“Blaise Cendrars Speaks… presents a remarkable set of interviews done in Paris in 1950 by Michel Manoll of Radio France with the Swiss-born French author Blaise Cendrars. In this long-awaited English translation of what is by far the best introduction to the vast scope of Cendrar’s oeuvre, the modernist Blaise exudes his joie de vivre, his eternal […]
David MacKinnon should be a household name in households where literature holds sway. Trucks groaning under the weight of boxes of his books should be making their way to campuses across the country each fall, as serious English professors make his novels required reading for skulls full of mush, in hopes of transforming them into […]
“Leper Tango is a heady mix of Chandler, Miller, Breton and…MacKinnon.” Hans Plomp, Poet & Pal of Ginsburg and the Beats, Dutch “Provo” activist, whose performances alongside beat legends Gregory Corso, Allen Ginsberg and many others during their mythical 1982 US tour sparked a cover issue of Lawrence Ferlinghetti’s City Lights Books. The “Nine […]
Editions Denoel, one of France’s most venerated literary houses,and publisher of Céline, Blaise Cendrars, Henry Miller, discovered Leper Tango in 2003, and took the unprecedented step of releasing an unpublished English-language manuscript. Leper Tango was personally selected by Jean-Paul Caracalla, chairman of the prestigious Prix des Deux Magots literary prize, and celebrated author in his […]
LEPER TANGO is not what I thought it would be, which ultimately is unimportant in the general scheme of things. It was easy enough to go with the flow and make the mental adjustment to the fact that it was not going to be full of explosions and karate (though it is loaded with […]
“Not since Henry Miller has the reader been taken on such a high energy tour of the seedier side of Paris. David MacKinnon in his novel, Leper Tango, has a lively, wry and sarcastic sense of humour rarely seen in novels. And best of all the reader is taken on a wild ride of the […]
“The writing reminds me by turns of Henry Miller, Hunter Thompson, Malaparte and Blaise Cendrars…Leper Tango also put me in mind of a James M. Cain novel, Postman, especially. Only better written. The observations, sidereal stuff, similes, metaphors, analogies, all that is superb. Also, I like the supporting cast, Tranh, especially, but the second tier […]