Dan Yack

Series · 2 books · 1929-1983

By Blaise Cendrars

Books in series

Dan Yack

1929

Centering on eccentric English millionaire shipowner, notorious hell-raiser, and the envy of all St Petersburg, Dan Yack, this strange travel yarn begins with the protagonist finding out that he is no longer wanted by his lover, Hedwiga. Rejection letter in hand, he eventually wanders into a nightclub to impulsively invite a handful of artists to accompany him on a world voyage via the Antarctic. As their journey progresses, the weather worsens and they enter pack-ice. Impatient, Dan orders the crew to land him and his three companions while they wait for a clear passage. They have enough provisions for a long, dark polar winter, but things do not run smoothly. The musician destroys their watches, the poet drifts off into serious daydreams, and the sculptor starts making statues of Dan Yack in ice. And Dan himself is worried—about time, about breaking his monocle, and about having no-one to love. But when the sun finally returns after the polar winter, no one could predict the surreal disaster that is about to unfold—a scenario involving a plum pudding, whales, women, and World War I.

Confessions of Dan Yack

1983

Continuing the adventures of the eccentric English millionaire Dan Yack, this novel centers on tells the story of the protagonist's tender love for the young Mireille, whom he meets in a crowded tabac in a Paris gone mad on Armistice night, 1918. This love transforms Dan Yack's life—he abandons his women and gives up his fast cars and debauchery to marry this convent-educated girl of his dreams. To indulge Mireille's fantasies he launches her as a film star by creating films for her and casting her in wraith-like roles inspired by Edgar Allen Poe. But before long Mireille is struck by a mysterious and fatal illness, the psychological origins of which raise disturbing questions about the nature of their relationship. Whereas Dan Yack's previous memoir celebrated his exploits with malicious bravado, this is a bittersweet memoir of love and loss in which the author's typically earthy, reckless surface is shot through with profound melancholy and a palpable sense of psycho-sexual disturbance.

Author

Blaise Cendrars

Author · 17 books

Frédéric Louis Sauser, better known as Blaise Cendrars, was a Swiss novelist and poet naturalized French in 1916. He was a writer of considerable influence in the modernist movement. His father, an inventor-businessman, was Swiss, his mother Scottish. He spent his childhood in Alexandria, Naples, Brindisi, Neuchâtel, and numerous other places, while accompanying his father, who endlessly pursued business schemes, none successfully. At the age of fifteen, Cendrars left home to travel in Russia, Persia, China while working as a jewel merchant; several years later, he wrote about this in his poem, Transiberien. He was in Paris before 1910, where he got in touch with several names of Paris' bélle époque: Guillaume Apollinaire, Modigliani, Marc Chagall and many more. Cendrars then traveled to America, where he wrote his first long poem Pâques à New-York. The next year appeared The Transsibérien. When he came back to France, I World War was started and he joined the French Foreign Legion. He was sent to the front line in the Somme where from mid-December 1914 until February 1915. During the attacks in Champagne in September 1915 that Cendrars lost his right arm. He described this war experience in the books La Main coupée. After the war he returned to Paris, becaming an important part of the artistic community in Montparnasse. There, among others, used to meet with other writers such as Henry Miller, John Dos Passos and Ernest Hemingway. During the 1920's he published two long novels, Moravagine and Les Confessions de Dan Yack. Into the 1930’s published a number of “novelized” biographies or volumes of extravagant reporting, such as L’Or, based on the life of John August Sutter, and Rhum, “reportage romance” dealing with the life and trials of Jean Galmont, a misfired Cecil Rhodes of Guiana. La Belle Epoque was the great age of discovery in arts and letters. Cendrars, very much of the epoch, was sketched by Caruso, painted by Léon Bakst, by Léger, by Modigliani, by Chagall; and in his turn helped discover Negro art, jazz, and the modern music of Les Six. His home base was always Paris, for several years in the Rue de Savoie, later, for many years, in the Avenue Montaigne, and in the country, his little house at Tremblay-sur Mauldre (Seine-et-Oise), though he continued to travel extensively. He worked for a short while in Hollywood in 1936, at the time of the filming of Sutter’s Gold. From 1924 to 1936, went so constantly to South America. This life globertrottering life was pictured in his book Bourlinguer, published in 1948. Another remarkable works apparead in the 40s were L’Homme Foudroyé (1945), La Main Coupée (1946), Le Lotissement du Ciel (1949), that constitute his best and most important work. His last major work was published in 1957, entitled Trop, C’est Trop. == Sources: