Yukking It Up With David Sedaris

Saturday Samplers will be laughing and scratching this Saturday, July 10th, as we meet to discuss the humor of David Sedaris.  Our chosen book is Me Talk Pretty One Day, but the group is welcome to share their own favorites by the author as well as other humorists.  For instance, I really had a laugh riot over another Sedaris book, Dress Your Family in Corduroy and Denim, and look forward to more recommendations.  Here are some short interviews featuring the author's offbeat humor as well as the issue of comic exaggeration.

There are Mountains Beyond Mountains in Haiti and Rwanda

In 2003 Tracy Kidder published Mountains Beyond Mountains which vividly describes the "mountains" Dr. Paul Farmer and his associates crossed to bring equitable medical care to Haiti.  Although Farmer's pioneering treatment of multi-drug resistant TB in Peru and Russia is also chronicled in the book, Kidder's story begins and ends with Haiti.  In fact he wrote that Farmer "would always return to Cange.  It seemed to me that he didn't have a plan for his life so much as he had a pattern.  He was like a compass, with one leg swinging around the globe and the other planted in Haiti."

Yet by 2004 Paul Farmer had journeyed to a new frontier and a new home in Rwanda.  This country had  made a remarkable recovery from the horrific genocide of the prior decade, but was still in dire need of medical care.  Partners in Health established hospitals in the neediest regions with the help of the Clinton Foundation, and Paul Farmer was directly involved from the beginning in selecting sites.  It might come as a surprise, but Farmer decided that Haiti had become too dangerous to raise his family, so he moved his wife, Didi Bertrand, and daughter, Catherine, to Rwanda with him.  They have since adopted a Rwandan baby daughter, Elizabeth, in the same year that they had a new son, Sebastian.

Farmer's associate and co-founder of Partners in Health, Dr. Jim Yong Kim, has gone on to become the new president of Dartmouth College in 2009.  Last month he invited Tracy Kidder to give a talk at Dartmouth to discuss Kidder's new book, Strength in What Remains.  The imprint of Paul Farmer can be felt in this book, too,  which follows the journey of a Burundi refugee, Deogratias, from homelessness in New York to Dartmouth Medical School and back to Burundi where he established a medical clinic.  The common factor in this story is Paul Farmer, who introduced Tracy Kidder to Deogratias.  And so it goes.

Paul Farmer and Partners in Health, Then and Now

Here are some pictures and links to articles about Paul Farmer and Partners in Health.

The first picture shows Pere Lafontant and his wife, fondly called Mamito, who passed away last month. Farmer wrote a nice tribute to her on the Partners in Health Web site.

Paul Farmer with the Lafontants in the 1980's

Recently Farmer has been working in Rwanda with PIH hospitals.  His wife Didi initiated the adoption of a Rwandan baby girl while pregnant with their second child who was born just a few months afterwards.

Farmer with wife Didi, daughter Catherine, new son Sebastian, and adopted daughter Elizabeth (in pink) - Rwanda, 2010

Partners in Health and Paul Farmer in Rwanda, 2010

The following link provides many recent photos of the Partners in Health clinics/hospitals in Rwanda and Farmer's current activity there.  He has also published a collection of writings called Partner to the Poor.  On the occasion of this new publication, Tracy Kidder, author of our book Mountains Beyond Mountains, reflects on some of his experiences with Farmer, many of which were not included in the book.

Elizabeth Strout

Maine is both a natural and, I believe, a conscious choice as the setting for Elizabeth Strout's book, Olive Kitteridge.  Many of the thirteen stories which comprise this book take place along the rocky coastline of Maine which Strout describes with the subtle, true familiarity of a native. In fact, Elizabeth Strout was born in Portland, Maine, and grew up in remote towns in Maine as well as New Hampshire. Her parents deliberately protected Elizabeth from outside influences,and she describes her upbringing as being very strict. The stony, isolating, and lonely nature of some of her characters seems to be reflected in the natural landscape of Crosby, Maine, the fictional town in Olive Kitteridge.  Read more here about the author's life and the fragments of her own family history that appear in bits and pieces in Olive Kitteridge, which won the Pulitzer Prize in 2009.

Further Links: The Lost City of Z

Kuikuro Men

Here are a few links and a video for you to explore, armchair-style, the question of  lost civilizations or organized societies in the Amazon. 

The first is a press release from the University of Florida announcing Michael Heckenberger's paper on his findings which were published in Science magazine.  The second is a National Geographic article which provides some of the illustrations from the academic paper itself.  And last is an interesting article and video about the bioengineering of Amazon Basin soil in ancient times.  This "biochar" indicates that the unusually rich soil there was actually man-made centuries ago and would have supported cultivation, thereby sustaining organized settlements.

David vs.Goliath

Percy Fawcett would never have picked David Grann to join his expedition to the Amazon.  That much is clear.  And yet, Grann has emerged from his own Amazonian quest intact and with a walloping good story to tell in The Lost City of Z.

Grann is a book author and writer for The New Yorker magazine who considers himself to be something of a couch potato.  He certainly lacked camping and survival skills when he first sought answers to Fawcett's last (and lost) expedition.  What a break for Grann that technology has advanced to the point where he had better odds than Percy Fawcett to survive a trek into this unwelcoming, unknown territory.

I thought you might find the interview above to be interesting.  It was conducted last year by newspaperman Phil Bronstein and is quite extensive.  You can hit the play button for the entire interview or link here to select topics in the interview you want to cover.

Stieg Larsson

Stieg Larsson

Swedish author Stieg Larsson poured a lifetime of causes and interests into the few pieces of fiction, collectively known as the Millenium series, which he wrote before his untimely death at the age of 50 in 2004. Issues such as feminism, fascism, corporate crime and the role of media in Sweden propelled his life as an activist and as a writer. These same issues fall front and center in his books.

Professionally, Larsson was a graphic designer for Tidningarnas Telegrambyra, a Swedish news agency, but he devoted much of his time to investigative journalism, political activism, ethics causes and (to throw a curveball here) the promotion of science fiction. A member of the Communist Workers League and editor of a Trotskyist journal, Fjarde internationalen, Stieg Larsson put his political beliefs into action by founding the Expo Foundation, a Swedish organization formed to counteract racist and extreme right-wing Swedish groups. He was the editor for this foundation’s magazine, entitled Expo, which is more than a coincidence as the character, Mikael Blomkvist, also publishes a magazine, Millenium, in Larsson’s books.

Karl Stig-Erland Larsson was born in the northern town of Skelleftea, Vasterbotten, Sweden in 1954, but changed the spelling of his name to Stieg as an adult. He was intimately familiar with the culture, landscape and “personality” of the north, having been raised in the country by his grandparents. This knowledge is apparent in his descriptions of the towns and countryside in The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo. As a young man he pursued interests in photography, and he enjoyed reading science fiction and mysteries.

His efforts to expose racism, neo-Nazism and extremist groups active in Sweden garnered him numerous death threats. For self-protection, he and Eva Gabrielsson, his partner of 32 years, sought to hide their personal information and address as much as possible, and this is why they never married because under Swedish law a married couple must publish their address. The fact that they were not married became a legal issue after Larsson died of a sudden, massive heart attack. Swedish law did not recognize Gabrielsson as his wife, and Larsson’s estate went to his father and brother, neither of whom were close to him nor had the intimate understanding of Larsson’s writings as did Eva Gabrielsson. The Guardian Observer just published an interesting interview with Gabrielsson which provides more insight into Larsson’s life and literary pursuits, which I recommend you read.

Stieg Larsson died having completed three books which he had hoped to turn into a long series. Known as the Millenium series, they are The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo (Swedish title being Men Who Hate Women), The Girl Who Played with Fire, and finally The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet’s Nest (Swedish title being The Aircastle that Blew Up.) The first book has been released in film form by Swedish and English companies and the next two books are to be turned into television productions. The poster for the Swedish film is illustrated below, giving you some sense of how the characters have been portrayed on film.

                                   

          Eva Gabrielsson

Movie poster for Men Who Hate Women (The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo)

Tim O'Brien

Tim O'Brien knows a thing or two about Minnesota where our book, In the Lake of the Woods, takes place (born there in 1946), Vietnam (served there in 1969), and writing (contributor to magazines , The Washington Post, and award-winning author of numerous books.) Among these awards is the James Fenimore Cooper Prize from the Society of American Historians for the 1994 book,  In the Lake of the Woods. O'Brien's 1990 book, The Things They Carried, was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize. To learn more about Tim O'Brien, read his 1999 President's Lecture at Brown University. In addition, you can refer to a critical analysis of our book selection in the context of the My Lai Massacre.

After Dark and Sleeping Beauty Syndrome

Well, here's a tidbit too fascinating to pass over!!  I saw this on the news today and found a video link for you.  I immediately thought of the character, Eri Asai, in Murakami's After Dark.  Kleine-Levin Syndrome proves that truth is stranger than ficion, but Murakami has managed to straddle that gap by sheer force of his imagination. I am impressed.

In the Lake of the Woods

Click on the title of this post to read a very brief blurb I wrote about our next book. It appeared in Bernardsville Public Library's blog, Book News and More, last year.  I will be posting information about the author, Tim O'Brien, soon, and I hope you find this book to be intriguing and thought-provoking.

Heaven or Hell?

Well, the knives came out at our discussion of The Five People You Meet In Heaven on Saturday, Dec. 5th. The group member who suggested the book was not in attendance, so we probably felt a little more liberated to let loose. We were unanimous in our disfavor, particularly about the author’s artificial construct of heaven. None of us wanted to go there! After all, who wants to be in an afterlife holding pattern waiting for someone else to die so that all can be revealed to that person?

Aside from a few neat tricks, like the lost key and the little girl’s hands, there was not a great deal to recommend about the book except that it’s brief. Yes, there are messages and morals herein, but we felt the author could have done a much better tribute to his uncle by writing a different kind of story. But then that story most likely wouldn’t have become the mass-market killer that The Five People You Meet In Heaven proved to be.

For a funny antidote to this book, I suggest reading the parody, The Five People You Meet In Hell by “Rich Pablum.” It is clever, jocular and filled with celebrity characters who fit surprisingly well into the storyline. Like the original book, it, too, is mercifully short.

Haruki Murakami

Author Haruki Murakami was born and raised in Japan, but is notably well versed in Russian and English literature as well as American culture.  Some of his favorite writers include Raymond Chandler, Kurt Vonnegut, F.Scott Fitzgerald, Joseph Campbell and Fyodor Dostoyevsky.  He recently completed a meticulous translation into Japanese of Fitzgerald's The Great Gatsby, a book which he describes as his "textbook" for how to write.

Murakami is known for having turned his back on his own country's formal literary tradition. Rather, he seeks the inner search or quest which he believes appeals to younger Japanese readers, "my books can offer them a sense of freedom - freedom from the real world." He also states, "That's the beginning of the story. We have rooms in ourselves. Most of them we have not visited yet...From time to time we can find the passage. We find strange things...old phonographs, pictures, books...they belong to us, but it is the first time we have found them." (Author's quotations from World Press Review, August 2001, vol. 48, no. 8.)

Visit the author's webpage to get a good sense of his aesthetics and interests.  In addition, here is a fact sheet elaborating on ten fascinating things you need to know about Haruki Murakami.

Some General Suggestions From The Group

FYI - I have been keeping a list, more or less, of books various group members have enjoyed over the past year:

Soul Catcher - Michael C. White
Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl, Written By Herself - Harriet Jacobs
The Broken Shore - Peter Temple
Still Alice - Lisa Genova
Shalimar the Clown - Salman Rushdie
Five-Finger Discount - Helene Stapinski
Mockingbird - Charles J. Shields
The Help - Kathryn Stockett
Olive Kitteridge - Elizabeth Stroudt
Lost City of Z - David Grann
Edith Wharton - Hermione Lee
The Madonnas of Leningrad - Debra Dean
Bad Cop - Paul Bacon
In the Lake of the Woods - Tim O'Brien
The Secret Scripture - Sebastian Barry
My Stroke of Insight - Jill Bolte Taylor
The Wild Places - Robert MacFarlane
The Bookseller of Kabul - Asne Seierstad

Please enter other books you want to share with the group under the comments link below.

Crashing Through, Just For You

Robert Kurson is familiar to us as the author of the very exciting book, Shadow Divers, which we read last year.   Kurson's Web site provides interesting information on his next book, Crashing Through, published in 2007.  Here you'll find a photo gallery of Mike May, review comments, and animated illusions which were described in the book.

Further information on Mike May can be found at the Sendero Group Web site, where you can also read news releases.  One of them dates from July of this year when May met with President Obama.  Sendero Group also has a photo gallery of Mr. May.

Finally, here is the link to The New York Times book review of Crashing Through.

Margaret Atwood's Cat's Eye

Are we ready to tackle this impressive book by Canadian author, Margaret Atwood?  I just finished reading it today (!) and finally get the significance of the cover illustration.  What a powerful, mood-filled, thought-provoking book.

Born in 1939 in Ottawa, Ontario, Margaret Atwood is the daughter of a forest entomologist who reared her in the northern Canadian wilderness during her early years.  In a Reading Group Guides interview she notes, "I grew up in the north under rather isolated circumstances, spending most of my early life in a forest with no electricity, no running water, without any radio or movies, and before television.  I was read to a lot as a child."  She graduated from the University of Toronto and earned a masters from Radcliffe College.  Honored with many literary awards, Atwood is best known for novels such as The Handmaid's Tale, The Robber Bride, The Blind Assassin, and Oryx and Crake as well as Cat's Eye.  Her newest book will be published September 22, 2009, and is entitled The Year of the Flood.

Loved The Histories

The Saturday Samplers group loved discussing Case Histories by Kate Atkinson at our July 11, 2009, meeting. We enjoyed the way the author tweaked the normal detective genre, giving us a sympathetic detective-without-the-star-quality, Jackson Brodie, who must contend as much with issues in his own life as with the oddball cases that come his way. Set in modern-day England, there is no pretense of class or airs, and everybody is found to have their own "histories" which haunt them. The author's use of time and humor worked well to keep us engaged with the unfolding mysteries and the great characters involved.

About Kate Atkinson

Author of our next book, Case Histories, Kate Atkinson was born in England (1951), but moved to Edinburgh, Scotland, after receiving her M.A. in English literature in 1974. While writing magazine articles and short stories, she also worked at a series of low level jobs in order to support herself and her two children before striking gold with her first novel, Behind the Scenes at the Museum. This book was awarded several prizes, primarily the 1995 Whitbread Book of the Year Award for first novels. Atkinson broadened her writing repertoire with two plays, more short fiction, and a number of novels including Human Croquet, Case Histories, One Good Turn, and When Will There Be Good News?


Kate Atkinson is known for her sense of humor and parody which helps to lighten the storylines of her often dysfunctional characters and their family units. She also utilizes the device of flashbacks to reveal elements of her story in a non-linear, crazy quilt of unfolding action. And she has dabbled in Magic Realism as well. Case Histories offers us the first appearance of Jackson Brodie, down-but-not-out detective who will reappear in subsequent books, as noted in my June 12th posting. When interviewed by Publishers Weekly, 10/25/2004, she stated that in Brodie she "wanted to write a good man but with a darkness at his core, a world-weary kind of hero."

The First in the Jackson Brodie Series

We will be reading Kate Atkinson's 2004 Case Histories for our July 11th meeting. If you like this book, you'll be happy to know that the author does, too. Or at least she likes her main character, Jackson Brodie, detective, enough to feature him in two subsequent books:

2006

2008

Blink Next

Saturday Samplers book group will discuss Malcolm Gladwell's Blink this Saturday at 3:30 p.m. in the Small Meeting Room of Bernardsville Public Library.

See my earlier posting from today to learn more about the author and his book.

Beyond Thin-Slicing Blink and Malcolm Gladwell

Here is a 2006 New York Times article with lots of insight into Malcolm Gladwell and two of his books, The Tipping Point and Blink.

If you'd like to hear Gladwell deliver a short lecture (on spaghetti sauce, no less!) press play below.


Since both were discussed in Blink, did you wonder what an Aeron chair looks like or how Kenna's music sounds? Simply click on Aeron and Kenna to find out.

Finally, visit Malcolm Gladwell's blog and Web site.

More about Wright

Just got an email today from book group member Jilana Dellal with this Smithsonian article about Frank Lloyd Wright. Jilana wanted you to note the photo gallery for some more pictures of Wright, his family and his architectural works. Thanks, Jilana.

Taliesin Photos

Click on the photo above to view an extensive photo album of exterior and interior shots of Taliesin East. I found this album on about.com while searching FLW.

Read This...Read That?

We are looking forward to discussing Nancy Horan's fictional account of Frank Lloyd Wright's relationship with Mamah Borthwick Cheney,entitled Loving Frank, for our next book group meeting on May 2nd.

If you have already read Loving Frank, you might be interested in comparing it to the 2009 fictional work by T.C. Boyle, The Women, which concerns Wright and four women involved with him, including Mamah. One book jacket suggests the next apparently.

Book Jackets for The Lathe of Heaven

Ursula Le Guin on SF and Writing

Ursula Le Guin is the author of our next book, The Lathe of Heaven, published in 1971. Here's a link to an interesting recent interview of the author in Vice Magazine. In it she is asked what constitutes science fiction, and this is her response:

"Science fiction—and the correct shortcut is “sf”—uses actual scientific facts or theories for the source ideas or framework of the story. It has some scientific content, however speculative. If it breaks a law of physics, it knows it’s doing so and follows up the consequences. If it invents a society of aliens, it does so with some respect for and knowledge of the social sciences and what you might call social probabilities. And some of it is literarily self-aware enough to treat its metaphors as metaphors."

Asked how she can keep straight the many worlds that she has created in her fiction, the author shows her wit as well as her mastery of writing:

"No, no, thank you for saying so, Steve, but if I really had, I would admire myself tremendously. I would be in awe of my own staggeringly great mind. What I did was give the illusion of there being all those different worlds. That’s called art, or fiction, or something. The rule is, you only invent what you have to. And that’s pretty much what’s right in front of the reader. Let’s say it’s an ansible. I do not, in fact, invent the ansible. I do not explain how it works. I cannot, but shhh. I simply present the device as working, and as coming from a society which is far in advance of ours in science and technology, having spaceships that can travel nearly as fast as light, et cetera. And this background or context creates expectation and softens up the readers’ credulity so that they’re willing to “believe in” the ansible—inside the covers of the book. After the ansible had been around for a while, I invented the man who invented it, Shevek, in The Dispossessed. And he and I played around with some pretty neat speculations about time and interval and stuff, which lent more plausibility to the gimmick itself. But all I really invented was a) the idea of an instantaneous transmitter and b) a name for it. The reader does the rest. If you give them enough background/context, they can fill in the gaps. It isn’t just smoke and mirrors. There has to be a coherent vision of how things hang together in that society/culture/world. All the details have to fit together and be thought through as to their implications. But, well... it’s mostly smoke and mirrors. What else is any fiction?"

Asked whether she is pleased with the film adaptations of her books, the author states:

"The only good adaptation to film I’ve had so far is the 1980 Lathe of Heaven from PBS. It’s still available on DVD. It was made on a budget that wouldn’t pay for the hairdressers’ doughnuts these days, but the screenplay’s adequate, the directing is intelligent, the acting is super, and the special effects are really something else. Like, the spaceships are lighted Frisbees, being hurled into the air by Ed Emshwiller’s son. I love it."

To learn more about this author, visit Ursula Le Guin's terrific Web site. It is definitely worth exploring.

Shadow Divers

Robert Kurson's Shadow Divers is today's topic of discussion for Saturday Samplers. Most readers should find this to be a fascinating story on many levels, not the least because it is true. Filled with daring divers whose personal lives presented them with challenges aplenty, the book churns with the excitement of high-risk underwater adventure undertaken by those on an extraordinary quest. One learns many interesting facts about diving and its dangers, but that is only one aspect of this multi-genre book. It is one part adventure story, one part a military history, one part character study, and one part dumbfounding mystery. "Breathless" is the way you will feel even as you read the last few pages.

Consensus on The Book Thief

Everyone who attended our February meeting (and two members who couldn't attend) agreed that The Book Thief by Markus Zusak was a very special book. We all liked it quite a bit and found that it provided good discussion material. The characters grabbed us right away, and human nature in its different aspects was well represented by these characters. Death held his own and then some. Several of us found the story very moving (a few of us shed some tears,) and we all would recommend this book. We were slightly perplexed by the domino imagery on the cover, though.

About Neil Gaiman

Neil Gaiman will be the featured author at this month's meeting of Saturday Samplers, a Bernardsville Public Library book discussion group, taking place today at 3:30 p.m. The library book group will be discussing Neverwhere, which the author turned into a novel after first writing the story as a screenplay for the BBC. Gaiman started his writing career in England as a comic book writer who developed a world-renowned graphic novel series, The Sandman, based on the earlier D.C. comics character of the 1930's and 40's. He collaborated with Terry Pratchett to write the wildly hilarious apocolyptic book, Good Omens, and he has branched out to write both adult and children's books which have been critically acclaimed. Among these publications are Coraline, a frightening children's story as well as American Gods, Stardust, and Anansi Boys. Neil moved from England with his wife and children to settle in Minneapolis where he said he wanted to live in a Charles Addams-style house. He found one complete with turret and possible ghostly history!

Neverwhere

Saturday Samplers will discuss Neil Gaiman's Neverwhere for its next meeting on Saturday, December 6th, at 3:30 p.m. in the library. This urban fantasy takes place in "London Below" where the city's noted underground stations comprise part of Gaiman's alternate universe. Memorable, original characters inhabit this dark and menacing setting in which an everday Everyman from "London Above" suddenly finds himself. Forced by situations out of his control, this "normal" main character must undergo a quest of mythological proportions in order to save not only the damsel in distress, but ever so much more. This is an exciting, imaginative book which nicely balances darkness and light, good and evil.

Any Further Thoughts?

Our group enjoyed discussing many aspects of The Red Tent by Anita Diamant. If anyone would like to comment further or if you were not able to come to the discussion (or if you are just visiting this blog), please post your comments below.

About Anita Diamant

Well, here's our author as the picture of contentment, in what I imagine to be her home in Newton, Massachusetts, where she has lived since completing her graduate work. Born in 1951 in Newark, New Jersey, Anita Diamant spent her early childhood years in the same Jewish community as Philip Roth. Although her family was not particularly religious, they nonetheless followed Jewish ways, and her interest in Judaism grew as she matured. Diamant is now a noted author on Jewish lifestyle and traditions, publishing such books as How to Raise a Jewish Child and Saying Kaddish. The Red Tent is her first fiction book, followed up by Good Harbor and The Last Days of Dogtown.


In writing The Red Tent, Diamant states that she was inspired by Virginia Woolf's idea that the relationship between women in fiction historically had been drawn too simplistically. Diamant initially considered the complex relationship between Leah and Rachel as her focal point for a story, but changed her mind when she read the very short passage in the book of Genesis about Dinah. Anita states, "I found Dinah's silence to be a great open door - thanks to Woolf and many other feminist writers who pointed out that there was a door. So I gave her a voice." You can read more about the author on her Web site.

The Red Tent

Anita Diamant’s first novel, The Red Tent, introduces readers to a spellbinding story of life for women in biblical times. Told through the eyes of Dinah, Jacob's daughter who is barely mentioned in Genesis, The Red Tent is not only Dinah’s story, but that of all women who were relegated to the “red tent” during their menses, childbirths or illnesses. Anita Diamant reminds us that the voiceless, powerless and unknown figures of the past must have had sweeping, wonderful and tragic stories just waiting to be revealed to us.

Saturday Samplers will discuss this book at our next meeting on Saturday, November 1st, at 3:30 p.m. Please note that this is a change in reading selection for November. Although we were scheduled to discuss Cat's Eye on this date, our group voted to move Cat's Eye to a date in the future. I hope no one is inconvenienced by this change.

Follow Up to our Meeting

Our group enjoyed sitting around a laptop looking at images of Caravaggio's work while we discussed this book. We all agreed that it was a fascinating selection.

For those of you who could not attend but who read the book, I shared with the group some interesting news about one of the versions of "The Taking of Christ." The Ukraine (Odessa) version was stolen from the Odessa Museum of Art in April of this year. The painting was cut from its frame and as of now has not been recovered by international authorities.

The Lost Painting

Born in 1948, Jonathan Harr has worked as a journalist, a writer, and an instructor at Smith College. He is best known for his first book, A Civil Action, which was later made into a popular-release film. Published in 1995, A Civil Action garnered several book awards including the National Book Critics' Circle Award for nonfiction.

The Lost Painting: The Quest for a Caravaggio Masterpiece, published in 2005, is his second book. Like A Civil Action, it is engrossing narrative nonfiction at its best. Harr's The Lost Painting traces the actual search for a missing Baroque painting and turns it into an exciting narrative on art detection and intrigue in the art world. The true-life characters and the storyline of this book will take you through the dusty archives of an Italian villa, across the sea to a Jesuit residence in Ireland, and into the art restoration laboratories of the British National Gallery as the hunt for a long-lost Caravaggio treasure becomes a thrilling story in itself.

About Caravaggio

Michelangelo Merisi da Caravaggio (1571-1610) lived a short, violent, but exceedingly fruitful life as an innovative Italian Baroque painter whose distinctive style influenced such noted painters as Rubens, Velazquez, Rembrandt, Honthorst, and Georges de la Tour. His oil paintings are known for their use of everyday characters (as if taken from the streets of Rome) placed in historical, allegorical or religious settings.

Bacchus

He hired locals as his models, and some of them can be seen repeatedly in his works. Rather than depicting the subjects of his paintings in heroic or historical garb, he often painted them in the dress of his time. As a consequence, his paintings have a sense of immediacy about them. All his works are bathed in deep, obscuring shadows and bright, defining patches of light.

Supper at Emmaus

Arranging his subjects in a dramatic fashion, such as in the moment of Peter’s martyrdom when he is about to be crucified upside down, Caravaggio employed the techniques of foreshortening, theatrical use of gesture, and a concentrated or a narrowed subject field (where your eye is drawn directly to the action/subject) in order to add drama and interest to his works.

The Martyrdom of St. Peter

Caravaggio painted primarily in Milan, Rome and Naples and enjoyed a degree of patronage; however, his personal life worked against his career as he outspent his income, brawled, gambled and even committed murder. He is said to have died on a malaria-ridden Italian coastline after escaping from prison.

The subject of Jonathan Harr's book, The Lost Painting: The Quest for a Caravaggio Masterpiece, can be seen below.

The Taking of Christ