Category: Art

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.

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

Announcing ‘The Old World Dies’

Friends, It’s been 16 years since “Rolling the Bones” and while you might think I’ve been goofing off all this time, au contraire! For here comes “The Old World Dies,” a comic romp through France guaranteed to get you through the rest of the winter with your sanity intact. You can get your very own copy of “The World Dies” in e-book form or in print on Amazon sites worldwide. PLEASE leave a review on Amazon, Facebook or Twitter. And tell your friends, colleagues and secret lovers. Hell, tell your cats, dogs and raccoons, too. MERCI. Happy reading! To pair with a Château La Tour de By. An excellent Médoc. All vintages recommended.

‘The Old World Dies’ out Jan. 15!

“The Old World Dies” is a comic satire on the final decline of France and the cleverly melodramatic adventures of a dreamy painter of nudes, his colorful models and spinster benefactors, an American swindler, an unlucky taxi driver, a savage teenage gang girl, and a well-lubricated cast of supporting actors, living or not, as they scurry through the great cultural and social collapse. The mad dash for the exits opens to the pleasant tinkling of sheep bells high in the Pyrenees where nature-struck Parisian artists wander through the fog looking for light to the bemusement of the Basque people, plunges into the Sturm und Drang of Paris where the well-heeled cower as suburban riffraff rush the walls and pet poodles take to speaking Portuguese, then swings out to sunny California and drinks with a con artist in a nice bar located on a dangerous coastal road, before arriving at a picture-postcard resort in Mexico where a beach artist dashes off paintings at sunset of those who, deserving or not, survived.

Out with dystopia, in with satire

The latest and hopefully final revision of the summary of my new novel, due Jan. 15.

“The Old World Dies” is a sprawling satire on a European age of decline and the tragicomic adventures of a dreamy painter of nudes, his colorful models and spinster benefactors, an American art swindler, an unlucky Paris taxi driver, a savage gang girl, and an amusing cast of supporting actors, living or not, as a wave of social anarchy crashes through France. Their absurd saga begins for purely artistic reasons high in the foggy, sheep-covered Pyrenees where the Basque people, who have lived forever, are wisely ignoring the turmoil in the lowlands, plunges into the melodramatic mayhem of the City of Light as the rotten elite and clueless bourgeoisie alike cower before hordes of suburban riffraff thundering at the walls, then wends through a nonlinear series of unlikely coincidences to a nice bar in California on a deadly coastal road, before arriving at a postcard paradise in Mexico where a beach artist dashes off paintings at sunset of those who, deserving or not, survived.

What’s ‘The Old World Dies’ about?

“The Old World Dies” is a dystopian-lite tableau of a European age of final decline about a down-and-out painter, his spinster benefactors and his exotic models, as well as one very unlucky taxi driver, as they struggle against great odds to survive a tragicomic wave of chaos washing over Paris and threatening to send them and their desperate last dreams into the abyss. Their absurd and spicy tales carry the brave reader through a Boschian world where the narrative slope plunges from the luminous heights of the Pyrenees and dark-eyed Basque country into the mayhem of the City of Light and its forlorn suburbs, thence by several wacky twists of fate to a nice bar along the dangerous coastal roads of California, before arriving at an ersatz paradise on the western shore of Mexico where a gentle beach artist dashes off a painting of the lucky few survivors at sunset.

 

You can pre-order ‘The Old World Dies’

My new novel is now available for pre-order. That makes it an early holiday gift for everyone, albeit one you buy! Here’s the place: http://tinyurl.com/ycj629tq
Print edition coming out at the same time, Jan. 15. So if you don’t want the Kindle version, check back for the paperback, which I’ll have ready in a couple of weeks. Merci!