Insel, the only novel by the surrealist master Mina Loy, is a book like no otherabout an impossible friendship amid the glamorous artistic bohemia of 1930s Paris.
German painter Insel is a perpetual sponger and outsiderprone to writing elegant notes with messages like Am starving to death except for a miraclethree oclock Tuesday afternoon will be the endbut somehow writer and art dealer Mrs. Jones likes him.
Together, they sit in cafés, hatch grand plans, and share their artistic aspirations and disappointments. And they become friends. But as they grow ever closer, Mrs. Jones begins to realize just how powerful Insels hold over her is.
Unpublished during Loys lifetime, Inselwhich is loosely based on her friendship with the painter Richard Oelzeis a supremely surrealist, deliberately excessive creation: baroque in style, yet full of deft comedy and sympathy. Now, with an alternate ending only recently unearthed in the Loy archives, Insel is finally back in print, and Loys extraordinary achievement can be appreciated by a new generation of readers.