Other editions of book Confessions of Dan Yack

Unlike the malicious bravado of Dan Yack, Confessions is a bittersweet memoir of love and loss in which the typically earthy, reckless Blaise Cendrars surface is shot through with profound melancholy and a palpable sense of psycho-sexual disturbance. Yack tells the story of his tender love for the young Mireille (daughter of one of his many mistresses) whom he meets in a Paris gone mad on Armistice night, 1918. This love transforms him; he abandons his women, gives up fast cars and debauchery to marry this convent-educated girl of his dreams. To indulge her fantasies he launches her as a film star by creating films for her and casting her in wraith-like roles inspired by Edgar Allan Poe. But she's struck by a mysterious and fatal illness that raises some disturbing questions about the nature of their relationship. Poet, lover, war hero, and adventurer, Cendrars led a life as glamorous as Hemingway tried to make his seem, and this novel reads like the original black-and-white original of which A Moveable Feast was the glossy re-make.""--Michael Dibdin