The Calamity of Desire and Other Stories is a debut collection of short fiction by Pushcart-Prize nominated author Judith Dancoff, now available from the award-winning independent publisher Finishing Line Press.
Described as "luminous" by Los Angeles Festival of Books judge Diane Smith, the seven short stories and one novella weave famous works of art with sometimes real, sometimes fictional artists and protagonists, living through the conflicts of their time. In vivid, lyrical prose and told from the female gaze, Dancoff's debut collection pairs events of history, and of life, with the healing power of art, to find the boundaries of the human heart.
The title story of the collection, "The Calamity of Desire," depicts the life of Ria Munk, a young Viennese woman of the last century who commits suicide over a broken heart. "Men have died throughout history on the battlefield," says Ria, "medals lain across their graves, and why shouldn't a woman's death for love be equally esteemed?" As the painter Gustav Klimt attempts her death portrait, Ria's ghost narrates his efforts, relives her failed love affair, and comes to terms with her suicide. One of the works stolen by the Nazis, the painting now hangs in the Metropolitan Museum of Art. "The Calamity of Desire" (originally titled "The Death of Ria Munk") was nominated for a Pushcart Prize.
In "Still Life with Cherries," Louise Moillon, the first female artist to be accepted into the French Academy of Art, grows up in 17th century Paris during the Huguenot/Catholic conflict and finds her voice as a painter. At the end of the story, she begins her painting Still Life with Cherries, based on an actual Moillon still life. "Terminus," winner of the Theodore C. Hoepfner Award for best story of the year, is inspired by the life of the 19th c. sharpshooter Annie Oakley who joins Buffalo Bill's troop in Paris for the opening of the Eiffel Tower, where she encounters the artist Paul Gauguin and struggles to save one of his child models from the same fate she experienced as a child. The basis of a current screenplay in-progress, "Terminus" is inspired by the life of Annie Oakley and Gauguin's painting of his thirteen-year-old mistress, Annah the Javanese.
Juli Min, editor of The Shanghai Literary Review and author of Shanghailanders, comments about the collection: "The Calamity of Desire is both timeless and quietly subversive: an essential for any art lover, artist, lover, human."
Other artists and their works depicted in The Calamity of Desire include Auguste Renoir, Diego Velásquez, John Singer Sargent, and Johannes Vermeer, in stories that span the 17th c to the present day.
