Untitled. Collage and acrylic on cardboard. 46×35.

Untitled. Acrylic on paper. 42 x 24 inches.

New poetry collection: “A Brief Progress”

“A Brief Progress: Through Strange Lands As in a Dark Dream And Safe Return”

Form: Nonrandom free verse. Themes: Life, Death, Super-Consciousness, the Infinite, Devotion and Miracles. Keywords: City parks, truck signs, saris and dhotis, cranky ravens, haircuts, trees, swimming pools, trains, skulls, mammoths, pharaohs, cats, virgins, Malone and Quetzalcoatl. Way Stations: Mahabalipuram, Auroville, Tranquebar, Gokarna, Bellary, Hubli, Ur, St.-Césaire, Dallas, Las Vegas, Guadalajara and last but not least, Paris. Select Takeaways: Travel while you can, Don’t play 24 black, Learn a raga or two.

Kirkus award for ‘The Old World Dies’

Read the review

Free copies of ‘The Old World Dies’!

Until April 1, go over to Goodreads to toss your name into the hat for one of 100 copies of “The Old World Dies.” Here’s the link: Goodreads giveaway

4-star review from IndieReader

THE OLD WORLD DIES details the interactions and encounters of Theo Carnot, an artist and the nephew of an artist; the Millet sisters, sensible Isabelle and whimsical Luce, traveling the world with the money left to them by their father; Marina, a young Mexican woman who works for the Millet sisters, poses for Theo, and dreams of home; and Roland, Marina’s taxi-driver husband who wants nothing more than to earn enough money to take Marina back to the sunny paradise where they met. Chance encounters lead to chance relationships, to disaster and success, love and loss, as their safe Parisian world crumbles around them into rioting and crime.

Jarrard’s writing is lyrical and imaginative, with expressively beautiful description and intimate internal monologues. The stories – because this is in fact a series of several intertwining stories, rather than one simple tale – are told in stream-of-consciousness fashion, giving the reader a direct first-person view of what each character in turn is thinking and feeling. The point of view switches casually from person to person, in ways that don’t disturb or confuse, but give a multifaceted perspective on what’s going on.

The language is graceful and dreamlike, keeping the illusion of life serenely moving forward in the face of upheavals both internal and external. It’s almost like an artistic view of a pinball game, as chance throws one character’s storyline into contact with another, and the rebounding reactions set whole new sequences in motion. At times, the length of the meandering sentences, which at their peak take up full pages, can get excessive, even tedious, and the book is rather long for the amount of actual plot it contains. However, the reader who allows themselves to be swept away on the waves of prose, and to drift with the plot as it meanders, will be rewarded by a rich and engaging experience.

THE OLD WORLD DIES is a lush and vividly poetic book, meant to be experienced as a piece of art, a moving portrait of intersecting lives and relationships.

~Catherine Langrehr for IndieReader

Review of ‘The Old World Dies’

A starred review from Kirkus:

In Jarrard’s (Cognac, 2008, etc.) satire, a prodigious artist and a multifarious cast of characters navigate their way through an unsettling urban landscape.

Paris is crumbling. Murderous gangs of teenage girls prowl the streets, and citizens are bracing themselves for a catastrophic civil collapse. Théo Carnot is a painter of nudes who wants to emerge from the shadow of his uncle Raymond, a distinguished watercolorist who recently died. Roland Jean-Marie Aymé is a taxi driver who’s bedazzled by the beauty of his partner, Marina, a “black-eyed creature from Mexico” with a beauty that’s almost “beyond believing.” Then there’s John Green, a suave, if overly bold, American who casually says that he owns a couple of paintings “by that fellow Monet, and I think one by his friend, almost the same name.” These characters intermingle with a vast, diverse network of other people in a dreamlike swirl. There is a plot here, punctuated by adventure and romance, but locating it is akin to discovering the eye of a hurricane. Part of the joy of the book is in forcing one’s way through what initially appear to be relentless, fragmented images and thoughts, in order to understand its central structure and how its characters fit together. The language often apes the moodily introspective monologues of 1950s French art-house films: “Do I look like another man? / The man I know, and there is this improvement. / Roland runs his hand over his head. / Younger? / And older. Both. There is this balance. It’s interesting.” The surreal elements, as when artists find themselves wandering in the Pyrenees looking for light, are reminiscent of André Breton’s Nadja (1928). But it’s all deliciously tongue-in-cheek. It’s a challenge to turn a page without finding an example of Jarrard’s inimitably observant approach to prose: “She had wanted to go out of the station and see Basseville for herself, this place where girl murderers come from, but everything is dark and smoky in the beyond and the high-rises stand like grave markers of a race of giants who died in the crepuscule.”

An intoxicatingly unique literary voice that demands further attention.

Remarks on ‘The Old World Dies’

A hyperlinear roller-coaster of a tale that will have you revising your definition of fine literature in no time. Plus you’ll never get lost, because it has a strict plot line. Tell your friends.
– GINGER ROGERS (Paris)

You don’t have to know any French to enjoy this romp through France, though some basic Basque won’t hurt. – L. CANARD (Paris)

Jarrard’s bucolic descriptions of the Pyrenees, its fogs and sheep will have you lacing up your hiking boots. – THE FAKE NYT (New York)

As a personage lost deep in this lush jungle of a drama, I can attest to its utterly fair treatment of all artists and animals. – VERITE (Paris)

Highly subtle philosophizing on the meaning of life that evokes Atisha’s Lamp for the Path to Enlightenment. – BERT SOLARITZA (Donostia)

It made me want to get my paint-by-numbers set out again after all these years, and for that I’m deeply grateful. – MAMI MOSES (Hoosick Falls)

I really enjoyed the sassy Villanova character. Western fiction needs even more transsexuals with attitude. – MELLA CINDERELLA (Dallas)

It’s sexy, it’s romantic, and I like it. – DAME BLANCHE (Paris)

Yuge, like, really smart. Not like Hillary. – STABLE GENIUS (Rikers)

Embarrassing. A stain on our family. – T.S. JARRARD (Deceased)