Reflection, the act of remembering and judging the past to inform the present, is human nature. With gray hair and wrinkles, we scrutinize our lives to gauge their worth. Or to make sense of our time. Childhood, trauma, love, and trial - they all go under the microscope in the search.
We all ask the big “Why?’, often through smaller questions. Was it fate that held her close? What was I supposed to say? Could I have helped them? Where have I been? The look over the shoulder, the meditation on memories, has somtimes led many to birth a magnum opus. The distillation of a life into a mantra: amor vincit omnia, some God, or simply farce.
For The Painter of Battles life is geometry.
Aruturo Perez-Reverte, retired war correspondent and popular Spanish novelist, has written a short book searing in its struggle to define justice, beauty, and humanity. This is his attempt at metering his own choices, or at least choices he was near. The story goes many places, but it is encapsulated inside a love story and a moral battle.
The retired war journalist Andrés Faulques has exiled himself in a 300 year old tower on the Iberian coast, in order to paint a brooding mural about his experiences capturing combat. One such photograph had literally ruined the life of Ivan Markovic. The Croatian veteran has hunted Faulques to the tower, where he promises to kill Faulqes. Markovic is the question “Did I live right?” Thus begins a delicate, devious dance central to the plot.
Staring back from the shadows is Faulques’ dead lover, Olvido. They met in front of a battle painting, and went to war together. She inspires, teaches and commands Faulques, and is the question “Did I love right?”
The book is a sparse and bloody affair wrought with the imagery of war and the techniques of the light stalker and brush wielder. While it pays homage to history’s violence, Perez-Reverte focuses on what he knows: the automatic-weapon conflicts in the last quarter of the 20th century.
Yugoslavia, Lebanon, Angola, Iraq, Sudan, Nicaragua. Students following their middle school teachers into battle. Neighbors brutalizing each other amongst the rubble. Sociopathic toddlers, amputees and snipers.
The New York Times Book Review harshly critized it, while the Guardian loved it. In order of strength, I recommend it immensely to photographers, journalists, and artists (assuming you are all readers). The Painter of Battles has the cinematic quality of a cult classic and enough staying power to haunt your life. I will read it again.
Arturo Perez-Reverte
The Painter of Battles
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