Century 21

Imagine Judy Chicago's The Dinner Party , but then make it literary, make it coed and make many of the guests fictional, and one begins to get an idea of this provocative and moving first novel by the Polish artist, art historian and poet. Kuryluk's ``guests'' include Propertius and his mistress/muse Hostia, the Ptolemaic queen Berenice, Anna Karenina, an HIV-positive Djuna Barnes, Moses Maimonides, Italo Svevo, Nadia and Osip Mandelstam, Malcolm Lowry and Goethe and Lotte--now married with a poodle named Faust. Then there are Ann and Carol Kar, the formerly probably and the latter definitely meant to represent Kuryluk the writer and painter. Finally, there is the futuristic ``Moon Scholar,'' who in the throes of Terra-Retrovirus--Ter-ret (Tourette's?)--has imagined this world drawn from fragments of the earth's texts, pictures and even advertising slogans and then insinuated himself into it. Although there is a fair smattering of polyglot wordplay and literary allusion, this is not as obtuse and heavy a work as Julian Rios's Larva: A Midsummer Night's Babel . Behind Kuryluk's purposeful lyric prose lie poignant insights into love, death and exile. (Dec.)