Description
A young artist meets Stephen Crane as America's hunger for empire draws them both into war
Oliver Fischer, a self-styled bohemian, boardwalk caricaturist, and student at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, enrages his banker father and earns the contempt of Philadelphia's foremost realist painter Thomas Eakins when he attempts to stage Manet's scandalous painting The Luncheon on the Grass. Soon after, he is ensnarled, along with Mark Twain and Andrew Carnegie, in a clash between the Anti-Imperialist League and their expansionist foes. Sent to Key West to sketch the 1898 American invasion of Cuba, in company with war correspondent Stephen Crane, he realizes--in the flash of a naval bombardment--that our lives are suspended by a thread between radiance and annihilation.
The Caricaturist, the penultimate, stand-alone book in The American Novels series, is a tragicomic portrait of America struggling to honor its most-cherished ideals at the dawn of the twentieth century.
About the Author
Norman Lock is the award-winning author of novels, short fiction, and poetry, as well as stage and radio plays. He has won The Dactyl Foundation Literary Fiction Award, The Paris Review Aga Khan Prize for Fiction, and has been longlisted twice for the Joyce Carol Oates Prize. He has also received writing fellowships from the New Jersey State Council on the Arts, the Pennsylvania Council on the Arts, and the National Endowment for the Arts. He lives in Aberdeen, New Jersey.
Reviews
Praise for The Caricaturist
Historical Novels Review "Editors' Choice" selection
Shelf Unbound "Recommended Reading" selection
Foreword Reviews "Book of the Day" selection
Literary Hub "New Books" selection
"Lock is not writing history, but his fiction acts as a sort of carapace around actual events and historical figures, showing how a Twain or Crane appear from the protagonist's perspective. . . . Oliver Fischer does not become another Crane, but without Crane's fortitude in covering wars and the urban down-and-out, Oliver could not embark on a quest that his unconventional father cannot fathom." -New York Sun
"The Caricaturist, contrasting the larger-than-life figure of Stephen Crane with the more modest Oliver Fischer, is both comic and tragic, and Lock's picture of Philadelphia in the late 1890s is vivid and enchanting, impressive in its detail. . . . A delightful picaresque novel." -North of Oxford
"Lock expertly provides readers, in the end, with a peek into a lost time wherein, much like the present, America holds its breath." -PopMatters
"The Caricaturist is fully immersed in the war fury of the era, and does a fine job visualizing it." -On the Seawall
"A masterfully written book that brings light to America's almost-forgotten first imperialist adventure." -Historical Novels Review (Editors' Choice)
"Captivating and energetic. . . . The Caricaturist rollicks through a turbulent American epoch via an artist's coming-of-age." -Foreword Reviews (starred review)
"A resonant story of art, rebellion, and politics." -Kirkus Reviews (starred review)
"Lock again demonstrates his uncanny ability to inhabit the voices of historical figures. . . . He is our most assured portraitist." -Booklist
"Lock successfully mimics Crane's impressionistic style in his marvelous depictions of late 19th-century America." -Publishers Weekly
Select Praise for Norman Lock's The American Novels Series
"Norman Lock has created a memorable portrait gallery of American subjects, in a succession of audaciously imagined, wonderfully original, and beautifully written novels unlike anything in our literature." -Joyce Carol Oates
"Shimmers with glorious language, fluid rhythms, and complex insights." -Jane Ciabattari, NPR
"Our national history and literature are Norman Lock's playground in his dazzling series, The American Novels. . . . [His] supple, elegantly plain-spoken prose captures the generosity of the American spirit in addition to its moral failures, and his passionate engagement with our literary heritage evinces pride in its unique character." -Wendy Smith, Washington Post
"This is fiction of a high caliber. . . on the cutting edge of history, providing us with a way to grapple with our evolving sense of the past, as we wonder what is next." -Carl Rollyson, New York Sun
On The Boy in His Winter
"[Lock] is one of the most interesting writers out there. This time, he re-imagines Huck Finn's journeys, transporting the iconic character deep into America's past-and future." -Reader's Digest
On American Meteor
"[Walt Whitman] hovers over [American Meteor], just as Mark Twain's spirit pervaded The Boy in His Winter. . . . Like all Mr. Lock's books, this is an ambitious work, where ideas crowd together on the page like desperate men on a battlefield." -Wall Street Journal
On The Port-Wine Stain
"Lock's novel engages not merely with [Edgar Allan Poe and Thomas Dent Mutter] but with decadent fin de siecle art and modernist literature that raised philosophical and moral questions about the metaphysical relations among art, science and human consciousness. The reader is just as spellbound by Lock's story as [his novel's narrator] is by Poe's. . . . Echoes of Wilde's The Picture of Dorian Gray and Freud's theory of the uncanny abound in this mesmerizingly twisted, richly layered homage to a pioneer of American Gothic fiction." -New York Times Book Review
On A Fugitive in Walden Woods
"A Fugitive in Walden Woods manages that special magic of making Thoreau's time in Walden Woods seem fresh and surprising and necessary right now. . . . This is a patient and perceptive novel, a pleasure to read even as it grapples with issues that affect the United States to this day." -Victor LaValle, author of Lone Women
On The Wreckage of Eden
"The lively passages of Emily [Dickinson]'s letters are so evocative of her poetry that it becomes easy to see why Robert finds her so captivating. The book also expands and deepens themes of moral hypocrisy around racism and slavery. . . . Lyrically written but unafraid of the ugliness of the time, Lock's thought-provoking series continues to impress." -Publishers Weekly
On Feast Day of the Cannibals
"Lock does not merely imitate 19th-century prose; he makes it his own, with verbal flourishes worthy of Melville." -Gay & Lesbian Review
On American Follies
"Ragtime in a fever dream. . . . When you mix 19th-century racists, feminists, misogynists, freaks, and a flim-flam man, the spectacle that results might bear resemblance to the contemporary United States." -Library Journal (starred review)
On Tooth of the Covenant
"Splendid. . . . Lock masters the interplay between nineteenth-century Hawthorne and his fictional surrogate, Isaac, as he travels through Puritan New England. The historical details are immersive and meticulous." -Foreword Reviews (starred review)
On Voices in the Dead House
"Gripping. . . . The legacy of John Brown looms over both Alcott and Whitman [in] a haunting novel that offers candid portraits of literary legends." -Kirkus Reviews (starred review)
On The Ice Harp
"Lock deftly takes us into the polyphonic swirl of Emerson's mind at the end of his life, inviting us to meet the man anew even as the philosopher fights to stop forgetting himself. . . . [A] remarkably empathetic and deeply moral novel." -Matt Bell, author of Appleseed
Book Information
ISBN 9781954276277
Author Norman Lock
Format Paperback
Page Count 352
Imprint Bellevue Literary Press
Publisher Bellevue Literary Press
