Hawkes, John, — The Passion Artist.

NY, Harper Colophon, (1981). 1st US PB ptg. VG PB. Set in an imaginary European city, takes us into the dreamlike interior world of a middle-aged widower unaware of his own dark. passion. He discovers his daughter has become a prostitute and learns that women prisoners, where his mother is jailed, are in revolt. A fantastic series of violent and erotic encounters explore the awakening of sexual feeling in childhood, the involvement of the will in erotic acts, the nature of female power over men, the limits of perversity and the borders of incest. John Irving calls it "a rich philosophical observation of the differences in our sexes..touched with the erotic power of John Hawkes's language. He and Kurt Vonnegut are simply the most original first-rate writers in this country." Name blacked out on ft endpaper.