Product Description

When the vision came, he was in the bathtub. So begins the madness of Louis Daguerre. In 1847, after a decade of using poisonous mercury vapors to cure his daguerreotype images, his mind is plagued by delusions. Believing the world will end within one year, Daguerre creates his "Doomsday List" -- ten items he must photograph before the final day. The list includes a portrait of Isobel Le Fournier, a woman he has always loved but not spoken to in half a century.

In this luminous debut novel, Dominic Smith reinvents the life of one of photography's founding fathers. Louis Daguerre's story is set against the backdrop of a Paris prone to bohemian excess and social unrest. Poets and dandies debate art and style in the cafés while students and rebels fill the garrets with revolutionary talk and gun smoke. It is here, amid this strange and beguiling setting, that Louis Daguerre sets off to capture his doomsday subjects.

Louis enlists the help of the womanizing poet Charles Baudelaire, known to the salon set as the "Prince of Clouds," and a jaded but beautiful prostitute named Pigeon. Together they scour the Paris underworld for images worthy of Daguerre's list. But Louis is also confronted by a chance to reunite with the only woman he's ever loved. Half a lifetime ago, Isobel Le Fournier kissed Louis Daguerre in a wine cave outside of Orléans. The result was a proposal, a rejection, and a misunderstanding that outlasted three kings and an emperor. Now, in the countdown to his apocalypse, Louis wants to understand why he has carried the memory of that kiss for so long.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #420097 in Books
• Published on: 2007-01-09
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 336 pages

From Publishers Weekly
Smith's clever but uneven debut novel peers into the mind of the eccentric 19th-century French genius who invented the daguerreotype. In 1846, the celebrated photographer Louis Daguerre, his brain addled by the mercury process that made him famous, has a vision of the end of the world, which launches him on a quest to record a series of 10 images before the apocalypse. The aged Daguerre enlists the help of bohemian poet Charles Baudelaire, and together they prowl Paris in search of Daguerre's subjects, including "a beautiful naked woman ," "the perfect Paris boulevard," "the king of France" and Daguerre's childhood friend and long-lost love, Isobel Le Fournier, whose affections he seeks to reclaim. When Daguerre encounters Isobel's daughter, Chloe—now working in a Paris brothel under the name Pigeon—he sees a way to bring closure to his unfulfilled romance. In flashback, Smith stages a vivid re-enactment of the intellectual progress and persistent experimentation that led to Daguerre's breakthrough discovery, but he trots out clichés in the service of the sentimental love story between Daguerre and Isobel, most notably her hooker-with-a-heart-of-gold daughter. Despite predictable plot twists, Smith renders a clear-eyed portrait of Daguerre and his thinking, against a backdrop of tumultuous times. (Feb.)
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Review
"[a novel] full of hallucinatory and beautifully rendered images...a richly promising start to the literary career of Mr. Smith." -- Dallas Morning News, February 19th, 2006

"[a] vibrant first novel...Smith has an artist's eye and gives Daguerre an artist's heart." -- Detroit Free Press, February 12, 2006

(Starred Review)Smith's beautifully written debut...a compelling psychological study, a thoughtful tracing of the birth of a new art form -- Kirkus Reviews, December 15, 2005

About the Author
Dominic Smith is the author of The Mercury Visions of Louis Daguerre. He is a former recipient of the Dobie Paisano Fellowship from the Texas Institute of Letters. His fiction has been nominated for a Pushcart Prize and appeared in The Atlantic Monthly. He grew up in Australia and now lives in Austin, Texas. Please visit Dominic's website at www.dominicsmith.net.

Customer Reviews

A MASTERFUL NOVEL SUPERBLY READ

While French artist and scientist Louis Daguerre is recognized for his invention of the daguerreotype photographic process, his life was the stuff of great drama. He was, indeed, a founding father of photography yet his battle for that honor was hard won, as he had to fight to protect his patent.

However, that struggle was a small price compared to the physical effects of the pursuit of his passion. Daguerre exposed himself to mercury vapors, a necessity to engrave the images on a plate. The danger was that he could not avoid some exposure to mercury poisoning, which was eventually his downfall.

The great man became delusional, convinced that the end of the world was near - as soon as a year. We hear: ""When the vision came, he was in the bathtub. After a decade of using mercury vapors to cure his photographic images, Louis Daguerre's mind had faltered--a pewter plate left too long on this cold evening of 1846, he felt a strange calm. Outside, a light snow was falling and a vaporous blue dusk seemed to be rising out of the Seine. "

Then, he made a list of what needed to be photographed before it was too late. His choices were a beautiful nude woman, the sun, the moon, the perfect Paris boulevard, a pastoral scene, galloping horses, a perfect apple, a flower, the king of France, and Isobel Le Fournier. (A woman Daguerre loved)

Smith is masterful as he traces Daguerre's descent into madness. This is a bravura debut novel, outstanding not only for the history of photography but for its psychological aspects and picture of mid nineteenth century Paris.

Although born in New England actor Stephen Hoye spent much of his professional life in London. Many will remember him for his Audie winning narration of Rich Dad, Poor Dad. He really comes to the fore with this story, imbuing it with a stage trained actor's resonant voice and skillfully persuasive phrasing.

Highly recommended.

- Gail Cooke

A Luminous Madness
I read this book on the long road from Michigan to Austin, Texas, where the author resides. I was on a journey to meet Dominic Smith, to interview him for the Kalamazoo College alumni magazine, LuxEsto. Smith had made a short stop in Kalamazoo years ago, but he had left an impression. Now, as I read his debut novel, I soon understood -- this young author will be leaving an indelible impression on every reader to come across his work.

Brilliance rises like a mercury vapor from the very first lines, making giddy with the magic of characters rising up, taking form, and coming alive on the page:

"When the vision came, he was in the bathtub. After a decade of using mercury vapors to cure his photographic images, Louis Daguerre's mind had faltered - a pewter plate left too long in the sun. But during his final lucid minutes on this cold evening of 1846, he felt a strange calm..."

Smith has lifted moments of history and wrapped them in vapors of imagination. How might this visionary, the founding father of photography, Louis Daguerre, have seen the world? What is the lens of his eye on life and might we, for a moment in time, look through it and see as he might have seen? He created his art at a time when he thought the world was coming to an end. Perhaps for that reason alone, his photographic images had a mystical aura about them, and his subject matter approached with such evident passion.

Daguerre makes a list of subjects he must capture in his photographs before it is too late:

1. a beautiful woman (naked)
2. the sun
3. the moon
4. the perfect Paris boulevard
5. a pastoral scene
6. galloping horses
7. a perfect apple
8. a flower
9. the king of France
10. Isobel Le Fournier

And it is Isobel who becomes the embodiment, perhaps even the lens, through which Daguerre sees all. She is his first love. She is his last. And the thread that weaves through all between.

"He could imagine kissing her and was appalled by that - it seemed like a desire to lie facedown in an icy stream, to burrow inside the very marrow of her youth and beauty and somehow indemnify himself against Armageddon. He looked down at his shaking hands, at the cordage of vein and tendon, at the sun's chemical blackening. He felt impossibly old..."

'The light is changing,' he said.

'Is it?'

'Dusk is a kiss between night and day.'

'You have an eye for romance, but perhaps no heart for it.'"

I as reader might argue - Daguerre would not have been willing to play with the madness of mercury vapors if he had not the heart for love. And it is clear, this new author, Dominic Smith, has the heart necessary for his own medium of art.

By the time I drove into Austin, I was enthralled with this find of a new star rising. "The Mercury Visions of Louis Daguerre" is a book not to be missed. Not to be forgotten. I await Smith's own list of 10 to be captured in his own medium.

With highest recommendations.

Bravo
I just finished reading this truly luminous novel - and finished wiping my eyes.

It is quite simply one of the most auspicious debuts I have read in years.

So often a writer who can craft a sentence with such beauty and create characters as well as you have skimps on plot. But this novel has all three and deserves all the praise it has received.

The sense of place, the emotion, the ability to enter into the artists soul all have me amazed at Smith's talent.