1921 - 1976 ... The singular Patrick Dennis It is one of those examples of creators recovered for the cause of art, in this case of XNUMXth century literature. It can be said that we are talking about an author outside his ideal time for the most complete recognition of the work.
Because Patrick took off quickly in the literary world in the mid-50s thanks to his novel My Aunt and I. Scholars of the author's biography want to find in the use of the first person of this novel and in the role of Aunt Mame and her captivating personality a biographical narrative that delves into fragility and in the search for an anchor, converted into that aunt rescued precisely from her real life.
But becoming a bestseller the first time does not ensure long-term success if readers ultimately find no more enjoyment of reading than a writer proposes. And so it happened with Patrick Dennis, who did not finish riding the wave of widespread success during his short life, despite the fact that literature continued to accompany him until the end, even under the pseudonym Virginia Rowans, in a more than likely gesture of protest. of his homosexuality.
Patrick Dennis's pen brings humor to a setting of restrained disenchantment or at least loaded with the fine sensitivity of one who does not pretend to represent the iconoclastic creator, but rather the narrator of social and vital certainties about a world full of shadows, to end up offering a crazy action that shakes from laughter. Comic realism with a view to the tragic to end up synthesizing the consciousness of deception with a smile on the lips.
Top 3 Recommended Novels by Patrick Dennis
My aunt and I, also titled Aunt Mame
It may be that the 11-year-old protagonist is Patrick Dennis himself. The first person as the narrative voice is what you have, plus the kid is also called Patrick. Or maybe not.
The point is that before the notion of a child alone in front of the world, the appearance of Aunt Mame supposes a sigh of relief from which humor arises in a more empathetic way.
Everything that Aunt Mame does is forgivable, her greatest extravagances and her out-of-tones that trigger highly varied humorous scenes, always with that counterweight of knowing that Aunt Mame, deep down, plays her role, ready to spit directly at the world if necessary, as a reply to the offenses that this ruthless world inflicts on him every day.
The adventure of the boy, Patrick, and his aunt goes on for years in a strangely quixotic and totally up-to-date relationship, puzzling and brimming with humor.
Genius
As a good connoisseur of bohemia, in 1962 Dennis published this novel that opened the doors of the cinema to its most grotesque realities. A novel that takes us into the back room of glamorous Hollywood. A fiction about the fictional lives that parade down the red carpet. A close look at the wispy stars where everyone wanted to be reflected.
In this book Genius, the writer Patrick Dennis, closely linked to the cinema of the 50s and 60s, dismantles the farandulian myth and presents the lives of actors, directors, producers, screenwriters and other pleiades, turning them into a crowd of beings clinging to the fleeting brightness of the premieres and glory. To laugh at everything, nothing better than starting with yourself.
Patrick Dennis himself is represented in his novel with his own name and his role as a writer condemned to a creative jam. The great director Leander Starr, fled to Mexican lands to escape women and tax inspectors, recruits him to write the script for his brilliant new film.
As if it were Don Quixote and Sancho Panza, both characters move in a satire on the world of cinema. With its eccentricities and its weaknesses, with its vices and its megalomanias. The mythical world of the most splendid of the known Hollywoods makes landfall in this novel. But in a way it is for the better. Mythologizing is easy enough.
Knowing the realities behind emblematic characters who occupy positions of honor in the popular imagination, lowers the matter a bit with soda. Although in the end, getting to know miseries and baseness, laughing with the noise and madness of those actors during those years, ends up increasing the myth. It is something without a doubt curious, which has more to do with nostalgia for the past than with the harsh daily reality of the stars on the red carpet.
Around the world with Aunt Mame
And it is that the years lived between Aunt Mame, her nephew and her strange friends give a lot of themselves. The world is too small for this woman who loves whatever comes next and who cannot remain without looking for a new adventure in which to feel alive again.
Together with the two main protagonists we enjoy the also relevant interventions of Vera and many other characters. All of them look out on a world violated by the conflicts of half the world and by the Second World War, but they will always come out unscathed and, strangely, convincing us that humor can always end up triumphing.
