Aerea in the forests of Manhattan
By: Emmanuel Hocquard ; translated by Lydia Davis.
Edition: 1st English-language ed.
Publisher: Marlboro Press
Published: 1992
Place of publication: Marlboro, Vt
Language: eng
Number of pages: 118
Description: At forty, Adam, an intellectual, a writer "who comes from the other side of the ocean," and who is steeped in the belief that he is the last of his line, finds himself - dreams himselfin America. The promised land's gift to him is Aerea, youthful, radiant, an enchantress, essentially unattainable: their adventure is short-lived: words, she tells Adam, are the obstacle that stands in the way. And scarcely has she appeared in it than she has walked out of his life. His.

Life then resumes its wandering course: "Imagine, reader, Ulysses far away from his own people . . ." Evocations of myths recur, mythic scenes and personages return again and again as this indeed dream-like story unfurls, serene and transparent like slowly flowing water under a brilliant sun. "And since everything on this earth must have a beginning," the story concludes, "here is what the beginning of this book was: our bodies intertwined on the sheet in the Manhattan.

Bedroom, Aerea, on top of me, let fall on my lips ... these words in which honey was tenderly mingled with venom: 'Don't forget me! Don't forget me!'"