WITH A GEMLIKE FLAME - [Signed] A NOVEL OF VENICE AND A LOST MASTERPIECE

by David Adams Cleveland

Hardcover

Published January 1, 2001

About the author

Writing to me is more than just telling great stories, it is a way of probing for the things that really matter to us as human beings. My characters, like all of us, are struggling to discover some kind of truth, to answer a fundamental question about themselves as they confront life’s dilemmas. Having been involved in the art world most of my life as an historian, connoisseur, and collector, I find that the visual arts inform my writing, both in terms of description, the physical setting(always a character in its own right), and the struggle artists endure to explore the world from every angle. Great art, like great literature, must never give up all its secrets: there must always be enough mystery and ambiguity to keep the thing fresh and alive. Whistler and Joseph Conrad understood this well, as do such modern greats as Richard Ford, Alice Munro, John Updike, and James Salter: the most profound art is all about conveying feeling and the sense of spiritual quest—the fluttering glimpse of the unseen at life’s ecstatic heart. As Proust knew: we exist in thrall to the spell of memory infused with the metamorphic glories of the visual world.