The Divine Duty of Servants

The Polish Jewish artist and writer Bruno Schulz perished at the hands of the Nazis in 1942. His work survives in two novels (The Street of Crocodiles; Sanatorium Under the Sign of the Hourglass) and he has been praised by such writers as Philip Roth and Cynthia Ozick. This curioius series of vignettes is supposedly based on the erotic drawings of s&m scenarios and foot fetishism that Schulz obsessively drew, although Perez and Cool Grove Press were denied permission by the Schulz estate to reproduce any of Schultz's actual work. Instead, Perez's untethered musings about foot worship, cruel mistresses and erotic humiliation are accompanied by anachronistic photos of ""hired models,"" Perez's own ""fetishy photographs"" and drawings by the late Malcolm McKesson. Novelist and playwright Perez reimagines fairy tale princesses like Snow White and Cinderella as dominatrices enjoying the favors of their worshipers, and The Odyssey's Circe as commanding a herd of pigs thrilled to be dehumanized in servicing her. Vignettes explore such characters taken from Schulz's writings as the haughty servant girls Undula and Adela, while other insubstantial sketches aim to delineate the erotic visions and political theories of the Marquis de Sade, Wilhelm Reich, Marx and Freud. In relation to these innovators, Perez's interpretive scenarios seem exploitative and pretentious. A slapdash introduction by John Strausbaugh sets up the reader for disappointment, claiming that this book can offer some insight on the question ""why we love the master"" in the context of Germany's embrace of Hitler. The effort does not deliver on such lofty promises: while it seems clear that the complex interstices of power and submissive eroticism resonated poignantly for the artist Schulz, Perez's graphic stylings merely titillate and attempt to shock. (Feb.)