Self Portraits: Fictions

In the surreal stories of Frederic Tuten's Self Portraits: Fictions, a man may shift from a middle-aged father to an old man to an essence that even his own son can't identify. The first-person narratives of this collection embrace these metamorphoses, whether they're staged at Tompkins Square Park or a restaurant in Spain, with Tuten romanticizing changes in the psyches and locations of his characters while simultaneously presenting such transitions as miniature deaths and rebirths. Some changes are acknowledged even before they occur, such as when the narrator's young lover in "Self Portrait with Beach" asks how long her looks will be "passable"; she knows that her beauty is ephemeral. Yet each story redeems the reality of life's impermanence through the saving grace of art, whether it's a Poussin painting or a young boy's drawing of Death. A primary theme of Self Portraits: Fictions is that unlike the human body, art lives on; unlike temporary human loves, art can always touch the soul. And just as art and time transform the characters of these stories, Tuten dexterously transitions between disappointment and hope, love and loneliness. The cumulative effect of the collection is that of a thousand-and-one image-warping mirrors, reflecting and refracting the life of one man who has lived many lives.