A Floating Life: A Novel

(Hardback)

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A Floating Life will delight lovers of Kafka, Murakami, and the magic realism of Gabriel Garca Mrquez. A nameless narrator awakens to the muddle of middle age, no longer certain who or what he is. He finds himself at a party talking to a woman he doesn't know who proves to be his wife. Soon separated but still living in the same apartment, he is threatened by a litigious dachshund and saddled with a stubborn case of erectile dysfunction in a world that seems held together by increasingly mercurial laws and elusive boundaries. His relationship deepens with an elderly Dutch model maker named Pecheur whose miniature boats are erratically offered for sale in a hard-to-find shop called The Floating World. Enlivened by Pecheur's dream to tame the destructive forces of nature, the narrator begins to find his bearings. With quiet humor and wisdom, A Floating Life charts its course among images that surprise and disorient, such as a job interview in a steam room with a one-eyed, seven-foot-tall chef, a midnight intrusion of bears, and the narrators breast feeding of the baby he has birthed.

"Equal parts science fiction, magic realism, and hard-boiled detective story, A Floating Life is a dizzying journey . . . a seamless, spellbinding narrative in the lineage of Borges, Castaneda, and Philip K. Dick."Kenneth Goldsmith, author of Uncreative Writing

Reviews

In Crawford s world, boundaries, especially those between people, are semipermeable membranes with tenuous connections to reality.

At times, Crawford seems to be channeling Kafka or Borges, a feeling reinforced when, at a party his unnamed narrator engages a vaguely familiar woman in conversation. She informs her interlocutor that she s written a letter to her husband, outlining his deficiencies and the hopelessness of their marriage. The narrator finally figures out whom he s talking to his wife. Equally dreamlike sequences emerge from this one. The couple decides to live in separate bedrooms in their apartment, but when this turns out to be unfeasible, the narrator goes to look for a new place to live. The real estate agent he talks to firmly rejects some of the narrator s choices and eventually tells him he d be happy in a small efficiency, but the building is being constructed under this apartment, deep in the ground, so in a surreal way, the apartment is actually a penthouse. One of the most important connections the narrator makes is to The Floating World, a weird and elusive shop where one can buy model ships, something the narrator starts to develop an intense interest in. The shop is located in a brownstone with no identifying marks, and its proprietor is a Dutchman who goes by the nautical name of Pecheur. Over time, the narrator and the shopkeeper become quite close, the latter taking on the narrator as an assistant. In addition to the death of Pecheur, the narrator ultimately must also confront his erectile dysfunction as well as the dilemma of waking up in an infirmary where he breastfeeds an infant, rather unusual since the narrator is a man.

Odd, offbeat, and strangely shimmering.

In Crawford's world, boundaries, especially those between people, are semipermeable membranes with tenuous connections to reality.

At times, Crawford seems to be channeling Kafka or Borges, a feeling reinforced when, at a party his unnamed narrator engages a vaguely familiar woman in conversation. She informs her interlocutor that she's written a letter to her husband, outlining his deficiencies and the hopelessness of their marriage. The narrator finally figures out whom he's talking to--his wife. Equally dreamlike sequences emerge from this one. The couple decides to live in separate bedrooms in their apartment, but when this turns out to be unfeasible, the narrator goes to look for a new place to live. The real estate agent he talks to firmly rejects some of the narrator's choices and eventually tells him he'd be happy in a small efficiency, but the building is being constructed under this apartment, deep in the ground, so in a surreal way, the apartment is actually a penthouse. One of the most important connections the narrator makes is to The Floating World, a weird and elusive shop where one can buy model ships, something the narrator starts to develop an intense interest in. The shop is located in a brownstone with no identifying marks, and its proprietor is a Dutchman who goes by the nautical name of Pecheur. Over time, the narrator and the shopkeeper become quite close, the latter taking on the narrator as an assistant. In addition to the death of Pecheur, the narrator ultimately must also confront his erectile dysfunction as well as the dilemma of waking up in an infirmary where he breastfeeds an infant, rather unusual since the narrator is a man.

Odd, offbeat, and strangely shimmering.

Author Bio

Tad Crawford grew up in the artists' colony of Woodstock, New York. A graduate of Columbia Law School, he campaigned for artists' rights as an attorney and drafted the artists' moral rights law enacted in New York State. The author of many nonfiction books, including Legal Guide for the Visual Artist and The Secret Life of Money, his writing has appeared in venues such as Art in America, The Cafe Irreal, Confrontation, Communication Arts, Family Circle, Glamour, Guernica, The Nation, and Writer's Digest. The founder and publisher of Allworth Press, he lives in New York City.