Venus Blue

Venus Blue is a novel in pursuit of its own subject: a 1930s bush pilot and 'gorgeous vagabond' named Molly Lamanna. As the focal point of an intense devotion, Molly, nonetheless, defies description: the closer one gets, the more ambivalent she becomes. Discovered by Hollywood at the edge of an airstrip in the Mojave desert, she manages to elude not only those about her, but - as both amnesiac and pilot prone to long, self-absolving flights up the Californian coastline - herself as well. Set in film-noir chiaroscuro, the novel is narrated by a present-day Hollywood memorabilia collector, Stefan Hollander. Something in the enticing vacuity of Molly's aspect as she flickers across a late-night television screen arrests his attention. Soon after, he comes to possess a journal, a kind of confessional, bound in flamboyant sapphire, kept by the one who most avidly worshipped at Molly's shrine: Millicent Rappaport, herself a Hollywood beauty. Of all the veneration Molly would incite in the various broken or obliterated segments of her life, Millicent's alone would come closest to capturing the spirit, if not the heart, of this glorious escapee.

About the Author :
Gustaf Sobin (1935-2005) was an American expatriate poet, resident for many years in Provence. He was born in Boston and, in 1962, moved to France, meeting Rene Char during his early days in Paris, a poet whose work he greatly admired and whose poetry was to have a great influence on his own. It was Char who suggested that Sobin go to Provence, and he settled in a small hamlet in the Luberon, where he was able to purchase an old silk cocoonery, and then to live frugally, while trying to find his way as a writer. It took some years before he was to find his poetic voice but, in the 1970s, his work was taken up by Eliot Weinberger's pioneering magazine Montemora which went on to publish his first two collections. Subsequent collections were published by New Directions and Talisman House. In his later years, Sobin also took to fiction and essays, writing four novels and two remarkable collections of essays on Provence. Venus Blue was his first novel.

Review :
"Venus Blue is less a novel about filmmaking than it is a film cloaked in the language of fiction. As Sobin unpacks his plot like so many Chinese boxes, the reader becomes less and less interested in "truth," the history in which these characters and mannequins are trapped, than in the series of images it presents--the frames of its film." -Douglas Messerli, Los Angeles Times "Gustaf Sobin writes like a poet. This is a sky novel - if you want to know what that means, read it." -John Berger "Venus Blue is irresistible: a story of haunted obsession and unfailing love set against the lush and corrupt background of Hollywood's glory years. Gustaf Sobin will make you love the women in his story. He writes of them with all the lyrical intensity and precision of a true poet." - Michael Ignatieff "This is an ingeniously constructed first novel by a distinguished poet." - John Nicholson, The Times "Dry, clever, and choked with cinematic references, Venus Blue is a striking debut." Jane Solanus, Time Out "There are many satisfactions in the novel which is written with a strong sense of visual beauty. There result is an ironic, sensuous evocation of a long vanquished star." -Judy Cooke, The Guardian "Venus Blue is an excellent story, exquisitely told ... elusive, without antecedent and possessed of a haunting glamour all its own." -Cressida Connolly, Marie Claire