This
is, for want of a better word, a biography. My friend’s
stepfather, Josh, came to Hampshire to paint the outside
of our cottage. In the evenings he told me about Soho
in the 1950s, his memories of Lucian Freud and Francis
Bacon - and, later, the poet and critic William Empson
- and how this period of his life had killed something
in him. Josh had the temperament of an artist but not
the accomplishments; people who should have known better
used him and threw him away. This is what I deduced
from what he said. Then, a week after finishing the
paint-job (brilliant white) he dropped dead and this
book started. The narrrator is me but he is also a
character in Josh’s story. This conflation was
unplanned but then I realised that it was good. The
book is a partly fictionalised and periodically surreal
account of true events, ending with Josh and I finding
refuge in the background of a Francis Bacon painting. |
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