I have deep gratitude for my American editor, Ken Siman, whose decision to buy this book and shepherd it through the editorial process eased some of the disenchantment I felt about my own country and increased my hopes for a better intellectual future here. I also thank Anna Jardine, the most understanding and informed copy editor I’ve ever encountered.
I’m very grateful to my publisher, Payot & Rivages in Paris, which published this book first, in French, in 2004; to my generous French publicist, Agnès Guéry-Plazy, whose exhaustive efforts helped me win the Prix de Flore that same year; and to my French editors, François Guérif and Catherine Argand.
I thank Carmen Firan for her interest in this book and the information about Romania she supplied, and Leonard Schwartz for introducing me to her. And Doris Sangeorzan, who rapidly and expertly prepared a synopsis of Johnny Răducanu’s Romanian-language autobiography. Thanks also to Toby Dammit, who wrote an electronic symphony around an excerpt of my text, which he performed with me in Paris and which sharpened my focus on the book.
I’m grateful to friends who volunteered to read the entire manuscript before publication: David Wax, Emily Blumberg, Mack Friedman, Eliot Michaelson, Catherine Texier, Walt Curtis, Michael Murphy, Tsipi Keller, John Evans, Susan Jill Levine and James Derek Dwyer; as well as those who read or listened to sections while it was being written: George Agudow, Peter Upton, Thierry Marignac, Japhet Weeks, Robert Houghton, Diane Clemente, Scott Neary and Carol Olicker.
I was also heartened by those editors who published early versions of parts of the manuscript, or spin-offs from it, including Jack Murnighan, Matthew Stadler, Joseph Holtzman, Ariana Speyer, Andrew Gallix, Jordan Heller, Bob Nickas, Nathan Deuel and Kelly McEvers.
Although this eccentric undertaking was often not without doubts that came from me and were projected toward those around me, I hope that those who helped will conclude that it’s been justified.
Versions of passages from this book appeared in the following publications between 1999 and 2004:
Best Gay Erotica 2005, edited by Richard Labonté and
William J. Mann (San Francisco: Cleis, 2005)
Gobeshite Quarterly
Index
The Literary Review
nerve.com
nest
Scrisul românesc
Shout
The Village Voice
www.respiro.org
www.sixbillion.org
www.3ammagazine.com
READINGS
TWELVE BOOKS provided most of the information about Romania and its people, or inspiration during this project. In order of personal importance, they are:
The Bandits by Panaït Istrati, translated from the French by William A. Drake (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1929)
Kyra Kyralina by Panaït Istrati, translated from the French by James Whitall (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1926)
The Playboy King: Carol II of Romania by Paul D. Quinlan (Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1995)
Lupescu: The Story of a Royal Love Affair by Alice-Leone Moats (New York: Henry Holt, 1955)
The Last Romantic: A Biography of Queen Marie of Roumania by Hannah Pakula (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1984)
Brancusi / The Kiss by Sidney Geist (New York: Harper & Row, 1978)
Athene Palace by R. G. Waldeck (New York: Robert M. McBride, 1942)
The Saint of Montparnasse by Peter Neagoe (Philadelphia and New York: Chilton, 1965)
King Carol, Hitler and Lupescu by A. L. Easterman (London: Victor Gollancz, 1942)
Romanian Rhapsody: An Overlooked Corner of Europe by Dominique Fernandez (New York: Algora, 2000)
Constantin Brancusi, 1876-1957 by Friedrich Teja Bach, Margit Rowell and Ann Temkin (Philadelphia: Philadelphia Museum of Art, and Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press, 1995)
Ten Steps Closer to Romania, conceived by Antoaneta Tănăsescu and edited by Cipriana Petre; translated by Adrian Bratfanof; English version revised by Stefan Lupp (Bucharest: Romanian Cultural Foundation, 1999)
Other books that I consulted:
Brancusi by Ionel Jianou (New York: Tudor, 1963)
Brancusi and Rumanian Folk Traditions by Edith Balas (Boulder: East European Monographs, 1987)
Romania: The Rough Guide by Tim Burford and Dan Richardson (London: Rough Guides, 1998)
Singuratatea . . . meseria mea by Johnny Răducanu (Bucharest: Regent House, 2001)
Bury Me Standing: The Gypsies and Their Journey by Isabel Fonseca (New York: Vintage, 1995)
Balkan Ghosts by Robert D. Kaplan (New York: Vintage, 1994)
The Prodigals by Petru Dumitriu, translated from the French by Norman Denny (New York: Pantheon, 1962)
The Story of Romanian Gastronomy by Matei Cazacu, translated by Laura Beldiman (Bucharest: Romanian Cultural Foundation, 1999)
The Black Envelope by Norman Manea, translated by Patrick Camiller (New York: Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 1995)
Red Horizons: Chronicles of a Communist Spy Chief by Ion Mihai Pacepa (Washington, DC: Regnery Gateway, 1987)
Journal: 1935-1944, The Fascist Years by Mihail Sebastian, translated by Patrick Camiller (Chicago: Ivan R. Dee, 2000)
America Seen by a Queen: Queen Marie’s Diary of Her 1926 Voyage to the United States of America, edited by Adrian-Silvan Ionescu (Bucharest: Romanian Cultural Foundation, 1999)
Roumanian Journey by Sacheverell Sitwell (New York: Oxford University Press, 1992; originally published 1938)
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
BRUCE BENDERSON is the first American to receive France’s prestigious literary award the Prix de Flore. He is the author of two works of fiction, User and Pretending to Say No, and several works of nonfiction, including Toward the New Degeneracy and James Bidgood. A translator of French literature who has worked as a journalist for numerous American and French publications, including The New York Times Magazine and Libération, Benderson lives in New York City and Miami.
1 All details are recounted by the intrepid Scott Long, in Public Scandals: Sexual Orientation and Criminal Law in Romania, a report by Human Rights Watch and the International Gay and Lesbian Human Rights Commission.
2 Romanian for “darling.”
3 Dinner!
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