Monsieur Teste in America and Other Instances of Realism
Short Stories by Andrei Codrescu

"The stories in this collection are comic and surreal, with that occasional quirky observation that is the expatriate’s metier. Existential and ontological questions arise from disparate sources - mythical creatures like Monsieur Teste, Californian babysitters, spirits contacted through seance, and priests in Brooklyn bars, ‘seeking asylum from the eternal verities.’" - Library Journal

"He celebrates language in an unrestrained manner, finding words and images that charge the atmosphere with a nearly unrivaled intensity. The closest writer to Codrescu in the South is Walker Percy, who persistently demonstrates an interest in language and philosophy. Although Monsieur Teste in America is different in approach from Percy’s fiction, it should provide provocative reading for those interested in fiction with a strong philosophical base." - Thoman Bonner Jr., The Times-Picayune

"In Comrade Past & Mister Present . . . This perpetual outsider offers ample evidence that even as his life grows more settled, he continues to push at his own outer limits, all the while treating the derangement of his senses with uncommon spontaneity and wit . . . . In Mr. Codrescu’s native Transylvania, poets are social spokesmen, and that perhaps explains his fearlessness of treading on the languages of philosophy, religion, politics, science, or popular culture. His focus on a pet theme, oppression, is as much concerned with the private as with the public . . . . One of our most prodigiously talented and magical writers." - Bruce Shlain, The New York Times Book Review

The two novellas and six short stories in Monsieur Test in America are explorations along and across the lines of fictional gender. Monsieur Teste of the title story is a mythical creature based loosely on Paul Valery’s character by the same name. He is the narrator’s old European "head" or "testes," coming to the aid of a confused emigrant, a new America. Between them stands both (literal and metaphorical) oceans of difference, and a female character named Ellen who is an elemental and powerful force. In the second novella, "Samba de Los Agentes," the emigrant narrator lives with his sisters and mother in a little vortex of madness from which he emerges only to kill "agents," or "people who mediate your reality for you." These mysterious instances of "ontological realism" are, like much of Codrescu’s other work, playful but profound inquiries into our social, sexual, and existential roles.

Andrei Codrescu was born in Sibiu, Romania, in 1946, and moved to the United States in 1966. Since then he’s published fifteen volumes of poetry and prose, including The Life and Times of an Involuntary Genius (Braziller) and In America’s Shoes (City Lights). In addition, he’s built a nationwide audience through his weekly essays on National Public Radio’s "All Things Considered." He lives in New Orleans with his wife and two children while teaching at Louisiana State University.

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