Category: France

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

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.

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.

Bubbles helping to finish novel

Working away to finish “The Old World Dies” by publication day, Jan. 15. Champagne and foie gras is helping with this process, however. Merry Christmas all you readers, and remember to pre-order my novel often, right here: http://tinyurl.com/y7rtqdt4