalmatian named Sabbat, a diabolical neighbor, and two shady characters with conspicuous mustaches. There's also a pretty PhD student, an unpleasant concierge, and an aggressive maître d' who looks like Emmanuel Macron...
This improbable, insightful tale bridges the divide between cinema and literature in unexpected ways that are at once gratifying and profound.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
The delightfully deluded protagonist of Haenal's latest (following The Messenger) juggles high and pop culture references with aplomb and a light touch. Having just completed his masterpiece, an epic screenplay called The Great Melville, the unnamed narrator decides that the only suitable director for the project is Michael Cimino, director of The Deer Hunter, because his life "wasn't unlike Melville's." It just so happens the screenwriter has acquired Cimino's contact information, and their short meeting sets him off on a crazy odyssey, which includes the de facto adoption of a docile Dalmatian named Sabbat and an eventual meeting with French actress Isabelle Huppert, the leading lady in Cimino's Heaven's Gate. There is no lack of incident, but one hesitates to call it a coherent plot. The constants are the narrator's indomitable passion for his artistic vision, however bizarre, and Haenal's artistic boldness. His Cimino, meanwhile, is not just a comic device but a fully realized character. Near the end, there is a lovely and surprisingly serious chapter built around a funeral, with a thoughtful contemplation on the nature of Christ. This is a stimulating novel, full of mischief and clever curveballs.
