The Goldkorn Variations: a trilorgy - Leslie Epstein
The Goldkorn Variations: a trilorgy - Leslie Epstein
The Goldkorn Variations collects in one definitive volume, with a new afterword by the author, three previously published novels (originally from E.P. Dutton and Norton presses) about an aged European flautist, his music and his loves, from childhood to age one hundred and four. The author, Leslie Epstein, introduced Leib Goldkorn in his novella The Steinway Quintet, which received the American Academy of Arts and Letters award for Distinguished Achievement in Literature, and which later became one of the three tales collected in the first of these volumes. That in turn spawned what came to be known as Goldkorniana. The illustration by Pablo Picasso, “Scène Erotique II 02-08-1962,” 1962, appearing on the cover of The Goldkorn Variations courtesy of the Estate of Pablo Picasso / Artists Rights Society (ARS), and the Pace Gallery, is one which the author, Leslie Epstein feels “particularly captures the undying energy of a man who never seems to grow old—in that sense, perhaps, Leib Goldkorn is like Picasso himself.”
The Goldkorn Variations: a trilorgy (Un-Gyve Press) is a 743 page softcover with flaps. Publication date is November 9, 2022.
On Goldkorn Tales
“As his earlier fiction has demonstrated, Mr. Epstein is an exuberant writer, whose ambitions to address the large matters of history, and our moral and intellectual choices, is matched by a commodious talent—an ease in story-telling and a screwball feeling for comedy that counterpoints the high seriousness of his subjects and invests them, at once, with humanity and a sense of emergency….Reason and passion, death and life, the mundane and the momentous come crashing brightly together. And by the end, as Leib Goldkorn re-embraces music as a symbol of nature and harmony, the reader, too, is moved to celebrate the redemptive powers of the imagination—and to applaud Mr. Epstein’s artistry and ambition.”
Michiko Kakutani, The New York Times