Orpheus in Fulton County

Fulton Country Courthouse

Remember the explosive scene in Marcel Camus' Black Orpheus (1959) where the director brilliantly replays the original myth against the floats and garishly lewd masks and puppets of the Rio's Carnival. Orpheus frantically tries to find his love who disappears into frivolity. Fellini used a similar backdrop in 81/2, Roma, La Dolce Vita and many other movies where childhood memories of carnival interweave with the pageants themselves. Little Fugitive uses Coney Island as the nightmarish background in which a runaway finds himself. The theme in all of this is the funhouse, the hall of mirrors where the parade of life in its most distorted forms constitutes a reality all its own.The sight of MAGA luminaries including a former president and his chief of staff turning themselves in to be arrested, fingerprinted and photographed for a mugshot is a carnival scene even Fellini couldn't have devised.

read the latest review of The Kafka Studies Department by Francis Levy in Booklife

and read the Kirkus review of The Kafka Studies Department by Francis Levy