The Baudelaire Fractal
Description
The debut novel by acclaimed poet Lisa Robertson, in which a poet realizes she's written the works of Baudelaire.
One morning, Hazel Brown awakes in a badly decorated hotel room to find that she's written the complete works of Charles Baudelaire. In her bemusement the hotel becomes every cheap room she ever stayed in during her youthful perambulations in 1980s Paris. This is the legend of a she-dandy's life.
Part magical realism, part feminist ars poetica, part history of tailoring, part bibliophilic anthem, part love affair with nineteenth-century painting, The Baudelaire Fractal is poet and art writer Lisa Robertson's first novel.
"Robertson, with feminist wit, a dash of kink, and a generous brain, has written an urtext that tenders there can be, in fact, or in fiction, no such thing. Hers is a boon for readers and writers, now and in the future."--Jennifer Krasinski, Bookforum
"It's brilliant, strange, and unlike anything I've read before."--Rebecca Hussey, BOOKRIOT
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About the Author
Lisa Robertson is a Canadian poet and essayist currently living in France. Born in Toronto in 1961, she was a longtime resident of Vancouver, where in the early 90s she began writing, publishing and collaborating in a community of artists and poets that included Artspeak Gallery and The Kootenay School of Writing. In 2017 she was awarded an Honorary Doctorate in Letters by Emily Carr University of Art and Design, and in 2018, the Foundation for the Contemporary Arts in NY awarded her the inaugural CD Wright Award in Poetry. She has taught at Cambridge University, Princeton, UC Berkeley, California College of the Arts, Piet Zwart Institute, Jack Kerouac School of Disembodied Poetics and American University of Paris, as well as holding research and residency positions at institutions across Canada, the US, and Europe.
Reviews
"Things happen in the novel but none so much as the sentences themselves, they are the events; each sentence invites mediation, pause, excitement. " - BOMB Magazine
"A difficult work of ideas, by turns enlightening and arcane, part autobiographical narrative, part literary theory, Robertson's debut novel, for those interested in possibilities of fiction, is not to be missed." - Publisher's Weekly
"Robertson, with feminist wit, a dash of kink, and a generous brain, has written an urtext that tenders there can be, in fact, or in fiction, no such thing. Hers is a boon for readers and writers, now and in the future." - Bookforum
"And perhaps that's what Robertson, with this demanding, erudite, and quite remarkable novel, is telling us is required to return those who have been expunged from the pages of liturature: time and effort." - Quill & Quire
"An intense if abstract portrait of the poet as a young woman in search of a kind of language that might lead to liberation." - The Kirkus Reviews
"It's brilliant, strange, and unlike anything I've read before." - BOOKRIOT
