Sky: Memoirs

Hiding from the Gestapo in Aix-en-Provence, France, from 1940 to 1944, Swiss-born novelist and poet Cendrars pored over scholarly documents on the purported levitation of saints and prophets. A war correspondent before he resigned his post and went into seclusion, Cendrars (1887-1961) oscillates between engagement and escapism in this hypnotic autobiographical chronicle, a feverishly lyrical collage of reportage, exotic travel writing, existential adventure and ``found texts'' about levitating saints' lives and miracles. As a teenager Cendrars traversed Siberia with a jewelry merchant. Later he made a pilgrimage to a strange Brazilian doctor obsessed with Sarah Bernhardt, and sailed from Rio to Cherbourg with 67 marmosets and 250 tropical birds. He writes of his son Remy, an aviator killed in WW II, and recounts the exploits of Dadaist poet/boxer Arthur Cravan, nephew of Oscar Wilde and WW I deserter. Felicitously translated, this is a great, haunted meditation on death, love, war and spiritual ecstasy. (June)