A man living in more than one world, one of them a foreign country, looks backward and forward, but survives each day with help of lost souls who cross his path. The novel is set in Madrid, where Goya is buried, minus his head. This serves as a controlling metaphor for the displaced narrator as he encounters down and outs and Basque terrorists.
I divined early on that I had one great character available and that was Madrid itself. There is a constant, day and night, sideshow on the streets of that city, and on my walks I’d take in the oddities of it, the beauty and madness. I’d go down to the rose garden and then on below that to the river and Goya’s tomb in the Chapel of San Antonio de la Florida and observe the frescoes he painted on the ceiling. I learned that his body was there, but his head wasn’t. This seemed a metaphor for how I was and, by extension, for the expatriate experience. Your body is present at this particular location on the map, but your thoughts are elsewhere. Mine were often back home; they visited my childhood and relatives and the small town where I grew up. All this was fictionalized by magic, as it will do. That magic is the wild card. It is unexplainable. I think also that when you have the one great character, others will congregate. Some I knew already, some I didn’t. They just arrived on paper and wanted in on things. St. Anthony is referenced a number of times. He is the patron saint of those who are seeking lost things. And that is probably a good part of what this book is about. I say ‘probably” because the person who writes and I myself are very different, and I don’t always know what he’s up to.
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I divined early on that I had one great character available and that was Madrid itself. There is a constant, day and night, sideshow on the streets of that city, and on my walks I’d take in the oddities of it, the beauty and madness. I’d go down to the rose garden and then on below that to the river and Goya’s tomb in the Chapel of San Antonio de la Florida and observe the frescoes he painted on the ceiling. I learned that his body was there, but his head wasn’t. This seemed a metaphor for how I was and, by extension, for the expatriate experience. Your body is present at this particular location on the map, but your thoughts are elsewhere. Mine were often back home; they visited my childhood and relatives and the small town where I grew up. All this was fictionalized by magic, as it will do. That magic is the wild card. It is unexplainable. I think also that when you have the one great character, others will congregate. Some I knew already, some I didn’t. They just arrived on paper and wanted in on things. St. Anthony is referenced a number of times. He is the patron saint of those who are seeking lost things. And that is probably a good part of what this book is about. I say ‘probably” because the person who writes and I myself are very different, and I don’t always know what he’s up to.
Goya's Head
A man living in more than one world, one of them a foreign country, looks backward and forward, but survives each day with help of lost souls who cross his path. The novel is set in Madrid, where Goya is buried, minus his head. This serves as a controlling metaphor for the displaced narrator as he encounters down and outs and Basque terrorists.
I divined early on that I had one great character available and that was Madrid itself. There is a constant, day and night, sideshow on the streets of that city, and on my walks I’d take in the oddities of it, the beauty and madness. I’d go down to the rose garden and then on below that to the river and Goya’s tomb in the Chapel of San Antonio de la Florida and observe the frescoes he painted on the ceiling. I learned that his body was there, but his head wasn’t. This seemed a metaphor for how I was and, by extension, for the expatriate experience. Your body is present at this particular location on the map, but your thoughts are elsewhere. Mine were often back home; they visited my childhood and relatives and the small town where I grew up. All this was fictionalized by magic, as it will do. That magic is the wild card. It is unexplainable. I think also that when you have the one great character, others will congregate. Some I knew already, some I didn’t. They just arrived on paper and wanted in on things. St. Anthony is referenced a number of times. He is the patron saint of those who are seeking lost things. And that is probably a good part of what this book is about. I say ‘probably” because the person who writes and I myself are very different, and I don’t always know what he’s up to.
I divined early on that I had one great character available and that was Madrid itself. There is a constant, day and night, sideshow on the streets of that city, and on my walks I’d take in the oddities of it, the beauty and madness. I’d go down to the rose garden and then on below that to the river and Goya’s tomb in the Chapel of San Antonio de la Florida and observe the frescoes he painted on the ceiling. I learned that his body was there, but his head wasn’t. This seemed a metaphor for how I was and, by extension, for the expatriate experience. Your body is present at this particular location on the map, but your thoughts are elsewhere. Mine were often back home; they visited my childhood and relatives and the small town where I grew up. All this was fictionalized by magic, as it will do. That magic is the wild card. It is unexplainable. I think also that when you have the one great character, others will congregate. Some I knew already, some I didn’t. They just arrived on paper and wanted in on things. St. Anthony is referenced a number of times. He is the patron saint of those who are seeking lost things. And that is probably a good part of what this book is about. I say ‘probably” because the person who writes and I myself are very different, and I don’t always know what he’s up to.
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Product Details
| BN ID: | 2940014617604 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | Livingston Press |
| Publication date: | 12/20/2010 |
| Sold by: | Barnes & Noble |
| Format: | eBook |
| Pages: | 340 |
| File size: | 290 KB |
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