Joseph's Easel, Don't Mess With Culture, the second novel in Larry Kaiser's Joseph Easel Series, is an artist's critical look at American culture, and a long, careful examination of what it means to be an "artist in full". The hero of the book, Javi Attila Gran-Cognac, lives and creates his paintings in an Indiana junkyard. He specializes in political paintings and has had enough national and world success to be the target of home town envy, media exploitation, political intimidation and assassination. The book is also an ...
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Joseph's Easel, Don't Mess With Culture, the second novel in Larry Kaiser's Joseph Easel Series, is an artist's critical look at American culture, and a long, careful examination of what it means to be an "artist in full". The hero of the book, Javi Attila Gran-Cognac, lives and creates his paintings in an Indiana junkyard. He specializes in political paintings and has had enough national and world success to be the target of home town envy, media exploitation, political intimidation and assassination. The book is also an examination of the merits and flaws of personal detachment, a condition of brightly honed emotional skill-sets which Gran-Cognac purports is necessary to and obligatory of the true artist, and without which, as is true of all scientists, the artist cannot treat his subject with an honest eye. But Javi Gran-Cognac's friends, his few friends, especially his beautiful landlord, Andra, the spitfire of a woman who owns the junkyard where he lives, constantly pressure him to get involved in local affairs. Ak-wy-yeth, Indiana is in need of rescue from the Clap Krugerrand cartel, and the challenge is apparently above the pay grade of citizens, law enforcement, prosecutors, Governors, Senators, Presidents, and armies. The artist's relationship with Andra's adopted eleven-year-old daughter, a brilliant, multi-ethnic and precocious child, an orphan aptly named Culture, becomes the leverage that might just bring Javi's explosive weapons down on the Kruegerrand cartel.
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