Tag Archives: literary fiction

Thinking About Thinking #29 – The Art Thief – Stealing art from the rich – victimless?

In novels and movies about jewel thieves, the burglar is a lovable rogue.

Noah Charney is a professor of art history and an expert in fine art forgery and theft. And in this novel he proves himself to be a sly spinner of detective yarn. The Art Thief is a tale of brain-teasing complexity involving multiple, interconnected forgeries and thefts of historic paintings from several institutions. And its resolution necessarily involves multiple detectives and forensic experts, each as colorful and eccentric in his own way as Inspector Clouseau. The victims – museum curators and aristo collectors – are a classier bunch who tend to both snobbery and hypocrisy – not the most admirable human beings. Classiest of all are the scheming thieves and forgers. You see, in today’s genre fiction, perpetrators of  these presumably victimless crimes against the upper class have the cachet of winners at Wimbledon. Well played, chaps! In a previous generation, this place of honor was held by jewel thieves who connived to execute intricately plotted heists. Remember Cary Grant – never more dashing than in his role as John Robie in Hitchcock’s To Catch a Thief? Or Melina Mercouri and her artful crew in Topkapi?

Along the way, Prof. Charney is going to teach you a lot about art history and criticism. And that’s even if you consider yourself well versed. He’s never happier or more entertaining than when his donnish characters tear off on rants to their dunderhead students about how to study paintings.
Here’s an example. His Professor Barrow pontificates: “I speak of observation, looking in order to gather information, rather than merely looking. Look deeper. Observation followed by logical deduction leads to solution. You shall see.”

And isn’t this just what the reader of a detective story must learn to do? Observe and deduce?

The Art Thief is great fun, but my advice would be to keep a scratchpad handy. The plots, the players, the crosses and the double-crosses are so intertwined you’ll want to make a diagram to keep track.

  A century-old scandal locked in a painting. This edition of the novel includes the author’s research whitepaper published in The Journal of Art Crime.   Intrigue on the white sands of the Indian Ocean. A lonely widower makes the difficult transition from passive-observer tourist to committed resident.

No, I’m not Marty. But I was The Playboy!

Author Gerald Everett Jones is sometimes, but not often, mistaken for movie director Martin Scorsese.

While I was on a business trip a few years ago, I was walking down the hallway of my hotel, and two young people passed by me. Moments later I heard a voice behind me as one said to the other, “That’s Martin Scorsese, you know.”

It doesn’t happen often. Of course, perhaps the people who are gaping at me across the room at a crowded restaurant might think they’ve spotted Marty – or there might literally be egg on my face.

This was not the first time I’d been recognized in public by a stranger, whether for being myself or some (other) celebrity. I was surprised and flattered the other day when after introducing myself to a young woman on a business matter and handing her my card, she replied, “I’ve heard of you.”

I was afraid to ask her how!

I once spotted novelist Paul Auster having breakfast at a nearby table at a coffee shop in Brooklyn. I knew he lived in the neighborhood. I regret I didn’t have the nerve to walk over there and tell him how much I admire his work.

Gerald played the title role (Christy Mahon) in a summer-stock production of John M. Synge’s play, Playboy of the Western World.

But the most sensational of these experiences happened decades ago, and I fear it might never be surpassed. When I was the callow age of twenty and thinking someday I’d be a professional actor, I played Christy Mahon, the lead role in J. M. Synge’s play, The Playboy of the Western World. (I should explain that playboy in the jargon of the period apparently meant something like trickster – nothing like the implication it would eventually have for Hugh Hefner or James Bond.)

I undertook this challenge – a large role for a green actor – during a summer-stock internship at the Town Meeting Playhouse in Jeffersonville, Vermont. Our acting company took on nine roles in ten weeks, performing four shows each weekend, including a matinee as well as an evening show on Saturdays. The schedule was so hectic and compressed that we’d start rehearsals and blocking of the next show every Friday, the day of the current show’s opening night.

During those four performances of Playboy, I forgot my lines a couple of times, but the generous cast helped me ad lib to cover. The applause was enthusiastic, I was told later by the director, and Vermonters are not known for public displays of affection of any kind.

The closest big town to Jeffersonville is Burlington. One afternoon following the closing of Playboy, several of us cast members took a road trip into town. It was a rare day out. And one of the highlights of our spree was stopping in a bookstore.

While I was browsing there, a teenage girl pointed eagerly at me and exclaimed, “Oh, my God! It’s the Playboy of the Western World!”

Gerald Everett Jones is the author of the new novel, Harry Harambee’s Kenyan Sundowner, which will be released on June 29.

Books That Make You… (cross-posts)

BTMY Author Interview

Read more of this interview…

Beach-Bound Book Bash Reading

Gerald’s gig begins at 42:31 for about five minutes – And there are many more captivating  authors on this beach!

Douglas Coleman Interviews Gerald on Trends in Publishing

Douglas Coleman hosts Gerald in a full and frank exchange of views – thinking about thinking about books!

In this new 15-minute episode of The Douglas Coleman Show VE (here on YouTube), Douglas and Gerald speculate about trends and recent changes in the publishing industry, along with how readers might want authors to approach their work to set it apart from 8 million other Kindle titles.

Gerald also tells how taking up residence in East Africa for two years motivated him to write his new award-winning novel Harry Harambee’s Kenyan Sundowner.

 NABE 2021 Best (and only) in Literary Fiction

Preorder for June 29, 2021 release.

Thinking About Thinking #26 – The Centaur – How did you make it through high school?

Here’s my book review of The Centaur, a novel by John Updike. This book’s central metaphor from Greek mythology is that Chyron, the noblest of all the centaurs, took pity on humankind. The man-beast sacrificed himself to appease Zeus.

The Chyron of Updike’s story is George Caldwell, a middle-aged high-school teacher in small-town Pennsylvania. Although Caldwell would seem to be the main character, a lot of the narration is by his teenage son Peter. The lad loves his father but wishes the old man had a higher opinion of himself. George thinks he’s a loser, even though he seems to be beloved by most of his students, even the ones who mock him mercilessly.

The father-son relationship is the core of the book. Mother Cassie isn’t much of a character at all unless you sense the compassion between the lines. There isn’t much mythology in it except in bookend chapters that take us in and out. Updike seems to have done his homework and knows his Greek stories. But how those intertwine with the Caldwell family saga is obscure.

Updike’s legacy has been his Rabbit books, much like Philip Roth’s Zuckerman series. Updike’s came first. I sampled both and I wasn’t drawn to either. Too cynical, too bitter. Does anyone really care whether middle-class white men experience heartache and disappointment? I admit that’s a sarcastic rhetorical question. I haven’t read them all, but I suspect The Centaur might be John Updike’s best book.

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.

Thinking About Thinking #23 – Can you enjoy a story you don’t understand?

Here’s my book review of Invisible by Paul Auster.

First off, there are many books with the title Invisible. Make sure you get the right one. Paul Auster writes fascinating literary novels, which are often baffling. This book presents three interwoven versions of the same story as told by three different narrators.

Main character Adam Walker is a young poet in New York. Soon after graduation he meets a worldly couple at a party – Frenchman Rudolph Born and his mistress Margot. Born is an international man of mystery, an unscrupulous character who may be con-man or spy or both. Margot is a seductress. Born helps Walker hook up with Margot, and the first plot complication is a love triangle.

Born pulls Walker into a publishing venture, and then – out of the blue – he murders a man in front of him on the street. He intimidates Walker into helping him cover it up.

Walker is now carrying a burden of guilt that will haunt him forever. When he thinks Born and Margot are out of his life, Walker has a love affair with his own sister. More guilt.

Walker tries to make sense of it all by writing an autobiographical novel. When circumstances prevent him from completing it, he challenges his friend Jim, who is also a writer, to finish the story. Jim then narrates the next part of the book, describing what he’s been able to discover about Walker’s past.

In a third narrative, a French woman named Cécile narrates. She was a minor character earlier in the story, but now she’s center stage. She met Walker by way of Born. She was in love with Walker and tormented by Born. Near the end of the book, she meets up with Born, and he tries to pull her into yet another of his traps.

The book ends on a final scene which seems to have no connection to Walker’s story. Like his protagonist Walker, Auster is a poet. It’s up to the reader to find meaning in this concluding image. This plot is complex and not easily understood. But Invisible isn’t a pulp-fiction whodunit. In the end, you probably don’t have all the facts, and the facts you do have, may not even be true.

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.

Thinking About Thinking #15 – Can feminists rewrite history?

My intention in picking up Mistress of the Revolution by Catherine Delors was to have fun dissecting a steamy chick-lit novel, a basis for comparison and contrast with male-centered fiction. The historical setting amid the turmoil of the French Revolution also promised political intrigue with gobs of gore. Now that I’ve read and reflected on this first novel from Catherine Delors, I regret to admit that I won’t have the fun of teasing or ridiculing her effort. It is, sadly for the purposes of a fratirist with a warped sense of humor, nothing to laugh about.

Mistress of the Revolution is a masterful (mistressful?), serious literary work about the widely ignored–and unlearned–lessons of history. As the very best historical novels do, it reflects and highlights the political and social dramas of the present day. At its core, it’s a story of class struggle and sexual politics.

So, let’s talk about the sex, shall we? (Warning: spoilers follow!)

Main character and first-person narrator Gabrielle de Montserrat is a gorgeous young aristocrat who lacks a respectable dowry. She is high-born but from a family that has seen its wealth dissipate. If she wishes to realize the great expectations of her rank, she must therefore find some rich aristocrat to marry her. Her other socially acceptable choices are to live as a spinster with her family (if they will have her) or to become a nun. Her plight is the recurring dilemma of sexual politics: If she wants the good life, she must be willing to market her body and her charms. In this central element of its plot, the book is not much different in theme from the works of Jane Austen and the Brontë sisters, nor of chick-lit stories like Bridget Jones’s Diary. The main character’s all-important goal–which she must achieve or everything else in her life will suffer–is to become half of a power couple.

Throughout the book, which covers Gabrielle’s story from ages fifteen to forty-six, she is dominated by men in a series of fundamentally monogamous relationships. And here’s where Mistress of the Revolution departs from its traditional sisters: Not one of those men, including her primary love interest, is what you’d call sympathetic in the modern sense. All of them (and there’s quite a collection) are cruel, vindictive batterers. They differ mainly in the degrees to which they bestow the occasional kindness or largesse on Gabrielle.

Before her arrogant older brother (and father substitute) can make a marriage bargain for her, teenage Gabrielle falls for a tall, dark commoner, Pierre-André Coffinhal. He’s a promising young man trained as a physician, who will later study the law and become a judge in the revolutionary tribunal. In a contemporary story, her quest could end there. He’s just the kind of young tyro our society applauds–the ambitious, self-made man. But back then, before the Revolution presumed to abolish social rank, his low birth makes the match unthinkable. Gabrielle ultimately agrees to follow her brother’s direction and marry the corpulent, disgusting Baron de Peyre to spare Coffinhal from her brother’s death threat.

As to sex, a contemporary diagnosis of Gabrielle’s psyche doesn’t require a medical degree–she’s a rape victim. She is numb to pleasure, and will pretty much remain so throughout the book–except for some notably rare experiences. In this, she does not seem disappointed. Rather, as with her overall physical treatment at the hands of her male controllers, most of the time she seems to feel she gets no more nor less than she deserves.

Not long after fathering their daughter, Aimée, the Baron very conveniently dies. At that point in a modern story, Gabrielle would immediately seek out Pierre-André. In this story, she is too ashamed of her betrayal of him to even make the effort. Instead, through assiduous social climbing and good connections, Gabrielle becomes the high-class kept woman of the Count de Villers, who introduces her to the court at Versailles. Her reputation soars after her beauty and wit stir the jealousy of the Queen, the infamous Marie-Anoinette.

In the years she’s involved with Villers, the Revolution erupts in Paris. (It is longer, bloodier, and more viciously irrational than I remembered from my meagre studies.) Although Villers in many ways is the most tender lover that Gabrielle will ever have, in his financial and emotional dealings with her he is an arrogant bully.

Rather late in the story, as the Patriots take over the city, the aristos, including Villers, are hunted down, subjected to mock trials, and slaughtered. Having passed up opportunities to emigrate, Gabrielle must disguise herself as a commoner and work as a seamstress to avoid the gallows. Coffinhal, now a judge and a close ally of the charismatic leader Robespierre, is working overtime sentencing scores of aristos to cruel and bloody deaths daily.

It’s at this point–when Gabrielle’s circumstances are the meannest and she’s in and out of jail–that she and Coffinhal reconcile. Through his protection, she survives, although just barely.

Perhaps the most remarkable aspect of this story is Coffinhal’s unashamed brutality toward Gabrielle. Although well educated and exhibiting a sensitive nature at times, he’s given to fits of righteous anger and physical violence–often directed at her. In this, the book bears no similarity at all to the bodice-ripper romance. When Gabrielle’s relationship with Coffinhal is not a dream come true, it’s a wicked nightmare.

And she puts up with it. Indeed, as she does throughout the book, she dismisses the abuse as expected, understandable, even deserved.

It’s obvious from the book’s meticulous detailing that it is incredibly well researched and authentic. But, according to Delors, the Gabrielle character is entirely fictional. The thing that I find fascinating is the author’s boldness at not offering up the expected romantic arc, giving us a chilling portrait of female sensibility as it calculates what it must do to survive. There is not a single male star in Hollywood, now or ever, who would risk the ire of his fan base to behave on the screen as Coffinhal does at his worst toward this woman. I’m not enough of a scholar of history to know for sure, but I’m guessing that Gabrielle’s resolution to her plight and the meanness of her existence, even at the height of society, are true to that time and place.

It does make me wonder, though, how much if anything has changed. Love, money, property–these are as intertwined and interdependent in today’s world as ever.

Also remarkable, from a writer’s technical viewpoint, is the impeccable prose style of this book. Delors is a native French speaker, and English is her second language. The book is written from Gabrielle’s point of view in 1815, while exiled in England. Like Delors, Gabrielle writes in her adopted English. In the historical note in the book’s endpapers, the author admits, “I strove to write this novel in the British English Gabrielle would have used in 1815.” I find that it reads a lot like Balzac in translation, and I’m reminded of his A Harlot High and Low (Splendeurs et misères des courtisanes), written in the 1830s, and treating, as Delors’ book does so well, the dynamics of sexual politics trapped in the web of human history.

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.

Thinking About Thinking #14 – Should a widowed preacher take a mistress?

Should a widowed preacher take a mistress? Or, dare anyone write satire about religion these days? Here’s my book review of The Mackerel Plaza by Peter De Vries.

I credit humorist and poet Peter De Vries as the godfather of boychik lit, or comedies about boys and men who are less than careful with their life choices, particularly their choices of romantic partners.

The Mackerel Plaza is one of the funniest books you will ever read. That is, provided you have a sense of humor about both religion and the lusts of the flesh. Rev. Mackerel, respected leader of the People’s Liberal Church in suburban Connecticut, has a problem. His saintly wife has recently passed away. But that’s not the problem. He suspects she’s enjoying a better life. But while he’s still on Earth, he’d like to remarry. And, conveniently enough, he’s been secretly dating the church secretary, Miss Calico. There’s a double irony here. First, his congregation is so respectful of his wife’s legacy that they wish to erect a new shopping mall named in her honor – the Mackerel Plaza. Secondly, the preacher rightly worries that, even if his flock were to eventually approve of his intention to marry Miss Calico, the couple would have to wait years to set the date – not until the plaza is built, the dedication is done, and the luster of his wife’s postmortem fame begins to fade.

A humorous novel must have an engine of comedy. That is, a situation that is both ridiculous and impossible to maintain, which generates conflict, embarrassment, and laughter. An outwardly righteous man who harbors secret lusts is just such a formula. Certainly, men and women of the cloth have the same urges and flaws as the rest of us, but in someone whose social position is exalted, discovering their hypocrisies gives them farther to fall. And we do love it when our comic characters go splat.

The Mackerel Plaza was published in 1958, back when making fun of straying fundamentalist preachers wasn’t politically incorrect. Author De Vries grew up in the Dutch Reformed church in Chicago and yea those strictures gave the guy a real cramp in the you-know-where, so painful it’s hysterical.

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.

 

Thinking About Thinking #12: The Goldfinch – What price loyalty if no love back?

What price loyalty if no love back? Here’s my book review of The Goldfinch by Donna Tartt.

This is a story about art theft and romantic obsession. Main character Theodore Decker is very much the boychik – a young man with more ambition than brains. So it’s a coming-of-age story, as well, full of his personal introspection and psychological turmoil.

Be warned – plot spoilers ahead.

Young Theo and his mother duck into a New York museum in the rain and are caught in a terrorist bomb blast. His mother is killed, but he is one of the few survivors. Another fatality is a cultured old man named Welty, who was at the museum with his pretty young ward Pippa. She’s close to Theo’s age and also survives, but with some debilitating injuries. She will become the unrequited love of his life. Before Welty expires next to Theo in the rubble, he gives him his signet ring and tells him to take this small painting – The Goldfinch – a Dutch Master picture of a bird chained to its perch. Theo takes on the mission to keep the painting safe.

That’s as much of the story as I’ll give away. There’s a lot more – this is a big book. The novel owes a lot to Proust’s Remembrance of Things Past and Dostoevsky’s The Idiot, and it mentions both. The underlying philosophical questions are broad and deep: Why is there evil in the world? What is the point of living? And what do we owe to history? to future generations?

A literary agent told me that author Donna Tartt refuses to be edited. Like I say, it’s a long book. It topped the bestseller lists for a while, and clearly many of her readers hoped it would be worth the time invested.

As for me, I applaud its ambitions, but I do think less would have been more.

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.

 

Thinking About Thinking #11: A Small Town in Germany – Historical fiction is all about today

Here’s my book review of A Small Town in Germany by John le Carré. Written decades ago by the recently deceased author, its plot has chilling parallels to today’s news.

A Small Town in Germany is one of le Carré’s first novels, written not long after he left the employ of the British Foreign Service in 1964. One of his first postings was in Bonn, the postwar capital city of West Germany, and the small town of the title. In the past, I’ve been effusive in my praise for le Carré’s writing style. My one criticism of this book is its occasionally strained efforts at poetic imagery. At times in his later career, the novelist’s prose has been to spare. But in this early work, he’s reaching for colorful analogies. The results too often come across as overwritten:

No dawn is ever wholly ominous. The earth is too much its own master; the cries, the colors, and the sense too confident to sustain our grim foreboding.

The fictional premise is that Dr. Klaus Karfeld, a crowd-pleasing politician, is rising to power on a wave of renewed German nationalism. A younger generation resents economic malaise and their parents’ having lost the war. Karfeld promises to break off ties with the Common Market, predecessor of the European Union, and pursue a new alliance with Russia.

The principal characters in the story are diplomats stationed at the British embassy, who are bewildered and threatened by the impending power shifts, including possible retaliation against the English occupiers. Most worrisome to these Brits, one of their employees, Leo Harting, a Polish-born German, has gone missing. Apparently, he took some secret files. They worry that the information in these files might not only embarrass the Queen’s government, but also help Karfeld in his rise to power and repudiation of NATO.

Welshman Alan Turner, an undercover operative, is summoned on an official mission to find the missing man and the stolen files. Turner has all the skills, along with the surly and irreverent personality of the classic noir detective. (As far as I know, he doesn’t reappear in any of the other le Carré novels.)

Turner runs afoul of almost everyone at the embassy, especially when he learns that, far from being a spy, Harting was hunting war criminals. He had uncovered Karfeld’s secret past as a Nazi scientist. Turner’s job changes from searching for a presumed defector to trying to prevent Karfeld’s goons from finding and then killing Harting.

The cynical Turner begins to realize that the Brits want the missing files, but not the man who took them. And most disturbing of all, they don’t want Karfeld’s crimes dredged up, even if it means Harting’s death. The Karfeld movement has gained too much popularity. The pragmatic diplomats are apparently ready to embrace the election’s expected winner even though they know he once supervised a laboratory that tested the homicidal effects of poison gas.

It was a coincidence that I picked this book up again recently. Perhaps you’ve guessed by now why I think this story resonates with today’s headlines.

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.