Author Description

Eric Torgersen, whose "Dear Friend" is an insightful and moving study of Rilke¿s relationship with the painter Paula Modersohn-Becker, now parses, in this captivating novella, the life/work dilemma¿which Rilke, Yeats, and others have insisted the artist must confront¿through the opposing yet complementary windows of the idealist and the cynic. This is a resonant, strange, and strangely familiar dialogue of soul and self which I first read, in manuscript, seventeen years ago. Back then I wrote that I thought it was brilliant. Today I read it again, and I believe I was right. ¿Dan Gerber