Frederic Tuten
Encyclopedia
Frederic Tuten is an American
novel
ist, short story
writer and essay
ist. He has written five novels – The Adventures of Mao on the Long March (1971), Tallien: A Brief Romance (1988), Tintin in the New World: A Romance (1993), Van Gogh's Bad Café (1997) and The Green Hour (2002) – as well as one book of inter-related short stories
, "Self-Portraits: Fictions" (2010) and essay
s, many of the latter being about contemporary art
.
, New York City
, New York
, in the USA, Tuten is the son of a Sicilian
mother and a French-Huguenot
father. His father left their family when Tuten was young, and though they were never close, his father eventually was a part of Tuten's life before his death.
Tuten received his undergraduate degree from the City College of New York
. After studying pre-Columbian art
history at the National Autonomous University of Mexico
and travelling through South America writing on Brazilian cinema
, he earned a Ph.D. in 19th-century American literature from New York University
, concentrating on Melville
, Whitman
, and James Fenimore Cooper, and taught literature and American cinema in France at the University of Paris VIII
.
Tuten spent 15 years heading the graduate program in creative writing at the City College of New York, which he co-founded. In that capacity, he championed the work of students Walter Mosley
, Oscar Hijuelos
, Philip Graham, Aurelie Sheehan
, Salar Abdoh
, Ernesto Quiñonez
, and many others. He also teaches classes on experimental writing at The New School
. He is on the board of advisors for Guernica Magazine
and executive editor of Smyles & Fish. Tuten's short fiction has appeared in Conjunctions
, Fence, Fiction
, Granta
, The New Review of Literature, and Tri-Quarterly. In 1973, he received a Guggenheim Fellowship
for Creative Writing and in 2001 was given the Award for Distinguished Writing from the American Academy of Arts and Letters.
Tuten is also a well-known figure within the art world. He has worked as an art and film critic in various venues such as the New York Times and Artforum
and often incorporates allusions to these fields in his fiction as well. Tuten was a close personal friend of Roy Lichtenstein
and published several essays on his work, as well as catalogue essays for many other artists including John Baldessari
, Ross Bleckner
, Eric Fischl
, R.B. Kitaj
, and David Salle
.
Tuten currently resides in New York City
's East Village
.
Tuten's first novel, The Adventures of Mao on the Long March
(1971), a fictionalized account of Chairman Mao
's rise to power, is highly experimental in nature. It contains Faulkneresque
changes in narrative and lengthy fictional conversations with Mao that read like journalistic interviews. The story first appeared in 1969 in a 39-page condensed form in the magazine Artist Slain. The novel in its entirety was subsequently published by Citadel Press
in 1971, and re-released in 2005 by New Directions.
The cover of Mao features original artwork by painter Roy Lichtenstein
. This is fitting for Tuten whom, in life as in his novels, has a keen interest in artistic criticism (particularly with regard to painting). Tuten himself was actually used as a model for the drawing, which Lichtenstein altered accordingly to resemble Mao.
His next novel, Tallien: A Brief Romance (1988), is also about an historical figure, though one not nearly as well known as Mao. Jean Lambert Tallien was a high-ranking figure in the French Revolution
, serving as the president of the Constitutional Convention
and a member of the Committee of Public Safety
. Like Mao, Tallien was a member of the common classes who rose to the upper crust of the revolutionary ranks.
Tuten tells the story of Tallien's courtship and marriage to Therese, a condemned member of the French aristocracy. When eyebrows are raised by Tallien's show of clemency, Tuten describes in minute organizational detail the sometimes-banal and sometimes-bloody bureaucratic struggle that ensues. The narrative is intercut with the author's account of his own father's life, demonstrating an illiquid literary mechanism similar to that used in The Adventures of Mao.
Tintin in the New World (1993) is perhaps Tuten's best known and most critically acclaimed work. The novel's unlikely protagonist is Tintin
, the cartoon boy detective created by Belgian
comic
artist Georges Remi, better known as Hergé
. Tuten transplants Tintin from his comic book confines into a fleshed out, realistic world with all its wicked, grave and abstruse trappings. Appreciation of the book is enhanced by an acquaintance with Thomas Mann
's The Magic Mountain
, the characters of which it uses.
The cover of the novel, like The Adventures of Mao, features a drawing by Roy Lichtenstein, which was created expressly for the novel. Again Lichtenstein makes use of the benday dot technique to depict Tintin and his dog Snowy
in a near-miss with a would-be assassin's knife. Behind Tintin hangs the painting Dance (I) by Henri Matisse
, which in reality is displayed in the Museum of Modern Art
in New York City
. Curiously, Roy Lichtenstein's own rendering of Dance, sans Tintin, hangs in the same museum.
The book went through several print runs, both in the United States and the UK (in Britain, the novel was published by Marion Boyars Publishers
, and later Minerva). The novel was also translated into French, German, Dutch, Spanish, Catalan, and Swedish. In 2005, it was re-released by Black Classics Press in the USA, with an introduction by Paul LaFarge
. All editions of the book feature the Interior with Painting of Tintin jacket illustration created by Lichtenstein.
Like Mao and Tallien, Tuten's next novel, Van Gogh's Bad Café (1997), offers an imagined glimpse into the psyche
of a historical character, Dutch
artist
Vincent van Gogh
. The book is also similar to Mao in that the time and place of action and the narrator
are inconsistent throughout and change without warning. Van Gogh's Bad Café explores the themes of love and addiction.
Tuten's most recent novel, The Green Hour (2002), is in many ways a departure from the others. The setting is the present day, and the characters are not borrowed from history. Further, it lacks much of the impertinent humor and ethereal feel of his previous works. The story recounts the 30-year love affair between an academic and a spiritual vagabond.
Several of Frederic Tuten's novels and short stories feature a cat named Nicolino.
, to write an essay about their former colleague and friend Donald Barthelme
. The project evolved into a lengthy article, which offers a sort of collage of these three writers and the world of their influences. The work is divided into three parts - an introductory essay on the project by editor-in-chief Iris Smyles, Charyn's essay on Barthelme, and Tuten's piece "My Autobiography: Portable with Images", into which Tuten embedded illustrations by Max Ernst
and quotes from Barthelme's works.
Tuten's first collection of short stories entitled Self Portraits: Fictions was published by W. W. Norton
on 13 September 2010 and includes the following stories:
United States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
novel
Novel
A novel is a book of long narrative in literary prose. The genre has historical roots both in the fields of the medieval and early modern romance and in the tradition of the novella. The latter supplied the present generic term in the late 18th century....
ist, short story
Short story
A short story is a work of fiction that is usually written in prose, often in narrative format. This format tends to be more pointed than longer works of fiction, such as novellas and novels. Short story definitions based on length differ somewhat, even among professional writers, in part because...
writer and essay
Essay
An essay is a piece of writing which is often written from an author's personal point of view. Essays can consist of a number of elements, including: literary criticism, political manifestos, learned arguments, observations of daily life, recollections, and reflections of the author. The definition...
ist. He has written five novels – The Adventures of Mao on the Long March (1971), Tallien: A Brief Romance (1988), Tintin in the New World: A Romance (1993), Van Gogh's Bad Café (1997) and The Green Hour (2002) – as well as one book of inter-related short stories
Short Story
Short Story is a piece for violin and piano composed by George Gershwin in 1927.Gershwin composed the duet from two other short works that premiered at the same time as his Three Preludes. He combined a section of the "Novelette in Fourths" and another slower work to create this piece....
, "Self-Portraits: Fictions" (2010) and essay
Essay
An essay is a piece of writing which is often written from an author's personal point of view. Essays can consist of a number of elements, including: literary criticism, political manifestos, learned arguments, observations of daily life, recollections, and reflections of the author. The definition...
s, many of the latter being about contemporary art
Contemporary art
Contemporary art can be defined variously as art produced at this present point in time or art produced since World War II. The definition of the word contemporary would support the first view, but museums of contemporary art commonly define their collections as consisting of art produced...
.
Biography
Born in 1936 in The BronxThe Bronx
The Bronx is the northernmost of the five boroughs of New York City. It is also known as Bronx County, the last of the 62 counties of New York State to be incorporated...
, New York City
New York City
New York is the most populous city in the United States and the center of the New York Metropolitan Area, one of the most populous metropolitan areas in the world. New York exerts a significant impact upon global commerce, finance, media, art, fashion, research, technology, education, and...
, New York
New York
New York is a state in the Northeastern region of the United States. It is the nation's third most populous state. New York is bordered by New Jersey and Pennsylvania to the south, and by Connecticut, Massachusetts and Vermont to the east...
, in the USA, Tuten is the son of a Sicilian
Sicily
Sicily is a region of Italy, and is the largest island in the Mediterranean Sea. Along with the surrounding minor islands, it constitutes an autonomous region of Italy, the Regione Autonoma Siciliana Sicily has a rich and unique culture, especially with regard to the arts, music, literature,...
mother and a French-Huguenot
Huguenot
The Huguenots were members of the Protestant Reformed Church of France during the 16th and 17th centuries. Since the 17th century, people who formerly would have been called Huguenots have instead simply been called French Protestants, a title suggested by their German co-religionists, the...
father. His father left their family when Tuten was young, and though they were never close, his father eventually was a part of Tuten's life before his death.
Tuten received his undergraduate degree from the City College of New York
City College of New York
The City College of the City University of New York is a senior college of the City University of New York , in New York City. It is also the oldest of the City University's twenty-three institutions of higher learning...
. After studying pre-Columbian art
Pre-Columbian art
Pre-Columbian art is the visual arts of indigenous peoples of the Caribbean, North, Central, and South Americas until the late 15th and early 16th centuries, and the time period marked by Christopher Columbus' arrival in the Americas....
history at the National Autonomous University of Mexico
National Autonomous University of Mexico
The Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México is a university in Mexico. UNAM was founded on 22 September 1910 by Justo Sierra as a liberal alternative to the Roman Catholic-sponsored Royal and Pontifical University of Mexico The Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México (UNAM) (National Autonomous...
and travelling through South America writing on Brazilian cinema
Cinema of Brazil
Brazilian cinema was introduced early in the 20th century but took some time to consolidate itself as a popular form of entertainment. The film industry of Brazil has gone through periods of ups and downs, a reflection of its dependency on State funding and incentives.- Early days :A couple of...
, he earned a Ph.D. in 19th-century American literature from New York University
New York University
New York University is a private, nonsectarian research university based in New York City. NYU's main campus is situated in the Greenwich Village section of Manhattan...
, concentrating on Melville
Herman Melville
Herman Melville was an American novelist, short story writer, essayist, and poet. He is best known for his novel Moby-Dick and the posthumous novella Billy Budd....
, Whitman
Walt Whitman
Walter "Walt" Whitman was an American poet, essayist and journalist. A humanist, he was a part of the transition between transcendentalism and realism, incorporating both views in his works. Whitman is among the most influential poets in the American canon, often called the father of free verse...
, and James Fenimore Cooper, and taught literature and American cinema in France at the University of Paris VIII
University of Paris VIII: Vincennes - Saint-Denis
The University of Paris VIII or University of Vincennes in Saint-Denis is a public university in Paris. Once part of the federal University of Paris system, it is now an autonomous public institution and is part of the Academy of Créteil...
.
Tuten spent 15 years heading the graduate program in creative writing at the City College of New York, which he co-founded. In that capacity, he championed the work of students Walter Mosley
Walter Mosley
Walter Ellis Mosley is an American novelist, most widely recognized for his crime fiction. He has written a series of best-selling historical mysteries featuring the hard-boiled detective Easy Rawlins, a black private investigator and World War II veteran living in the Watts neighborhood of Los...
, Oscar Hijuelos
Oscar Hijuelos
Oscar Jerome Hijuelos is an American novelist. He is the first Hispanic to win a Pulitzer Prize for Fiction.- Early life and career :...
, Philip Graham, Aurelie Sheehan
Aurelie Sheehan
Aurelie Sheehan is an American novelist and short story writer. She is the author of two novels, History Lesson for Girls and The Anxiety of Everyday Objects, as well as a collection of stories, Jack Kerouac Is Pregnant. She is the director of the creative writing program at the University of...
, Salar Abdoh
Salar Abdoh
Salar Abdoh is an Iranian American writer and teacher of creative writing at The City College of New York.-Biography:Salar Abdoh was born in Iran and spent two years of his early childhood in England. When Abdoh was fourteen his family was forced to flee Iran and arrived in the U.S...
, Ernesto Quiñonez
Ernesto Quiñonez
Ernesto Quiñonez is an American novelist. His work received the Barnes & Noble Discover Great New Writers designation, the Borders Bookstore Original New Voice selection, and was declared a “Best Book” by the New York Times and the Los Angeles Times....
, and many others. He also teaches classes on experimental writing at The New School
The New School
The New School is a university in New York City, located mostly in Greenwich Village. From its founding in 1919 by progressive New York academics, and for most of its history, the university was known as the New School for Social Research. Between 1997 and 2005 it was known as New School University...
. He is on the board of advisors for Guernica Magazine
Guernica Magazine
Guernica / A Magazine of Art and Politics is a biweekly online site that publishes art and photography, fiction, and poetry, from around the world, along with nonfiction such as letters from abroad, investigative pieces and opinion pieces on international affairs and U.S. domestic policy...
and executive editor of Smyles & Fish. Tuten's short fiction has appeared in Conjunctions
Conjunctions
Conjunctions, is a biannual American literary journal based at Bard College. It was founded in 1981 and is currently edited by Bradford Morrow....
, Fence, Fiction
Fiction Magazine
Fiction is a literary magazine founded in 1972 by Mark Jay Mirsky, Donald Barthelme, and Max Frisch. It is published by the City College of New York....
, Granta
Granta
Granta is a literary magazine and publisher in the United Kingdom whose mission centers on its "belief in the power and urgency of the story, both in fiction and non-fiction, and the story’s supreme ability to describe, illuminate and make real." In 2007, The Observer stated, "In its blend of...
, The New Review of Literature, and Tri-Quarterly. In 1973, he received a Guggenheim Fellowship
Guggenheim Fellowship
Guggenheim Fellowships are American grants that have been awarded annually since 1925 by the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation to those "who have demonstrated exceptional capacity for productive scholarship or exceptional creative ability in the arts." Each year, the foundation makes...
for Creative Writing and in 2001 was given the Award for Distinguished Writing from the American Academy of Arts and Letters.
Tuten is also a well-known figure within the art world. He has worked as an art and film critic in various venues such as the New York Times and Artforum
Artforum
Artforum is an international monthly magazine specializing in contemporary art.-Publication:The magazine is published ten times a year, September through May, along with an annual summer issue...
and often incorporates allusions to these fields in his fiction as well. Tuten was a close personal friend of Roy Lichtenstein
Roy Lichtenstein
Roy Lichtenstein was a prominent American pop artist. During the 1960s his paintings were exhibited at the Leo Castelli Gallery in New York City and along with Andy Warhol, Jasper Johns, James Rosenquist and others he became a leading figure in the new art movement...
and published several essays on his work, as well as catalogue essays for many other artists including John Baldessari
John Baldessari
John Anthony Baldessari is an American conceptual artist known for his work featuring found photography and appropriated images. He lives and works in Santa Monica and Venice, California...
, Ross Bleckner
Ross Bleckner
-Life and work:"'I always absolutely thought there was a difference between being a young artist and an important young artist,' said Mr. Bleckner, who grew up in Hewlett, L.I., graduated in 1971 from New York University and earned an M.F.A...
, Eric Fischl
Eric Fischl
Eric Fischl is an American painter, sculptor and printmaker.-Early life:Fischl was born in New York City and grew up on suburban Long Island; his family moved to Phoenix, Arizona in 1967...
, R.B. Kitaj
R. B. Kitaj
Ronald Brooks Kitaj was an American artist who spent much of his life in England.-Life:Born in Chagrin Falls, Ohio, near Cleveland, United States, his Hungarian father, Sigmund Benway, left his mother, Jeanne Brooks, shortly after he was born and they were divorced in 1934. His mother was the...
, and David Salle
David Salle
David Salle is an American painter who helped define postmodern sensibility by combining figuration with a varied pictorial language of multi-imagery...
.
Tuten currently resides in New York City
New York City
New York is the most populous city in the United States and the center of the New York Metropolitan Area, one of the most populous metropolitan areas in the world. New York exerts a significant impact upon global commerce, finance, media, art, fashion, research, technology, education, and...
's East Village
East Village, Manhattan
The East Village is a neighborhood in the borough of Manhattan in New York City, lying east of Greenwich Village, south of Gramercy and Stuyvesant Town, and north of the Lower East Side...
.
Novels
The Adventures of Mao on the Long March
The Adventures of Mao on the Long March is Frederic Tuten's first published novel. The novel is a fictionalized account of Chairman Mao's rise to power, and is highly experimental in nature, including extensive use of parody and collage.-Plot summary:...
(1971), a fictionalized account of Chairman Mao
Mao Zedong
Mao Zedong, also transliterated as Mao Tse-tung , and commonly referred to as Chairman Mao , was a Chinese Communist revolutionary, guerrilla warfare strategist, Marxist political philosopher, and leader of the Chinese Revolution...
's rise to power, is highly experimental in nature. It contains Faulkneresque
William Faulkner
William Cuthbert Faulkner was an American writer from Oxford, Mississippi. Faulkner worked in a variety of media; he wrote novels, short stories, a play, poetry, essays and screenplays during his career...
changes in narrative and lengthy fictional conversations with Mao that read like journalistic interviews. The story first appeared in 1969 in a 39-page condensed form in the magazine Artist Slain. The novel in its entirety was subsequently published by Citadel Press
Kensington Books
Kensington Publishing Corp. is an American book publisher.- Overview :Kensington was founded in 1974 by Walter Zacharius, formerly of Lancer Books. Steven Zacharius became president and CEO in 2005. Vice president Michael Rosamilia has been the CFO since 1989. Laurie Parkin is the vice president...
in 1971, and re-released in 2005 by New Directions.
The cover of Mao features original artwork by painter Roy Lichtenstein
Roy Lichtenstein
Roy Lichtenstein was a prominent American pop artist. During the 1960s his paintings were exhibited at the Leo Castelli Gallery in New York City and along with Andy Warhol, Jasper Johns, James Rosenquist and others he became a leading figure in the new art movement...
. This is fitting for Tuten whom, in life as in his novels, has a keen interest in artistic criticism (particularly with regard to painting). Tuten himself was actually used as a model for the drawing, which Lichtenstein altered accordingly to resemble Mao.
French Revolution
The French Revolution , sometimes distinguished as the 'Great French Revolution' , was a period of radical social and political upheaval in France and Europe. The absolute monarchy that had ruled France for centuries collapsed in three years...
, serving as the president of the Constitutional Convention
National Convention
During the French Revolution, the National Convention or Convention, in France, comprised the constitutional and legislative assembly which sat from 20 September 1792 to 26 October 1795 . It held executive power in France during the first years of the French First Republic...
and a member of the Committee of Public Safety
Committee of Public Safety
The Committee of Public Safety , created in April 1793 by the National Convention and then restructured in July 1793, formed the de facto executive government in France during the Reign of Terror , a stage of the French Revolution...
. Like Mao, Tallien was a member of the common classes who rose to the upper crust of the revolutionary ranks.
Tuten tells the story of Tallien's courtship and marriage to Therese, a condemned member of the French aristocracy. When eyebrows are raised by Tallien's show of clemency, Tuten describes in minute organizational detail the sometimes-banal and sometimes-bloody bureaucratic struggle that ensues. The narrative is intercut with the author's account of his own father's life, demonstrating an illiquid literary mechanism similar to that used in The Adventures of Mao.
Tintin (character)
Tintin is a fictional character in The Adventures of Tintin, the series of classic Belgian comic books written and illustrated by Hergé. Tintin is the protagonist of the series, a reporter and adventurer who travels around the world with his dog Snowy....
, the cartoon boy detective created by Belgian
Belgium
Belgium , officially the Kingdom of Belgium, is a federal state in Western Europe. It is a founding member of the European Union and hosts the EU's headquarters, and those of several other major international organisations such as NATO.Belgium is also a member of, or affiliated to, many...
comic
Comics
Comics denotes a hybrid medium having verbal side of its vocabulary tightly tied to its visual side in order to convey narrative or information only, the latter in case of non-fiction comics, seeking synergy by using both visual and verbal side in...
artist Georges Remi, better known as Hergé
Hergé
Georges Prosper Remi , better known by the pen name Hergé, was a Belgian comics writer and artist. His best known and most substantial work is the 23 completed comic books in The Adventures of Tintin series, which he wrote and illustrated from 1929 until his death in 1983, although he was also...
. Tuten transplants Tintin from his comic book confines into a fleshed out, realistic world with all its wicked, grave and abstruse trappings. Appreciation of the book is enhanced by an acquaintance with Thomas Mann
Thomas Mann
Thomas Mann was a German novelist, short story writer, social critic, philanthropist, essayist, and 1929 Nobel Prize laureate, known for his series of highly symbolic and ironic epic novels and novellas, noted for their insight into the psychology of the artist and the intellectual...
's The Magic Mountain
The Magic Mountain
The Magic Mountain is a novel by Thomas Mann, first published in November 1924. It is widely considered to be one of the most influential works of 20th century German literature....
, the characters of which it uses.
The cover of the novel, like The Adventures of Mao, features a drawing by Roy Lichtenstein, which was created expressly for the novel. Again Lichtenstein makes use of the benday dot technique to depict Tintin and his dog Snowy
Snowy (character)
Snowy is a fictional character in The Adventures of Tintin, the series of classic Belgian comic books written and illustrated by Hergé. He is a white Wire Fox Terrier and Tintin's four-legged companion who travels everywhere with him...
in a near-miss with a would-be assassin's knife. Behind Tintin hangs the painting Dance (I) by Henri Matisse
Henri Matisse
Henri Matisse was a French artist, known for his use of colour and his fluid and original draughtsmanship. He was a draughtsman, printmaker, and sculptor, but is known primarily as a painter...
, which in reality is displayed in the Museum of Modern Art
Museum of Modern Art
The Museum of Modern Art is an art museum in Midtown Manhattan in New York City, on 53rd Street, between Fifth and Sixth Avenues. It has been important in developing and collecting modernist art, and is often identified as the most influential museum of modern art in the world...
in New York City
New York City
New York is the most populous city in the United States and the center of the New York Metropolitan Area, one of the most populous metropolitan areas in the world. New York exerts a significant impact upon global commerce, finance, media, art, fashion, research, technology, education, and...
. Curiously, Roy Lichtenstein's own rendering of Dance, sans Tintin, hangs in the same museum.
The book went through several print runs, both in the United States and the UK (in Britain, the novel was published by Marion Boyars Publishers
Marion Boyars Publishers
Marion Boyars Publishers is an independent publishing company located in Great Britain, publishing books that focus on the humanities and social sciences.-External links:*...
, and later Minerva). The novel was also translated into French, German, Dutch, Spanish, Catalan, and Swedish. In 2005, it was re-released by Black Classics Press in the USA, with an introduction by Paul LaFarge
Paul LaFarge
Paul La Farge is an American novelist, essayist and academic whose three books, The Artist of the Missing , Haussmann, or the Distinction and The Facts of Winter received generally favorable critical notices, with Haussmann, in particular, singled out as the work of a unique and original...
. All editions of the book feature the Interior with Painting of Tintin jacket illustration created by Lichtenstein.
Psyche (psychology)
The word psyche has a long history of use in psychology and philosophy, dating back to ancient times, and has been one of the fundamental concepts for understanding human nature from a scientific point of view. The English word soul is sometimes used synonymously, especially in older...
of a historical character, Dutch
Dutch people
The Dutch people are an ethnic group native to the Netherlands. They share a common culture and speak the Dutch language. Dutch people and their descendants are found in migrant communities worldwide, notably in Suriname, Chile, Brazil, Canada, Australia, South Africa, New Zealand, and the United...
artist
Artist
An artist is a person engaged in one or more of any of a broad spectrum of activities related to creating art, practicing the arts and/or demonstrating an art. The common usage in both everyday speech and academic discourse is a practitioner in the visual arts only...
Vincent van Gogh
Vincent van Gogh
Vincent Willem van Gogh , and used Brabant dialect in his writing; it is therefore likely that he himself pronounced his name with a Brabant accent: , with a voiced V and palatalized G and gh. In France, where much of his work was produced, it is...
. The book is also similar to Mao in that the time and place of action and the narrator
Narrator
A narrator is, within any story , the fictional or non-fictional, personal or impersonal entity who tells the story to the audience. When the narrator is also a character within the story, he or she is sometimes known as the viewpoint character. The narrator is one of three entities responsible for...
are inconsistent throughout and change without warning. Van Gogh's Bad Café explores the themes of love and addiction.
Tuten's most recent novel, The Green Hour (2002), is in many ways a departure from the others. The setting is the present day, and the characters are not borrowed from history. Further, it lacks much of the impertinent humor and ethereal feel of his previous works. The story recounts the 30-year love affair between an academic and a spiritual vagabond.
Several of Frederic Tuten's novels and short stories feature a cat named Nicolino.
"The Collagists"
In 2007 Tuten was asked by literary website Smyles and Fish, along with lifelong friend Jerome CharynJerome Charyn
Jerome Charyn is an award-winning American author. With nearly 50 published works, Charyn has earned a long-standing reputation as an inventive and prolific chronicler of real and imagined American life...
, to write an essay about their former colleague and friend Donald Barthelme
Donald Barthelme
Donald Barthelme was an American author known for his playful, postmodernist style of short fiction. Barthelme also worked as a newspaper reporter for the Houston Post, managing editor of Location magazine, director of the Contemporary Arts Museum in Houston , co-founder of Fiction Donald...
. The project evolved into a lengthy article, which offers a sort of collage of these three writers and the world of their influences. The work is divided into three parts - an introductory essay on the project by editor-in-chief Iris Smyles, Charyn's essay on Barthelme, and Tuten's piece "My Autobiography: Portable with Images", into which Tuten embedded illustrations by Max Ernst
Max Ernst
Max Ernst was a German painter, sculptor, graphic artist, and poet. A prolific artist, Ernst was one of the primary pioneers of the Dada movement and Surrealism.-Early life:...
and quotes from Barthelme's works.
Short stories
- "My Autobiography : Portable, with Commentary", ConjunctionsConjunctionsConjunctions, is a biannual American literary journal based at Bard College. It was founded in 1981 and is currently edited by Bradford Morrow....
40, Spring 2003. - "In the Borghese Gardens," The New Review of Literature Vol. 1, October 2003.
Tuten's first collection of short stories entitled Self Portraits: Fictions was published by W. W. Norton
W. W. Norton
W. W. Norton & Company is an independent American book publishing company based in New York City. It is well known for its "Norton Anthologies", particularly the Norton Anthology of English Literature and the "Norton Critical Editions" series of texts which are frequently assigned in university...
on 13 September 2010 and includes the following stories:
- "The Park Near Marienbad", Conjunctions 42, Spring 2004.
- "Voyagers", Conjunctions 44, Spring 2005.
- "The Park in Winter," Fence Vol.8, Summer 2005.
- "The Ship at Anchor", GrantaGrantaGranta is a literary magazine and publisher in the United Kingdom whose mission centers on its "belief in the power and urgency of the story, both in fiction and non-fiction, and the story’s supreme ability to describe, illuminate and make real." In 2007, The Observer stated, "In its blend of...
91, September 2005. - "Self Portrait with Icebergs", KGB Bar Lit, 2005.
- "Self Portrait with Cheese", "Roy Lichtenstein: Conversations with Surrealism, Exhibition Catalogue: Mitchell-Innes & Nash, October 2005; reprinted in Smyles & Fish 1, Fall 2006.
- "Self Portrait with Beach", Mona Kuhn : Evidence, 2007 ISBN 3865213723; reprinted in Conjunctions 48, Spring 2007, and in Harper'sHarper's MagazineHarper's Magazine is a monthly magazine of literature, politics, culture, finance, and the arts, with a generally left-wing perspective. It is the second-oldest continuously published monthly magazine in the U.S. . The current editor is Ellen Rosenbush, who replaced Roger Hodge in January 2010...
, August 2007; - "Self Portrait with Sicily," Conjunctions, Spring 2008.
- "The Bar on Tompkins Square Park: Self Portrait with Blue Horse", BOMB Magazine, Summer 2009.
- "The Park on Fire"
- "Self Portrait with Circus"
- "Self Portrait with Bullfight"
Essays
- "TrovaErnest TrovaErnest Tino Trova was a self-trained American surrealist and pop art painter and sculptor. Best known for his signature image and figure series, The Falling Man, Trova considered his entire output a single "work in progress." Trova used classic American comic character toys in some of his pieces...
." Arts Mag., XLIII (Dec. 1968 – Jan. 1969), 32–33. - "Roy Lichtenstein Bronze Sculpture 1976–1989." 65 Thompson Street, 1989.
- "Twenty-Five Years After : The Adventures of Mao on the Long March." Archipelago, 1997.
- "Still Replying to Grandma's Persistent 'And Then?'" Writers on Writing. - reprinted as a prologue to the short story collection Self Portraits: Fictions
- Frederic Tuten / December Guest Editor. Guernica MagazineGuernica MagazineGuernica / A Magazine of Art and Politics is a biweekly online site that publishes art and photography, fiction, and poetry, from around the world, along with nonfiction such as letters from abroad, investigative pieces and opinion pieces on international affairs and U.S. domestic policy...
, 2006. Frederic Tuten comments on fiction from four selected writers whose work he edited for Guernica Magazine.
Other writings
Tuten has contributed to the following books:- R.B. Kitaj Pictures. Marlborough Gallery, 1974.
- Roy Lichtenstein: Water Lilies. Richard Gray Gallery, 1992.
- David SalleDavid SalleDavid Salle is an American painter who helped define postmodern sensibility by combining figuration with a varied pictorial language of multi-imagery...
. Gagosian Gallery, 1999. - Roy Lichtenstein: Early Black and White Paintings. Gagosian Gallery, 2002.
- Eric FischlEric FischlEric Fischl is an American painter, sculptor and printmaker.-Early life:Fischl was born in New York City and grew up on suburban Long Island; his family moved to Phoenix, Arizona in 1967...
: Paintings And Drawings 1979-2001. Hatje Cantz, 2003. ISBN 3775713794 - John BaldessariJohn BaldessariJohn Anthony Baldessari is an American conceptual artist known for his work featuring found photography and appropriated images. He lives and works in Santa Monica and Venice, California...
. Ecole normale supérieure des beaux-arts, 2005. ISBN 2840562006 - Roy Lichtenstein: Conversations With Surrealism. Mitchell-Innes & Nash, 2006. ISBN 0974960748