Confessions of Dan Yack

This whimsical, bittersweet 1929 period piece continues the semi-autobiographical memoirs begun in the surrealist classic Dan Yack , named for the Swiss-born novelist/poet's British persona. Where the first work celebrated the travels, pranks and derring-do of the narrator and his male comrades, Confessions dwells with lyrical tenderness on women--Yack's mother, before her death, in a darkened room crowded with flowers and candles; his lovers; and, above all, his lovely child-wife Mireille (daughter of an ex-mistress), with whom he shares seven chaste years. Millionaire Yack creates movies for her, casting Mireille in the roles of the wraithlike heroines of Edgar Allen Poe. Then Mireille becomes a ghost of herself, succumbing to a mysterious and fatal illness. A layered narrative structure, built around ``transcribed'' cylinders containing Yack's dictation and readings from Mireille's notebooks, reinforces the vibrant thematic questioning of the relationship between art and life. (Sept.)