Antoine Wilson
Antoine Wilson is the author of the the forthcoming novel Mouth to Mouth, coming in 2022 from Avid Reader Press (Simon & Schuster), and the novels The Interloper and Panorama City, from Other Press and Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, respectively.He is a contributing editor of the literary journal A Public Space as well as the Los Angeles Review of Books. His fiction and essays have appeared in The Paris Review, StoryQuarterly, Quarterly West, and Best New American Voices, among other publications.He was winner of the San Fernando Valley Award for Fiction, and has been a finalist for The National Magazine Award, the Southern California Independent Booksellers Association Book of the Year Award, and the Foreword Magazine Book of the Year Award.He was recipient of the Carol Houck Smith Fiction Fellowship at the Wisconsin Institute for Creative Writing, and has taught writing at the University of Iowa, the University of Wisconsin, the University of California San Diego, the University of California Extension Writers’ Program, and the Otis School of Art and Design.Born in Montreal and raised in Central and Southern California as well as Saudi Arabia, he now lives with his family in Los Angeles. He can be found on twitter at @antoinewilson and Instagram at @theantoinewilson
Mouth to Mouth
Antoine Wilson
In a first-class lounge at JFK airport, our narrator listens as Jeff Cook, a former classmate he only vaguely remembers, shares the uncanny story of his adult life—a life that changed course years before, the moment he resuscitated a drowning man. Jeff reveals that after that traumatic, galvanizing morning on the beach, he was compelled to learn more about the man whose life he had saved, convinced that their fates were now entwined. But are we agents of our fate—or are we its pawns? Upon discovering that the man is renowned art dealer Francis Arsenault, Jeff begins to surreptitiously visit his Beverly Hills gallery. Although Francis does not seem to recognize him as the man who saved his life, he nevertheless casts his legendary eye on Jeff and sees something worthy. He takes the younger man under his wing, initiating him into his world, where knowledge, taste, and access are currency; a world where value is constantly shifting and calling into question what is real, and what matters. The paths of the two men come together and diverge in dizzying ways until the novel’s staggering ending. Sly, suspenseful, and engrossing, Mouth to Mouth masterfully blurs the line between opportunity and exploitation, self-respect and self-delusion, fact and fiction—exposing the myriad ways we deceive each other, and ourselves.
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