Watteau in Venice

Pierre Froissart sends faxes signed Crebillon fils, cites Stendhal and Vivant Denon, and lounges in a secluded palazzo, watching his beautiful young lover swimming laps. He muses on art, philosophy, history, and even astronomy as he looks at slides of the stolen painting he has in his possession. Suave, cosmopolitan, immensely well read (as the dizzying range of citations demonstrates), the narrator of this droll, obscure, lyrical, and occasionally witty novel is a modern aristocrat, living a life of ease among the pastel colors of Venice. A kind of sinister boredem seems to afflict everyone but Froissart and his proches. An entertaining exercise in frivolity.