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Table of Contents
THE
INVENTOR
W. E. Gutman
CCB Publishing
British Columbia, Canada
The Inventor
Copyright ©2012 by W. E. Gutman
ISBN-13 978-1-927360-89-7
First Edition
Library and Archives Canada Cataloguing in Publication
Gutman, W. E., 1937-
The inventor [electronic resource] / written by W. E. Gutman.
Includes bibliographical references.
ISBN 978-1-927360-89-7
Also available in print format.
I. Title.
PS3607.U86I59 2010 813'.6 C2010-900697-6
Additional cataloguing data available from Library and Archives Canada
Original art: The Ship of Fools, by Hieronymus Bosch, Musée du Louvre, Paris. Cover design by the author.
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise without the express written permission of the author.
References to real persons, alive or deceased, and allusions to verifiable historical incidents are meant to lend the narrative epic realism. All other characters and events are fictitious and any similarity to real persons, living or dead is purely coincidental. Inferences and speculations readers may draw from this work are entirely their own.
Publisher:
CCB Publishing
British Columbia, Canada
For the Widow’s Son, and in defense of Reason
Also by W. E. Gutman:
Journey To Xibalba –- THE SUBVERSION OF HUMAN RIGHTS IN CENTRAL AMERICA.
© 2000. Reporter’s Notebook (out of print).
NOCTURNES –- Tales From The Dreamtime.
© 2006. Fiction (ISBN 1-4259-5951-2)
ADRIFT –- Life In Transit.
© 2008 Autobiography (ISBN 13 978-0-9810246-9-1)
Flight From Ein Sof.
© 2009 Fiction (ISBN 13-978-1-926585-17-8)
A PALER SHADE OF RED –
The Roots of Dissent, Memoirs of a Radical
© 2012, Autobiography One Last DreamUn Dernier Rêve (French translation)© 2012, Screenplays
ONE NIGHT IN COPÁN
Chronicles of Madness Foretold
© 2012, Short Stories
Prologue
Michel Montvert loves books. He was six or seven when he first leafed through an art album he had casually pulled off a shelf at home. With the old Blaupunkt radio humming in the background, he sat crossed-legged on a fading Persian rug, the large tome stretching across his lap. He would forever be transformed by the experience.
“They were all there,” Montvert told me years later as we dined at Jo Goldenberg’s on Rue des Rosiers in Paris. “Titian. Botticelli. Michelangelo. Rembrandt. Van Eyck. Van Gogh. Corot. Gainsborough. Turner. Toulouse-Lautrec. Utrillo. Gauguin. Degas. Renoir. Monet. Cézanne. I couldn’t get enough. I was seduced by the interplay of light and color, awed by motion so deftly captured and frozen in space, inveigled by the lyricism and gauzy quality of impressionism, the precision of neo-Classicism, the refinement of the Venetian School, the probing intensity of portraiture.”
There was one artist he kept revisiting, and one painting in particular among several strange works by an old master whose name meant nothing to Montvert at the time. Nor did the mysterious and exotic title of a legendary masterwork he found himself staring at and dissecting inch by inch for hours on end.
“I was only a kid but I sensed that, unlike the other painters, this artist didn’t just replicate life. He imagined it,