Circus: Or, Moira Orfei in Aigues-Mortes

by Wayne Koestenbaum, Rachel Kushner (Introduction)

For five years, concert pianist Theo Mangrove has been living at his family's home in East Kill, New York, recovering from a nervous breakdown that derailed his career, and attempting to relieve his relentless polysexual appetite in the company of male hustlers, random strangers, music students, his aunt, and occasionally his wife. As he prepares for a comeback recital in Aigues-Mortes, a walled medieval town in southern France, he becomes obsessed with the idea that the Italian circus star Moira Orfei must join him there to perform alongside him. Extravagantly (and tragicomically) describing his hallucinatory plans in a series of twenty-five notebooks, he assembles an incantatory meditation on performance, failure, fame, decay, and delusion. A new edition of a "dazzlingly seductive" fever dream written in "brilliant poetic vernacular" (Bookforum) by a beloved poet and cultural critic, now with an introduction by Rachel Kushner.

Genres: Fiction, Music, LGBT, Gay, Literary Fiction, Novels

304 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 2004

About the author

Wayne Koestenbaum has published five books of critical prose, including The Queen’s Throat: Opera, Homosexuality, and the Mystery of Desire, which was a National Book Critics Circle Award finalist; and three books of poetry, including Ode to Anna Moffo and Other Poems. He is a Professor of English at the Graduate Center of the City University of New York.

Reviews

[Eric Byrd · Rating 3 out of 5]

James McCourt says this is “in every way a match for its most illustrious precedent, the hallucination recorded in Nabokov’s Pale Fire.” Oh please. Theo Mangrove’s moribund fantasizing - a comeback concert of Liszt and Ravel accompanying the ring show of a circus artiste of whom he’s an obsessed fan - has none of the solidity of Kinbote’s Zembla, its intricate, involuted madness. And Theo’s fantasies are so much less interesting than his acidic summaries of his family, his neighbors, and his favorite hustlers. That said, the prose is fabulous, really fun.

[Julie · Rating 5 out of 5]

Koestenbaum's writing is unlike anything I've read before. Shamelessly raw, he reflects on performance and classical music ("The classical music industry, in which I play a minor part, is the last bastion of whoredom"), sexuality, disease, decay (decay of reputation, of landscape, of body).

This book is surreal, poetic, disturbing. It will take your own obessions and perversions, and reflect them back to you in a way that is more twisted than you could have imagined (your own mind in a distorting funhouse mirror).

"Moira Orfei in Aigues-Mortes" is a collection of private "notebooks" of an ailing, polysexual pianist and his correspondences with a flamboyant, fallen circus star. The two are planning a career comeback in Aigues-Mortes, a medival camarguais town surrounded on all sides by a fortress wall.

After finishing this book, I took a trip to Aigues-Mortes to better understand why Koestenbaum chose this town as the backdrop for his personnages (one of whom never makes it to the town).

He could not have chosen a better locale. The town, enclosed like a circus tent, shelters its kitsch and its freaks. Like Theo Mangrove and Moira Orfei, Aigues-Mortes wants to overcome its failure with attempts at circus, at rodeo, at culture. But its fortress walls impede expansion. Its colors remain faded from Camargue's salt air. Its potential is stale.

"As long as there is cricus, there will be Aigues-Mortes. . . As long as there is Aigues-Mortes, there will be Moira Orfei."

Note: this is NOT a book for those that might be offended by vulgarity, subserviseness, deviant sexuality (or deviant behavior in general), frank discussion of certain body parts, unconventional syntax, absurdity, surrealism, etc.

[Guttersnipe Das · Rating 5 out of 5]

I found this book in New Orleans, in the dollar box of a used book shop: it may have been the best dollar I’ve spent in my life. As I read it I thought, “I’ve wanted to read this book for years, but I had no idea it actually existed.” But let me explain.

Many years ago, in graduate school, the other kids and I were so excited when the department said we could have a class in Queer Lit. A dozen of us ploughed through a tall pile of books but -- please don’t shoot me for saying so -- we were kinda disappointed. The only books that most of us entirely loved were by Genet and Jane Bowles. (OK, so we were snobs. But we were not wrong.)

I think we would have been really excited by this book. Anyway, it’s what I was looking for: real swagger, daring, vice, zest, energy, innovation. It’s a truly great queer novel. Or, to put it another way, it’s a great novel about fame, the history of piano music, the circus, rent boys and having anal sex with one’s aunt.

The book -- which consists of 25 “notebooks”, 25 series of jottings -- is about a hypersexual pianist obsessed with the Italian circus legend Moira Orfei. His mother is a legend, his sister a victim, his aunt a lover, and he is falling apart -- brilliantly, with amid hustlers and music history. My god, it’s so smart, so depraved, so much fun.

A word to the wise: I am guessing that this book is very nearly out of print. Soft Skull publishes great stuff but when it’s gone, it’s really gone. (That’s why I never got to read Antler’s Selected Poems. . .) Get your copy now, before we have to pass around photocopied bootlegs -- because somewhere this book has GOT to have a cult following. (Dear cult of Koestenbaum: Sign me up.)

[Kate · Rating 5 out of 5]

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THIS BOOK!!!
Its a must read for summer!
Written in a fever dream style it will capture you, and carry you under, and leave you gasping for air. I had a hard time putting it down and when I did I was thinking about it. Its written so poetically. Theo Mangrove was a facinating character, the depth!
The story and how its told were a rare reading experience for me. And I utterly enjoyed every minute of it! Koestenbaum is a wonderful writer. This was my first introduction to his work but I am already seeking more.

[Richard]

Five years of breakdown separate pianist Theo Mangrove's last recital in Europe from his planned comeback in Aigues-Mortes, "the town of dead water." At home in tiny East Kills, NY, Theo begins jotting in 25 notebooks, purchased all at once and addressed to his mother. Theo's wife, aside from servicing two of Theo's twenty daily erections, will have nothing to do with him. The other eighteen—taken care of by male hustlers, random strangers in YMCA locker-rooms and naked piano students—contribute to Theo's sense of dissolution as his "comeback" approaches. Overcome with the belief that Moira Orfei, queen of the Italian circus during the 1960's, must perform with him, Theo begins to write to her and to pen what may or may not be her cryptic replies into his notebooks. In a fugue of notes and troubling memories, Theo prepares for Aigues-Mortes, struggling with Moira's guidance towards one final, full celebration of "the partial, the flawed, the almost, the not quite."

Peopled by piano playing relatives, prostitutes, muses and manipulators; poet and cultural critic Wayne Koestenbaum's first novel shines a hot light on the treacherous crossroads of sex, death, family and popular culture.

[Stephano Medina · Rating 4 out of 5]

read this high or you’ll think it’s an overwritten, elitist stunt. but high it’s great.

[Chris Roberts · Rating 1 out of 5]

Mirage Factor divided by fourteen,
addiction overflow, concert junkies glow,
Lucifer times me equals Heaven's key,
Narcissus a.k.a. Theo vains himself to death.

#poem

Chris Roberts, God Breathlessly the Not Night

[David Tromblay · Rating 4 out of 5]

Koestenbaum’s writing reveals the circus that is the private life of concert pianist Theo Mangrove following his nervous breakdown and departure from public life. In this series of epistolary admissions, readers are treated to the private musings of a reckless recluse who treats his transgressions like a roadmap of cursory self-care. In the end, without spoiling any of the twists and turns along the way, Koestenbaum leads readers through a tragically comical story of place-as-character when a character is utterly unable to separate himself from whence he came. This book falls off the page like a soap opera you can hold in your hand, and you won’t want to put it down.

[Thomas Bergvinson · Rating 3 out of 5]

Very likeable protagonist. A little cliche at times, but overall an entertaining read.

[Hubert · Rating 2 out of 5]

Overwrought, meandering, somewhat annoying. The protagonist, Theo Mangrove, pianist, displaying HIV symptoms, writes in convalescence to a mysterious circus performer named Moira Orfei. Orfei lives and performs in France, and both of them look forward to the day when Mangrove can resuscitate his career as a professional pianist by performing while Orfei does circus acts.

The writing, though cleverly written, comes over as "inscrutable" and overbearing. The narrator namedrops every piece of concert piano music written, the well-known, the not-so-well-known. Every line is meant to be an affectation of sorts, whether of musical reference, of linguistic syntax, or wordplay. Add to that a demonstrable need to reveal the minutiae of the protagonist's sexual promiscuities in ever-so-overt ways, and his tendency to refer to his mother by first name, and lack of an active plot, and you end up with a ponderous text that just makes you go 'ugh.'

I am curious as to what the author has written in non-fiction.

[David Williams · Rating 4 out of 5]

Theo Mangrove is an unmitigated--and unredeemable--asshole. Period.

But: his moments of tenderness seem that much more so because of the overriding assholery; even more impactful is when such tenderness is not curtailed with his normal turns of self-loathing or need of attention. He's the sort of man who creates his own drama if none finds its way to him naturally.

I very much enjoyed this, but I'm not sure if I liked it; but I also do not think I disliked it. There are very few things within this book that I feel I know For Sure are real and not just a wildly maladied man's florid retellings. I'm not even sure I know what to say by way of review without in some way ruining the absolutely beautifully horrid ride that is Circus to the unread.

Perhaps you should just read it? I think you probably should. It is quite beautifully written, and utterly more devastating than any story about such a dastardly being has the right be.

[Charles · Rating 4 out of 5]

It took me forever to read this very short book. It is definitely not for everyone, but if you are a fan of sentences, it is worth the effort. This book takes the form of notebooks written by Theo Mangrove, an out-of-favor pianist who is planning his grand return in a performance with the circus star Moira Orfei. The details are densely layered and very rich. Taboo sex acts are made even stranger, not because they titillate, but because they’re rendered banal. Very strange read, but I enjoyed it in the end.

[michal k-c · Rating 3 out of 5]

what John Barth (by Koestenbaum’s own words) would call a stained-glass writer, not going to elaborate. a nasty kind of bohemian decadence that is a bit too on the nose maybe but also results in some beautiful sentences. don’t care about any of the “plot” here but that’s kind of an afterthought anyway it seems

[Albert · Rating 2 out of 5]

More a poem than a novel. Really nice turns of phrase and a unique subject trapped in a crappy story about nothing told by a narrator who we have no reason to root for. The only emotional channel into Theo is his choice of pieces for the Aigues-Mortes program.

[Jessica (bean) · Rating 3 out of 5]

I’ve thought a lot about this book as I’ve been reading it over the last couple weeks. It’s a slow, but interesting, burn. And everything accumulating at the end and the writing is 🤌 Very glad I read it but not one of my faves. But I’ll still think about it for a while to come

[Soft Skull · Rating 5 out of 5]

John Ashbery said it best: “If Debussy and Robert Walser had collaborated on an opera, it would sound like this."

[Turner · Rating 1 out of 5]

Nearly finished but decided not to waste any more time on it. Simply put: it's annoying to read and the story does little to nothing to make it worth the trouble.

[Shara · Rating 5 out of 5]

Not a word out of place.

[Grace O’Hanlon · Rating 2 out of 5]

I imagined the narrator as Stanley Tucci and as a result, found this novel ridiculously humorous.

[Rachel Seo]

the experience of reading this novel reminded me of a date i went on once

[Xavier Guerra · Rating 5 out of 5]

I liked this book a lot but uhhhhh. something is amiss with shorty I’ll say that much

[Tarek Azad · Rating 3 out of 5]

kind of a wild guy.