the painting and the city is now available
The Painting and the City is the new novel from my writing pal Robert Freeman Wexler, available now from PS Publishing in the UK. Robert's writing is beautiful and unsettling, and I always come away from his fiction seeing the world in a slightly odd way. His remarkable chapbook Psychological Methods To Sell Should Be Destroyed was like a series of slow-motion concussive grenades going off in my brain. I've heard fantastic things about In Springdale Town and Circus of the Grand Design , both of which I bought from Robert himself at conventions years ago, and which I intend to get to very soon. A new work by Robert is a reason to be happy.
What is the secret contained in Philip Schuyler's painting? Who was the woman he depicted, the innocent woman and her dark stalker? The Kreunen sisters know, but they must re-bury the past. And Jacob Lerner, artist flailing in a sea of commerce, can only press forward, explore his own art and the mystery of Schuyler's painting, aided and manipulated by an animate marionette of rosy glass...
Manhattan, summer, in the rosy dawn of the 21st century, the sculptor Jacob Lerner sees a painting at a friend's apartment and is drawn into an obsessive search for traces of its long-dead painter, fictional 19th-century artist Philip Schuyler, and his subject, a woman called Madame Burgundy. The search leads to the remains of a once-powerful but still wealthy Dutch-American secret society, and carries Lerner through real and surreal Manhattan streets, buildings, and countryside. Finding Schuyler's journal draws Lerner in deeper. Finding the dapper marionette makes it impossible for Lerner to escape.
The Painting and the City tells a story of art and its conflict with commerce, the way art can (literally) reshape the world, and the consequences of such a reshaping.
Jeffrey Ford has written the introduction to the book and Buddy Drake provided the cover art. The novel is available in two editions: Signed Hardcover (£20/US$30) and Signed, Limited, Slipcased Hardcover (£50/US$75). PS Publishing always does a gorgeous job with their books, and I'm very much looking forward to holding this one in my hands.
You could do worse than pick up a copy yourself. If you're on the fence, read the first two chapters for free; I dare you not to get hooked.