Kyle Jarrard

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.