Self-Portraits: Fictions

Purchase Self Portraits: Fictions at Amazon, Barnes & Noble, or Strand

What an amazing, glittering, glowing, Proustian, Conradian, Borgesian, diamond-faceted, language –studded, myth-drowned dream!
—Cynthia Ozick 


 Frederic Tuten’s Self-Portraits are beautifully made stories, at once experimental and deeply old fashioned, filled with observations, connections through time and history—his own and ours—along with the forever delicate dance between men and women. There is an artful elegance to his prose, playfully doused in art history, literary and filmic references, and philosophical inclinations. You have to lean forward to listen to these stories, wonderful amalgams of fact and fiction, melancholic memories and joyous celebrations—all of it the stuff of life—and perfect reading. 

—A.M. Holmes  


What a joy ride this book is! I’m caught up in its veerings and swervings, its jazzy improvisations and wondrous plot play. It’s all delicious and essential Tuten. 

—Edmund White  


Delicious, profound, droll, tender. I love its undertone of departure, melancholy—sadness, at confronting the unrepresentable.

—Wayne Koestenbaum  

For a further biography of Frederic, be sure to read Han’s Ulrich Obrist’s interview with Frederic on this site.

Read more reviews for Self Portraits: Fictions