TROMPE-L'OEIL
by
Russell Bittner
"Man's creative struggle, his search for
wisdom, is a love story." – Iris Murdoch
Why would a
woman entering middle age—attractive, sexy, articulate, imaginative,
intelligent, charming, charismatic, wealthy and successful in almost every
aspect of her life—knowingly give up the only thing missing from that
life: namely, love? And love with a younger man whom she meets
serendipitously not once, but three times—and whose appreciation of her quickly
grows from mere physical attraction to adoration and then to obsession? The riddle from start to finish is perhaps to
be found in the word “knowingly.” The
answer to that riddle? Revealed only in
the final chapter.
DANEKA
SØRENSEN is a Danish transplant to NYC, where she
manages her life from an Upper East Side apartment building by night and from
the top floor of a mid-town skyscraper by day—ostensibly, all under tight
control. KIT ADDISON is a fashion photographer with a sideline penchant for
flora and poetry who lives on the Lower East Side. The distance between them, however, is about
much more than a mere hundred city blocks.
In Chapter
One, serendipity brings Daneka and Kit together for the first time as both are
exiting the Columbia campus—she from a poetry class in which she dabbles once a
week, he from Philosophy Hall in which he labors days and nights without
respite. This first encounter is both
poetic and philosophical—but too hot
to be captured in a mere haiku, too impulsive to be squeezed into an
imperative, moral or historical, for either of them. At the start of Chapter Two, already eleven
years later, they—or rather his camera and the front bumper of her limousine—meet
a second time on a zebra crossing. Her
search for a photographer for a special project (too hot and too
imperative for any of the more than competent staff of a major magazine of
which she is the Managing Editor) leads to a third serendipitous meeting. What follows these three meetings is, in the
coming weeks, a game of cat and mouse—until, that is, their affair becomes such
that “it seemed as if they might engulf each other in this single, ferocious
act, like tigers chasing their own tails and slowly churning, turning, burning
into butter.”
Their affair
takes them from New York to Paris, to the coast of Portugal, to Rome and
Positano, to the island of Bornholm in the Baltic Sea, then back to New
York. What they discover about each
other in those few weeks is more than most people discover in a mate or lover
over a lifetime. The exploration is an
erotic Elysian field, but also a psychological inferno.
What
gradually comes to light in the space of two continents and one return transatlantic
flight is that, while love’s bite may initially be sweet, the aftertaste may be
exceedingly bitter—when not downright nauseating.
"Trompe–l’oeil" is suitable for mature readers over the age of 18
Available from Amazon.com
http://www.amazon.co.uk/Trompe-loeil/dp/B004OEKBIE/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&qid=1299188352&sr=1
Christopher Russell Bittner
(son of author Russell Bittner)
“The apple doesn’t fall far from the tree”—as they say in
America, but also here in South Africa and in most of the former British Empire
where Malus domestica (apple trees)
grow. I suppose in India they substitute ‘mango’ for ‘apple,’ but what do I
know? Author Russell Bittner’s son,
Christopher, is also a budding poet whose first verses will turn his father’s efforts into mere sauce in a literary
(formal verse) journal by the name of Trinacria out of
Brooklyn, New York, U.S.A. And so, for the poetry lovers amongst us, keep an
eye out for this boy of mixed blessings and multiple talents. They—and he—could
well turn a head or two.”
Apple
Triolet
An apple—sprung from seed—has left
His tree to find his kind below.
The withered tree feels old, bereft:
An
apple, sprung from seed, has left.
“Farewell, my seed; forget the heft
Of this old tree—and now let go.”
An apple, sprung from seed, has left
His tree to find his kind below.
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