An Artist's Life (Paperback)

This is the story of Lenny Goldman, a fictionalized biography of the author Eugene V. Solot. The story stretches from the time he arrived in West Quincy, Massachusetts, in 1951 to the present day, covering his years as an art student, artist and university professor. Most of the story is factual and in some cases the real names of artists have been used, but many of the close friends of the artist have fictional names and in some important cases characters meet and interact who never really met in real life. The story is approached as if someone found the writings, audio tapes and letters of the artist and put them together to tell the story. The author spent years in the seventies and eighties exchanging tapes with his father and his friend Toga and some of these tapes have been transcribed as accurately as possible. There is a great deal of discussion about art, music and literature, as many of his friends were artists, writers and musicians and they discussed the esthetics of these fields extensively. But there is also much discussion about cooking, the game of chess, and fishing on the Mississippi River, as these activities were also of extreme interest to him.