A young poet's relationship with a predatory professor is, explored through a diary, a play, and a novella dealing with themes of grief, trauma, and desire. Jennie Silver has been seduced, abused, and abandoned by Benedict Eck, a Midwestern literature professor known for being influenced by Hungarian émigré novelist Avigdor Element, and a notorious womanizer known for preying on vulnerable graduate students. In the process, Jennie keeps a diary and writes a play and a novella in her attempt to control her desperate, high-pitched emotions focused on a man she is uncontrollably, drawn to and at the same time finds repugnant-a man who is one of the keepers and part of the legacy of Element's bad behavior. Spanning a hundred years of history from when Nijinsky danced "The Afternoon of the Faun" in Paris in 1912, through World Wars I and II, to very close to the present, Losing Beck is not only a portrait of one woman's relationship with one man, but an exploration of obsession, grief, desire, and the effects of historical trauma

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