The BURIED Book Club discussion

Browsing the shelves for Sukenick my eye caught an unknown imprint on an old-timey looking spine : "Quadrangle." All initial signs of BURIAL were present ; and on the cover -- a photo of a belly dancer, a Greek hoplite, a jet at take off, an image of Stalin, and the following teaser, "None of the characters and all of the events described in this Cold War episode are real." Database check :: 3 ratings.

The Tooth Merchant, pub'd 1973, is C.L. Sulzberger's first novel. Following are words from this dusty dustjacket::

"C. L. Sulzberger has covered the news from every corner of the globe. His column which appears three times a week in The New York Times and other papers is among the most highly regarded commentaries on the news. The author of many books -- among them The Last of the Giants, History of World War II, My Brother Death and Unconquered Souls--this is his first novel."

And then, the book description :: "Outstanding political satires are rare in literature, especially if they are eminently readable, but this artfully camouflaged lampoon on war may prove to be the Candide of our era. Indeed, both Arthur Koestler and James Jones have compared it with Voltaire's famous work. Yet THE TOOTH MERCHANT has qualities of its own, combining the picaresque and the improbably to produce a work praised by Lawrence Durrell and termed 'a marvelous experience' by Irwin Shaw.
"The hero of Sulzberger's novel is an Armenian petty crook of limitless talent and few discernible morals who is blackmailed into Turkish espionage work but escapes to adventure on his own account. In the course of his travels he discovers a secret as astonishing as the creation of Mary Shelley's Frankenstein and attempts to sell it to world leaders as far apart in doctrine and geography as Stalin and Eisenhower or Ben Gurion and Nasser. This career as a traveling merchant of death is embellished by the company of a series of lubricious women -- Armenian, Druse, Georgian, Turkish, Coptic and, above all, a golden-haired Soviet Greek girl married to an Abkhazian fish farmer.
"Initially the reader may be under the impression that he is engrossed only in a beautifully written thriller. However, it will dawn upon him slowly that there is deep significance to the irony that accompanies Kevork Sasounian, the eminently corruptible linguist-poet, as he strides with gusto across these pages from a whorehouse in Istanbul to the White House in Washington, leaving behind a litter of broken hearts and broken heads. Only at the very end does it become apparent how profound is the philosophy that lies beneath the gaudy Levantine carousals which cloak but do not obscure THE TOOTH MERCHANT's purpose."

And the backcover BLURBS (disbelieve these at your won risk) ::

Lawrence Durrell : "A satirical tour de force most memorably written that leaves no spy unturned, Bravo!"

Arthur Koestler : "A kind of modern Candide...a thriller whose Armenian her far outshines James Bond."

Irwin Shaw : "A marvelous experience...a kind of latter-day Arabian Nighs cum Graham Greene."

James Jones : "A very funny novel...combination of Tom Jones, Candide, and Frankenstein...hilarious...most satisfyingly pungent satire."

[I've not confirmed that goodreads has adequately gathered together the various forms of Salzberger's names within the database]

Cyrus Leo Sulzberger II

okay and his scant wikipedia :: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cyrus_Le...

I don't really give a flying who-who about his journalism stuff -- that can be left to the journalists and historians. If anyone digs up more of his fiction or such, please do let us know.

And the NYT obit :: http://www.nytimes.com/1993/09/21/obi...