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Abstract
Part memoir, history and forgery, this novel chronicles a child’s love affair with the violent expressionist paintings of Egon Schiele. The novel is written in switchback time and takes place in the 1960’s and the early twentieth century (1910-1915). An unnamed narrator and his Viennese circle of friends are trying to restore the history of the great painter when a mysterious man turns up at the door. Wilhelm Boehme claims to know more about Schiele than any history book. But what Boehme describes is not just a coming of age story but the unsettling process of history rewriting itself, tucking into its folds, parts of the narrative that are too disturbing for a culture. In this novel are real events mixed with fantasies; personal chronicles from real historians and institutional figures (Alessandra Comini, Werner Hoffman)—and fictionalized characters taken from paintings that still hang in our galleries.
Type
campus
article
thesis
article
thesis
Date
2012-01-01