Ice Never F

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Ice Never F is the second part in a trilogy of novels by the American poet Gil Orlovitz. The protagonist is again Lee Emanuel, living in Philadelphia, and the major personalities from the first novel--Lena Goldstein, now his wife, Lee’s parents Rachel and Levi, as well as a host of other people--appear again in it. Orlovitz has written that his aim in his books is ‘to educate a protagonist in the ramifications of the paradoxes of apparently commonplace phenomena’, and to this end he employs a variety of interrelated personal and contemporary events to suggest a ‘created presence’, in which conventional dogmas of time and character are rejected in favour of a poetic approach that celebrates the multiplicity of existence. In a long essay on Orlovitz in a recent issue of the Kenyon Review, the American critic Hale Chatfield notes that while this approach bears some resemblance to the painting of Jackson Pollock and the self-consciously absurd juxtapositions of Surrealism, Orlovitz ‘characterises himself by the intensity of his search for the significance of his own associations and his militant reluctance to let them go by without exploring themselves’. Mr Chatfield adds: ‘If Coleridge were here to evaluate Orlovitz, I am confident he would confine the Dadaist and Surrealist to the realm of fantasy--and admit, if not elevate, Orlovitz to the Kingdom of Imagination.’

Gil Orlovitz was born in Philadelphia and served in the Second World War. For some years he has been highly regarded by his fellow writers, but it was only with the publication of Milkbottle H that he reached a wider public. He has always been interested in the theatre and has written several plays and has also published many volumes of poetry and short stories. He is married with three children and now lives in New York.