Jonathan Santlofer and Joyce Carol Oates

Earlier this week, I enjoyed listening to Joyce Carol Oates interview Jonathan Santlofer about his new novel, The Lost Van Gogh. An accomplished artist in his own right, Jonathan has written several novels which incorporate art into a mystery story. In The Lost Van Gogh, an artist searches for a long-rumored missing self-portrait of Van Gogh. Within the story is a wonderful look at how French resistors tried to protect art by painting over it because they felt that preserving their art was integral to preserving their culture and identity. It’s a wonderful story.

It was great to see so many author friends in the audience. Getting to speak to them alone was well worth the trip. But the main event was hearing Joyce and Jonathan talk about art's influence on his writing and vice versa.

Jonathan talked about his training in art school and how he had to draw and paint between four and six hours a day. He credits that focus with giving him the discipline to write, something he still struggles with until this day. “After I write, I will go into my studio to draw,” he said. “I think it’s because when I draw, it’s something I know I can do. With writing, I’m still not nearly as sure.”

Given how art has affected his writing, I asked Jonathan how writing has affected his art. “I suppose what I paint and draw is much more literal now,” he said. “I used to do more abstract work, but that’s changed more recently. I think it’s because when I write, the words are there. They have a specific meaning. Now, my work is more realistic. I never really thought of that until you asked.”

There was one other story that Jonathan told that was fascinating to me. Nearly three decades ago, he had an exhibition in a Chicago gallery containing nearly 10 years of his work. After the opening, he returned to New York to discover that a fire had destroyed all of it. After picking himself up off the floor, he struggled to return to his work. He even tried repainting some of it.

Later that year, he went to Rome and started a novel about… an artist who lost his work in a fire. After reading a draft, he hated it, so he scrapped it and started over. The new work, The Death Artist, became a success and earned him a contract to write more books. Now he had a second career.

Once he got over the loss, he said, he realized he could start over. Nothing, not even beloved art, was too precious. And it changed him both as an artist and a writer. If he didn’t like something was working or felt lost, he could take out a new page or canvas and begin again. There is always something wonderful waiting to be made.

Read Me – Books I Like

Tell Me One Thing – Kerri Schlottman

A young woman who wants to be a photographer is traveling through rural America when she captures an image of a little girl smoking while sitting on a trucker’s lap. Years later, the photograph takes on a life of its own as their two lives diverge. Kerri has written a wonderful novel about artist and subject and how class and circumstance play such huge roles in the trajectory of our lives.

The Sorrows of Others – Ada Zhang

As I often do when I make a new friend on Twitter, I picked up Ada’s debut collection of short stories and holy smokes! I could feel the alienation and pain of her characters in my own heart, particularly as she provides a window to the immigrant experience in America. Just a stunning entry into the literary world.

Chuck Berry: an American Life - RJ Smith

I was rummaging around a bookstore on a recent Artist Date and came across this biography of Chuck Berry by my old colleague at Details, RJ Smith. Given how familiar I am with RJ’s work, I didn’t even have to open it to know it was going to be a magnificently researched and entertaining read about the birth of rock and roll, how Berry navigated racism throughout his life, and RJ provides an unflinching look at Berry’s troubled relationships and actions away from the stage. It’s a fascinating story about an American icon.

Found Treasures

Brian Koppelman mentioned this on his wonderful podcast, and I tracked it down. It’s a clip of Paul Simon appearing on The Dick Cavett Show. Here, Simon talks about having a song he’s been working on for months but hasn’t figured out how to move forward. I can’t imagine an artist doing this today, allowing a national audience to hear incomplete work. I would watch an entire channel of artists doing this.

“[Artists] live at times in their rare moments of happiness with such strength and indescribable beauty, the spray of their moment’s happiness is flung so high and dazzlingly over the wide sea of suffering, that the light of it, spreading its radiance, touches others too with its enchantment. Thus, like a precious, fleeting foam over the sea of suffering arise all those works of art, in which a single individual lifts himself for an hour so high above his personal destiny that his happiness shines like a star and appears to all who see it as something eternal and as a happiness of their own.” —Herman Hesse on the inner conflict of an artist.

Happy 25^th anniversary to The Sopranos. Max has added several deleted scenes for binge-watchers to enjoy. The New York Times takes a look at what some of the famous locations of the show look like now.

Sad to hear Joan Acocella passed away earlier this week. Joan is most known for being the dance critic for the New Yorker, but she also wrote wonderful culture stories as well. Two of my favorites were this story on how Agatha Christie influenced the modern crime novel, and this profile of Mikhail Baryshnikov.

My pal Warren Zanes is working on a new album with his band Rogue Elephant, and the New Yorker pays a visit to the studio where Warren, Paul Muldoon and band are working with legendary music producer (and Bowie collaborator), the Brooklyn-born Tony Visconti.

One more thing about the New Yorker, I’m late to this, but they’ve been having fiction contributors read the stories they publish in the magazine, and it’s quite wonderful, as you would imagine.

Jami Attenberg developed quite a following from her #1000wordsofsummer, which encouraged writers to write a thousand words a day for two weeks (a much gentler task than NaNoWriMo). Her new book, 1000 Words, came out yesterday.

Hundreds of years from now, I would like to be described as a “saucy polymath.”

I try not to be nostalgic, but the 50^th birthday of hip-hop has brought forth all kinds of wonderful retrospectives, including these books on the essential objects of rap history.

Who is coming to Flushing to get noodle soup with me?

As always, I welcome all comments, feedback, art/books/food/music/podcasts you are enjoying below.

See you next week!