Zoë; or, On the Clockwork Sphæres of Paradise: Entr'acte

by Sean Fraser

ENTR’ACTE, the Second book in a series of four — Zoë; or, On the Clockwork Sphæres of Paradise — is a Conte des fées about Zoë, on her promenade in France, set in 1913, from Saint-Étienne, Lyon and Clermont, and of those she meets from Humanity and Faery during her travels who address philosophy, theories and mores of Religion, Myth, Reality, Humanity, Dreams, the Arcane and Fey in the state of Existence.

[Note: This book is available from Lulu.com. Please visit my author's page and click on the "website" link. Thank you.]

514 pages, Paperback

First published September 16, 2020

About the author

His Grandfather introduced him to Chas. Addams and Pogo in 1965. [His Grandfather's complete set of Dr. Eliot's Five Foot Shelf, i.e., The Harvard Classics, would be read in the 1980’s.] Ballantine Paperbacks and Dover Books were essential.

Krazy Kat was viewed in the Sunday colour funnies.

Mad Magazine and, later, Zap Comix &c were read. He was introduced to the works of Edward Gorey in 1970.

A fine literary foundation.


THE THIRTEEN STAGES OF WRITING


1. The Walrus and The Carpenter : Meter and rhyme

2. The Hunting of the Snark (An Agony in 8 Fits)[1] : Meter, Rhyme and Structure

3. A Midsummer Night’s Dream : Meter and Rhyme, Sentence structure, Schemes

4. Lewis Carroll[2] : Portmanteau

5. William Morris[3] and Edward Gorey[4] : Word use and Self-Publishing

6. Charles Baudelaire : [Original Texts] Word use and Schemes

7. Stéphane Mallarmé : [Original Texts] Mythos, Schemes, Word use, Line structure and Work structure

8. Guillaume Apollinaire : [Original Texts] Word use, Line structure and Work structure

9. Donatien Alphonse François, Marquis de Sade, Voltaire, Jonathan Swift, and François Rabelais : Mythos and Polemics

10. Isidore-Lucien Ducasse, Raymond Roussel, H. P. Lovecraft, and Rikki Ducornet : Mythos and Narrative

11. James Joyce[5] : Word use and Line structure

12. Kenneth Patchen : Portmanteau

13. Ambrose Bierce, Lord Byron, Angela Carter, Leonora Carrington, Raymond Chandler, G. K. Chesterton, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Joseph Conrad, Marcel Duchamp, William Faulkner, Joris-Karl Huysmans, Eugène Ionesco, Washington Irving, John Keats, Arthur Machen, Richard Matheson, Herman Melville, Mervyn Peake, Edgar Poe, Sade, Percy Bysshe Shelley, Alfred Lord Tennyson, and Rod Serling[6] : Schemes, Narrative & Divers

[It should be noted that Stage 13 began during the first Stage and continued the length of this endeavor when those Authors’ works were found and read with Influences that were forgotten after subsumption of their Lessons.]

1 See The Annotated Snark by Martin Gardner.
2 See The Annotated Alice: The Definitive Edition by Martin Gardner.
3 The Kelmscott Press.
4 The Fantod Press.
5 See Here Comes Everybody: An Introduction to James Joyce for the Ordinary Reader (also published as ReJoyce) and Joysprick: An Introduction to the Language of James Joyce by Anthony Burgess.
6 In 1974, I attended Sherwood Oaks Experimental College for a screenwriting workshop given by Rod Serling from which I learned more than how to write a script.

Reviews

[Stephanie · Rating 4 out of 5]

Not so much a story as a painting in progress, a walk around a gallery and engaging with different, but linked, images. This work is quite unlike anything I've ever read and I will admit at times goes over my head but I have sufficient grasp of culture and history to recognise a large number of the principal characters (and I occasionally googled!). As the images evolved it began to remind me of one of my favourite books, The Man Who Was Thursday by G.K. Chesterton - a very surreal tale of anarchists - and lo, some of the characters from that book appeared in the scenes! Whilst this is a literary work which demands some concentration, on my part at least, there are also some lovely humorous touches, often absurdist in nature. If you want something different, this series is it. Now to the next book ...