Lives of the Artists

📖 The Scoop

Throughout this collection, Dennis Vannatta distills art and storytelling into their core matter -- the human comedy. Vannatta also peppers in his own authorial persona, with anachronistic forays into the Vietnam War, pushing the envelope of storytelling to encompass the entire collection. The stories themselves run from the first cave artist and cave storyteller, who must tell a captivating tale or be assassinated, through a modern aluminum siding salesman obsessing over a lovely art historian and winding up trapped on an academic panel discussing Mona Lisa after the historian slyly hands him her name tag, promising to meet him at the panel. This salesman, too, must weave a story or lose -- not his life certainly, but all self-respect. Both caveman and salesman contrast the illusory stillness of visual art with the illusory movement of storytelling by injecting emotion into their stories, to eventually find redemption. Just so, Vannatta's persona injects Vietnam throughout this collection as if to say that storytelling can move to heal even the grossest of wounds: war. Book jacket.

Genre: Fiction / Short Stories (single author) (fancy, right?)