Real-life composer inspires purgatorial novella
RICHARD Skinner’s novella, The Velvet Gentleman, about the real-life composer Erik Satie, begins arrestingly. Satie says: “I died yesterday.”
Satie is in a waystation, a purgatory, and is tasked with choosing a memory from his life that can be taken with him into the afterlife. This is a useful ruse for Skinner, who is appearing at the West Cork Literary Festival in July, to cast back over an unusual life lived.
