Robert Archambeau reads from Alice B. Toklas Is Missing

Jazz-age Paris was the center of the artistic and literary world, and the center of the center was Gertrude Stein’ s salon, where the famous and aspiring creative talents gathered to gawk at Stein’ s Picassos and vie for status. Young Midwesterner Ida Caine arrives in Paris with her husband Teddy, a would-be Hemingway who thinks he can adventure first and write later. When Teddy falls in with the Stein set, he brings Ida to the salon, where she is shunted into a corner with the wives of famous men. She burns with resentment and wonders if she can ever develop into a real artist herself. A few days later, Gertrude Stein’ s partner Alice B. Toklas vanishes. Stein calls upon Teddy to investigate. Soon after, he vanishes. Forced to seek out her missing husband, Ida follows his trail through a milieu including strange Surrealist rituals, Tarot card readings, and the catacombs beneath the city. She falls in with a young American poet, T.S. Eliot. An unlikely passion grows while they seek answers to the shocking disappearances.

I'm giving two readings tomorrow night, the first from my novel "Alice B. Toklas is Missing" at the extremely cool Surface Noise, Louisville's best all-in-one bookstore, record store, and art gallery; the second from my translations of Belgian Surrealist poets at the Brown Hotel, as part of the MadHat Press tribute to Maxine Chernoff. Come one, come all! Cash bar at the Brown!