Monday, December 17, 2012

The Cliffs by Bertrand Fleuret


My review of Bertrand Fleuret's latest book The Cliffs (JL Books, 2012) is now available in the latest issue of afterimage (vol. 40, no. 4).

Here is an excerpt from the beginning:

It begins with a dream. Berlin. September 3, 2006.

Bertrand Fleuret’s daring new book, The Cliffs, flirts with the most dangerous of artistic clichés—the dream. Writing for The New York Review of Books, Michael Chabon recently opined, “I hate dreams . . . I hate them for the way they ransack memory, jumbling treasure and trash . . . The recounting of a dream is—ought to be—a source of embarrassment to the dreamer, sitting there naked in fading tatters of Jungian couture.” What saves Fleuret’s foray into such treacherous terrain is his self-conscious embrace of the artistic device and its limitations. Modest in size and scope, the book does not proclaim any grand intensions or meaning, but operates within its own parameters. Either unafraid or unaware of such dangers, Fleuret presents us with his own dream—a dream of ascent, exploration, and hellish confusion. Cliffs loom in the distance and chaos reigns.
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Read the rest of the review in the current issue along with a bunch of other excellent essays and reviews. You can also get a copy of The Cliffs here and here.

All images © Bertrand Fleuret and JL Books
All images © Bertrand Fleuret and JL Books