Description
In These Lowly Objects, Cate McGowan has fashioned one of
the great fictional characters of our time in Jules Lalande,
Dadaist extraordinaire. From his Dickensian childhood
alongside a second cousin (and later, wife), Isobel, McGowan
tracks–in rich, rigorous prose–the Zelig-like Lalande’s
wanderings through fin de siècle Paris as he rubs elbows with
Degas and Cézanne, fights in World War I, lands in New York
with Breton, becomes a professional boxer, hangs out with
Duchamp, and disappears in Cuba–or does he? Enter this
remarkably imagined, enchanted world and discover the
many delights of McGowan’s marvelous creation.
–Robin Lippincott, author of Blue Territory:
A Meditation on the Life and Art of Joan Mitchell
Lyrical, stunning, and deeply strange, Cate McGowan’s novel
concerns a shape-shifting protagonist, Jules Lalande. Lalande
disappeared years ago: various people–his estranged wife
Isobel Wright, journalist Titus Pidgeon, and the people
Pidgeon interviews, including historical figures like Andre
Breton and Marcel Duchamp–chase his scent. McGowan’s
luminous novel tracks their efforts to conjure this enigmatic
poet-painter-performance artist-thief-con man-duke-trauma
victim-killer-healer. Twisty and original, These Lowly Objects
is fundamentally about self-hood, its precariousness and
perishability, and its surprising capacity for resurrection.
–Kim Magowan, author of Undoing and The
Light Source
