FICTION

NEW MYSTERIES OF PARIS by Barry Gifford (Clark City Press: $11.95; 82 pp.). These are not so much stories as they are character sketches, artfully drawn, as though told by people very close to their subjects--the narrator of Andre Breton’s “Nadja,” a companion of King Farouk, the painter August Macke describing the young Paul Klee. The most accessible story is a parallel to Klee’s “Diary of Trip to Tunisia,” told from the point of view of fellow traveler Macke who tolerates but does not admire Klee. Gifford sketches with words, dissecting people who are famous or puzzling or crazy. He portrays troubled Nadja as she strips in front of the Mona Lisa, laughs at the wrong moment, and paints one crude picture and then tears it to bits saying: “Now I have been an artist. I never have to prove myself again.” Gifford is relentless in his imaginative scrutiny of human frailty.