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Waiting at the Shore chronicles the extraordinary life of the
Spanish artist Luis Quintanilla, championed by Ernest Hemingway,
John Dos Passos, Elliot Paul, and many other American and European
writers and artists. In 1912, at the age of 18, he ran off to
Montmartre where, under the influence of his fellow countryman Juan
Gris, he began his artistic career as a Cubist. Returning to Madrid
before the war he befriended prominent Spaniards, including Juan
Negrin, the Premier during the Spanish Civil War. In April 1931 he
and Negrin participated in the peaceful revolution which ousted the
monarchy and installed the Second Spanish Republic. When civil war
broke out Quintanilla helped lead troops on Madrid's Montana
Barracks, which saved the capital for the Republic. "Because great
painters," as Hemingway put it, "are scarcer than good soldiers,"
the Spanish government [Negrin] ordered Quintanilla out of the army
after the fascists were stopped outside Madrid. The artist
completed 140 drawings of the various fronts of the war which were
exhibited at New York's Museum of Modern Art, with a catalogue by
Hemingway. After the Republic lost the war Quintanilla was forced
into an exile which lasted several decades. Living in New York and
in Paris he strove to perfect his art, shunning the modernist
vogues of the time. Although a celebrity when he first arrived in
the United States he eventually fell into obscurity. This volume,
which is heavily illustrated, brings him out of the shadows of
neglect, and provides the compelling story of an artist who led not
just an extraordinary life but left a legacy of paintings and
drawings which, in both their skill and great imaginative variety,
should be known to all art lovers.
"I saw my magnificent aesthetic monument wilting and fading all
about me, dissolving away, losing what little substance it had for
not having been cultivated. For that spirit-world I sought had to
be exercised and though drink offered me a certain freedom, a
certain easy unity with that world, my sober cold productive hours
were fully occupied now by my job! And though the world told me
over and over and over again that I had to work, had to support
myself, bitterly I wondered at the quality of life this demand
returned to me if its truest recompense was to rob me of my life?
For work did nothing more for me than merely grant the brute
necessities of life. And by complying with this fundamental demand
I received nothing in return: not life nor adventure nor even any
respect much less any form of basic consideration or kindness or
rewards at that office." Barry Miles
Life is good. And Michael Howard believes he has been uniquely
chosen by fate for there is a singular brightness about the world
he uniquely enjoys. All he has to do is continue choosing
correctly. Part anti-war novel, part love story, part coming of age
adventure, this novel is yet another exploration of the "American
dream."
How can one man own another man? What takes place in the heads of
such men? How could slavery ever have been seen as natural and
normal? This novel explores that most odd of relationships.
It is 1967. Jamie Budlow is a freshman in college, in love, and his
world on campus is rocked by student demonstrations against the
Vietnam War. This is a coming of age tale. These are books two and
three of a five book novel.
These modest lines which I wouldn't dare call poetry for lacking
the power of art may at least bring a smile or a new thought into
bold momentary relief for being something new, unexpected, though
not very deep or certainly profound. My voice may be odd, too and
may not harmonize immediately or comfortably with your own inner
voice or what you expect or hope for in lines like these. And you
may be right! But if there's any worth in these words and if they
touch a few hearts and minds and spirits perhaps a certain
commonality may have briefly come to life here among us and the
foolishness and vanity of wasted time, wasted days pursuing art may
not becomemy epitaph.
Ernest Hemingway stood out in a significant manner back in the
fifties. He had a beard. And he went about flaunting his beard in
an "I don't give a damn" manner. We should remember that the
fifties were a time of great conformity. Those who flouted society
by wearing a beard could be severely punished. Today such a rigid
display of personal conformity may seem odd. Few people would care
about such facial hair. But that's the way it was back then. This
then is a novel about the ridiculous. Through a variety of
deviations we, the human race, continue to create a great deal of
needless suffering for ourselves. For the same senseless strife in
human affairs seems to appear over and over again.
If travel is "broadening" then John Sawyer's adventures in the Land
of the Dacks, an ancient third world country, are quite
transformative. And he becomes a new man. This is also a novel of
ideas
"Hell is other people," a character in Sartre's No Exit tells us.
And for the employees of the Red and Black Fire Equipment Company
this is mostly true. Written as a series of interior monologues
(with a touch of omniscient commentary) The Industrial Park enters
into the inner lives of these conflicted and conflicting souls. A
tragedy? A comedy? You as the reader would have to decide.
Most novelists consider the daily routine of a menial job in an
office to be too dull and uninteresting to merit the treatment of a
full length novel. How can such an unchanging dull monotony hold
the reader's attention, they may ask? Though the clashes of the
titans at the top have been fully explored often enough. The daily
experience, though, of being at work in an office is one of the
most common experiences of everyday life. And for that reason
merits our attention. What's more, these basic realities should be
more openly dealt with. Abuses which are not covered in any union
contract occur. Great ambitions flourish. And petty cruelties can
abound all within a larger framework of a deep boredom and
monotnoy. This is a novel about the simple daily experience of
being on the job. Of going to work everyday. A drama which is large
enough on its own.
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