In Mocking Desire Gregor Gradnik, a Slovenian writer, enters the sensual and seething life of New Orleans to teach a creative writing class at a university. In a style both serious and ironic, Jančar observes and comments on the two cultures, illuminating both American and Central European forms of self-obsession. Gregor at first identifies himself as only an observer, yet seductive New Orleans soon draws him into a series of increasingly bizarre erotic, professional, and social relationships. Fracturing and realigning the cultural, psychological, and perceptual boundaries by which Gregor believes he knows the world and his place in it, Jančar reveals a deepening loss of control over our collective knowledge of the divisions between life and art, reality and dream, East and West, man and woman, naivete and cynicism, transcendence and perdition.
