Category Archives: Rants and Raves

Here’s where my thoughts go.

Thinking About Thinking #3: The Forgery of Venus – Is art forgery a victimless crime?

Thinking About Thinking #3

Is art forgery a victimless crime? The owners of paintings valued in the millions of dollars are either high-net-worth individuals or or cathedrals or museums. And, yes, international mobsters and oligarchs have been rumored to use them as mediums of exchange in drug deals and money-laundering schemes. Some would argue that a truly masterful forgery, aside from being a fraud, actually preserves cultural history and works that might otherwise be lost or deteriorated. That is – for the museum patron or the visitor to an aristocratic household – what’s the difference in the thrill of seeing it?

What do you think?


Here’s my book review of The Forgery of Venus by Michael Gruber. Thanks to Judy Wisdomkeeper’s comment on Goodreads for recommending this book.

Gruber’s writing style has a voice, and right away that puts him at the top of my list. Besides the plotting, which goes back and forth in time in ways I’ve never experienced in a book, The Forgery of Venus fascinates in two other ways – its meticulous description of painting technique and its depiction of mental illness. Peter Carey’s Theft, which I also enjoyed, also has these two elements. The neurological issues are reminiscent of another masterpiece novel, The Marriage Plot by Jeffrey Eugenides, which I reviewed in Thinking About Thinking #2.

The protagonist of this novel is Chaz Wilmont, an accomplished fine arts painter. He’s a brilliant technician but insecure about his creativity. His insecurity is rooted in the emotional abuse he received from his father, who was also a famous painter and intensely jealous of his son.

Wilmont is also pretty much a failure in his personal relationships. He’s divorced two wives, and he’s not a particularly attentive father to his children. Then a bizarre thing happens. Chaz volunteers as a patient in a pharmaceutical research study. He’s given a psychoactive drug that induces hallucinations. But in Chaz the effect is unique and disturbing. He seems to bi-locate physically as well as mentally into another person’s body at another time in history. He finds himself living in Madrid in the 1650s. Having assumed the identity of Diego Velazquez, one of the most supremely gifted painters who ever lived, in this past life Chaz learns all Velazquez’s techniques, one brushstroke at a time.

Back in the present day, international criminals discover Wilmot’s talent and blackmail him into forging a Velazquez painting that has been missing for centuries.

I find two things remarkable about this book: First, perhaps because Gruber is married to a painter, his descriptions of painterly techniques are vivid and detailed. Second is the theme of altered mental states. As Chaz shuttles back and forth between the centuries, he begins to wonder, What is reality? What is personal identity? How can you be so sure you are the person you think you are? And what difference would it make if your favorite painting by an old master just a masterful forgery? 

Gruber also hints, as other writers of art-history novels have, that many great painters of yesteryear made a living forging the works of their predecessors as they studied and then copied their techniques. A painting the experts think is a Titian could be from Rembrandt’s workshop of apprentices, for example.

My mystery-thriller about art history, which centers on a scandal rather than a forgery, is Bonfire of the Vanderbilts.

A hundred-year-old secret locked is in a painting. The painting’s owner, Los Angeles Museum of Art, refuses to admit I got it right. But, hey, it’s fiction, the art historians say. Why should anyone take it seriously? What, according to my decades-long research into this painting that obsessed me so, did Cornelius Vanderbilt II not want you to know? Hint: Vanderbilt and his reputed mentor, banker J. P. Morgan, were rivals in the Episcopal Church hierarchy, each claiming to be more righteous than the other.

Thinking About Thinking #2: The Marriage Plot – Does the old story still work?

For generations, a staple of romantic fiction has been a genre called the marriage plot. An underprivileged female protagonist must find a rich, aristocratic husband, or her life will be ruined. Her choices for the future will be to enter a convent or resign herself to spinsterhood.

Second in a series of posts with my book reviews of literary fiction – the kind of stuff that, well, made me think.

My book review and reading suggestion for this installment is The Marriage Plot by Jeffrey Eugenides. It’s a contemporary story about four friends, which begins when they meet in college at Brown. It updates the question embedded in the old theme.

It’s about whether we understand anything about what makes relationships work.

Here’s my book review of The Marriage Plot, a novel by Jeffrey Eugenides.

The Marriage Plot is masterful on many levels. At first I wasn’t drawn to any of the three characters in the love triangle – Madeleine, Leonard, and Mitchell. Each seemed deeply flawed, and they are. Except you read along and find that Eugenides thinks we all are, just as deeply in our unique ways, and are none the lesser for it. That’s the way people are, and the way life goes. We stumble through it, thinking we are somehow in control, and it’s what happens nevertheless while we are furiously busy making other plans, or simply fretting about making up our minds.

This is a literary novel, in the best sense, and I was surprised to read some critics cramming it into the diminutive genre “campus novel.” That would be like classifying Pride and Prejudice as a rom com, which is not as irrelevant as it sounds. The marriage plot, you see, is the genre form of which that work is representative. Eugenides wants to know whether the marriage plot is dead as a meaningful literary form, now that marriage seems hardly worthy as the ultimate goal of youthful aspirations.

But back to Eugenides. The characters meet in a semiotics class at Brown, and the author gives a lot of detail aboutthe subject and its impact on their personal thoughts. Semiotics claims, for example, that humans would not experience love as we have come to understand it unless we had read about it (or seen movies about it) first. There’s a similar concept in Stendhal’s The Red and the Black. The narrator comments that peasants in the French countryside cope with life less well than the sophisticated citizens of Paris, who have all read novels that give them models for how to act in society.

Ultimately, this is a novel about perception, what we make of reality as it is happening to us, and our inability to make meaning of events in time to control their outcome. Things happen or they don’t. Things work out or they don’t. They mostly don’t, and we move on.

Perhaps significantly, the character in this book who understands himself best is the one whose grasp on reality is most tenuous because he has to work at staying sane. In his acknowledgements, Eugenides credits several experts and sources for genetic research (another theme), but he thanks no one for his extensive detailing of bipolar disorder and its treatment. So naturally I wonder how he came by this information, and at what personal cost.   ~ ~ ~

In Clifford’s Spiral a stroke survivor tries to piece together the fragments of his memories. Was he the victim or the perpetrator? 2020 IPA Distinguished Favorite in Literary Fiction.

Answers on CreateSpace Migration to KDP

I named my small press LaPuerta Books and Media – “la puerta” meaning “the door” in Spanish. It’s all about the unlimited opportunity of self-publishing.

Robin Quinn of Quinn’s Word for Word Asks Me About My Experience Migrating POD Paperbacks

My longtime friend and colleague Robin Quinn, who is herself an expert on book development, asked me for this contribution to her blog. As you might expect, the migration from CreateSpace to Kindle Direct Publishing (KDP) Print on Demand (POD) for paperback production was not quite as automatic as Amazon promised it would be. #amwriting #selfpub

http://quinnswordforword.blogspot.com/2018/11/the-buzz-on-books-more-interview-1.html

It’s About Boy-Girl Chemistry and Failing Ever Upward

When I was in high school, my chemistry teacher approached me and asked with a sly grin, “You interested in mining?” I told him absolutely not. I was going to be a writer. Little did I suspect that he wanted to send me to a student conference on metallurgy where I could seek the fellowship of like-minded teens on a minimally supervised road-trip to the Big City. Undeterred by my abrupt negative response, he grumbled, “Well, you’re interested in mining your own business, aren’t you?” And he sent me anyway.

Now I realize I should’ve listened more carefully to everything he said.

I wrote about a particularly instructive episode in my studies with this crusty chemistry teacher – and my comely lab colleague – in my short story “Chemistry,” which is featured in my collection Boychik Lit. In that book, I include six short stories about coming of age, failing ever upward, and boy-girl chemistry. There’s also a glib essay on the fiction genre (only?) I call boychik lit.

It’s a Kindle book (also EPUB). It’s cheap (but not slutty) and a quick read on your smartphone while you’re waiting for her to finish in the bathroom.

Boychik Lit Kindle

Boychik Lit EPUB

Remember, Russian Dressing Isn’t Even Russian!

Watch for these #fakenews Liar’s Tricks before you forward that post to all your friends…

  • Change the order of events. Reverse cause and effect to make the perpetrator the victim.
  • Accuse the accuser. If you’re guilty, blame your innocent opponent before the news breaks.
  • Stretch the analogy. You can generalize all you want if you reinforce the reader’s existing opinions.
  • Focus on a side issue. Pick one that’s hot so you can distract from the real story.
  • Release late Friday. Or after the closing bell.
  • Confuse with “alternative facts.” If you can’t quash the rumor, create multiple bogus versions of events to bury the story in noise.
  • Point to anomalies as trends. This scorching day means more drought to come.
  • Use a pitchman. Lying people are more interesting than honest graphics.
  • Animate your charts. Shorten attention spans and reduce study time.
  • Use nonstandard chart formats. Make eye-catching puzzles out of your boring facts.
  • Abuse the Net Promoter Score. Just because they sent you a survey doesn’t mean they intend to improve anything.
  • And, no matter what you do, leverage emotion! Leverage anger or strong sentimentality to cloud the logic and make it go viral.

 

Art Crime whitepaper included in Scholar’s Edition of the art history novel

Who were these people really?

The fictional version of the story is now backed up by peer journal documentation.

This special scholar’s courseware edition of Bonfire of the Vanderbiltsincludes the full text of the novel, along with the author’s research whitepaper “Deconstructing the Scandalous Narrative of The Baptism,” which appeared in the Fall 2016 issue of The Journal of Art Crime. Also included in the endmatter are:

  • Extensive research bibliography
  • Rare photographs from the private collection of the painter’s family
  • Links to related audiovisual supplementary materials, including the recording of the author’s presentation on the The Baptism to the American Art Council of the Los Angeles County Museum of Art

In 1892 Paris, Julius Stewart painted The Baptism, a Vanderbilt family scene that contains an embarrassing secret. In the novel, art historian Grace Atwood becomes obsessed with the painting and its hidden clues for reasons that have more to do with her personal ghosts. Either her doting husband is trying to make her think she’s crazy, or she really is in the early stages of dementia.

Praise for Bonfire of the Vanderbilts

“I must say, I am impressed with your sleuthing, your imagination and your ability to weave a story. Your theory is fascinating, and I personally would be quite excited if any piece of it proved true.”  —  Carson Joyner Clark, biographer of painter Julius Stewart

“Alva Vanderbilt Belmont would be very grateful to you for researching a Vanderbilt family painting – as will all the family. And as I do. Historians keep us alive!”  —  Margaret Hayden Rector, Vanderbilt biographer, author of Alva,That Vanderbilt-Belmont Woman

“Of the many inquiries we get, this has been the most interesting in a long time.”  —  The Very Rev. Harry E. Krauss (retired)

“I think you’ve done an extraordinary job of researching and speculating on the painting. You’ve certainly convinced me that this was a Vanderbilt affair!”  —  Mary Sudman Donovan, Historian, Episcopal Church USA, Author of A Different Call: Women’s Ministries in the Episcopal Church, 1850-1920

The new Scholar’s Edition is available from booksellers worldwide in EPUB or Kindle formats:

Amazon Kindle     B&N Nook

 

‘Choke Hold’ Paperback Giveaway on Goodreads

Goodreads Book Giveaway

Choke Hold by Gerald Everett Jones

Choke Hold

by Gerald Everett Jones

Giveaway ends November 27, 2017.

See the giveaway details
at Goodreads.

Enter Giveaway

New Rave Review for Choke Hold – a crime novel about police brutality

This from D. Donovan, Senior Reviewer for Midwest Book Review:

Choke Hold sounds like a legal thriller, but it opens with a dose of unexpected humor: “Putting a law firm above a funeral home might seem an unwise marketing decision. But the price was right on the rent.” Both businesses are struggling, and both proprietors are involved in civil rights issues in their community which take them away from their appointed positions and into dangers which include confronting injustice and murder.

Subtle humor is injected into a story line that holds emotional connections, action, and social issues alike (“Whenever they turned on the waterworks, he could feel the size of his retainer shrinking…So, here she was – no cash, no credit – and probably (and this was the real challenge) with no idea whatever where chubby hubby had his assets hid.”). The infusion of all these elements into a story that ultimately revolves around murder and survival makes for a multi-faceted production that is, in turn, a gripping story of lost causes, choking situations, and heartbreak.

It should be noted that Choke Hold is replete with descriptions of urban noir culture and a sense of the urgency of race relations in the 1980s. Issues of oppression and justice are wound into the overall story of character choices and interactions, making for a saga that takes one man’s ill-fated encounter with the police and expands the tale to demonstrate its wider-reaching impact on individuals and the community.

What happens when authorities and justice systems don’t seem to care about injustice and the outcome of brutality?

Choke Hold succeeds in posing some hard questions in the course of its descriptions of a personal injury lawyer’s special challenge, making it a top recommendation for those who like police and legal procedural mysteries tempered by a healthy dose of social inspection and a light dash of wry humor throughout.

Choke Hold is now available in paperback and in EPUB (Nook) and Kindle formats.

One practical result of this book’s publication could be to encourage debate about whether to bring back the inquest process in police-involved wrongful-death cases. I’ve read that even some parties in law enforcement and the judiciary think that such a prompt, open process could help defuse public anger and improve communication based on facts rather than rumors.

 

Wuddya think? Do I need new glasses?

Martin Scorsese can make any movie he wants. Gerald Everett Jones can make any book he wants.

That’s fair.

Thank You Claude Monet

Impressionist painter Claude Monet did not become commercially successful until relatively late in his life. By that time, he was prosperous enough to buy a farm estate at Giverny, located a train-ride trip from Paris. Here’s a picture of him in his eighties, seated on a bench near the pond on the estate where he painted his masterwork series of water-lily panoramas.

Claude Monet at Giverny

I first saw this photo in the gift shop at Giverny. It’s a wall-sized blowup. I see him all dressed up in his three-piece suit – very probably, his best – waiting for the photographer. He has a straw hat to shade his eyes. He usually wore one with his bib overalls and old long-sleeved shirt when he painted. Perhaps this is a new one. You can almost see the gold-rimmed spectacles staring out beneath the brim. And the long beard was a trademark, dating from back in the day when it wasn’t all white.

I could imagine his saying to me, “Well, let’s get on with it.” Or, “What are you waiting for?”

I have a framed copy of it on the wall in my bathroom.

He asks me those questions every morning.