Jeff in Venice, Death in Varanasi
by Geoff Dyer
Jeff Atman, an arts journalist, meets the enchanting Laura while in Venice to cover the opening of the Biennale. The opening section, Dyer has said, is a play on Thomas Mann’s Death in Venice, but “operates at a far lower cultural level.” In the Mann novella, he added, “Aschenbach’s obsession with the young boy, Tadzio, is tied up with some quest for ideal beauty, in my book the romance with Laura is very carnal and hedonistic—though that could itself be said to represent some kind of ideal.”
