The Caricaturist
The 11th stand-alone book of The American Novels series.
Shelf Unbound “Recommended Reading” selection
Foreword Reviews “Book of the Day” selection
Literary Hub “New Books” selection
ISBN: 9781954276277 | Ebook ISBN: 9781954276284 | Bellevue Literary Press | July 2, 2024
Oliver Fischer, a self-styled bohemian, boardwalk caricaturist, and student at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, enrages his banker father and earns the contempt of Philadelphia’s foremost realist painter Thomas Eakins when he attempts to stage Manet’s scandalous painting The Luncheon on the Grass. Soon after, he is ensnarled, along with Mark Twain and Andrew Carnegie, in a clash between the Anti-Imperialist League and their expansionist foes. Sent to Key West to sketch the 1898 American invasion of Cuba, in company with war correspondent Stephen Crane, he realizes––in the flash of a naval bombardment––that our lives are suspended by a thread between radiance and annihilation.
The Caricaturist, the penultimate, stand-alone book in The American Novels series, is a tragicomic portrait of America struggling to honor its most-cherished ideals at the dawn of the twentieth century.
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PRAISE FOR The Caricaturist and The American Novels series
“Norman Lock has created a memorable portrait gallery of American subjects, in a succession of audaciously imagined, wonderfully original, and beautifully written novels unlike anything in our literature.”
—Joyce Carol Oates
“Lock is not writing history, but his fiction acts as a sort of carapace around actual events and historical figures, showing how a Twain or Crane appear from the protagonist’s perspective. . . . Oliver Fisher does not become another Crane, but without Crane’s fortitude in covering wars and the urban down-and-out, Oliver could not embark on a quest that his unconventional father cannot fathom.”
—New York Sun
“Captivating and energetic. . . . The Caricaturist rollicks through a turbulent American epoch via an artist’s coming-of-age.”
—Foreword Reviews (starred review)
“A resonant story of art, rebellion, and politics.”
—Kirkus Reviews (starred review)
“A masterfully written book that brings light to America’s almost-forgotten first imperialist adventure.”
—Historical Novels Review
“Lock successfully mimics Crane’s impressionistic style in his marvelous depictions of late 19th-century America.”
—Publishers Weekly
“Lock expertly provides readers, in the end, with a peek into a lost time wherein, much like the present, America holds its breath.”
—PopMatters
“The Caricaturist is fully immersed in the war fury of the era, and does a fine job visualizing it.”
—On the Seawall
“Lock again demonstrates his uncanny ability to inhabit the voices of historical figures. . . . He is our most assured portraitist.”
—Booklist
“The Caricaturist, contrasting the larger-than-life figure of Stephen Crane with the more modest Oliver Fischer, is both comic and tragic, and Lock’s picture of Philadelphia in the late 1890s is vivid and enchanting, impressive in its detail. . . . A delightful picaresque novel.”
—North of Oxford
“Norman Lock has already presented us with an engaging series of stand-alone historical reveals unlike any other writer’s work that I’ve seen. . . . [He] has an amazing literary gift and I am so grateful he has chosen to share it with us through his writing!”
—Linda Bond, Auntie’s Bookstore (Spokane, WA)
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RELATED:
- BLP Conversations: Norman Lock & Constantin Severin
- Norman Lock on Literature, History, and his American Novels Cycle: A Series Published by Bellevue Literary Press
- An Interview with Meg Nolan of Foreword Reviews.
- An Excerpt of The Caricaturist in Shelf Unbound.
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Photo: Charles Giraudet
NORMAN LOCK has written novels, short fiction, and poetry as well as stage plays, dramas for German radio, a film for The American Film Institute, and scenarios for video-art installations. His plays have been produced in the U.S., Germany, at the Edinburgh Theatre Festival, and in Turkey. His work has been translated into Dutch, German, Spanish, Turkish, Polish, Greek, and Japanese.
He received the Aga Kahn Prize, given by The Paris Review, the Literary Fiction Prize, given by The Dactyl Foundation of the Arts & Humanities, fellowships from the New Jersey Council on the Arts, the Pennsylvania Council on the Arts, and from the National Endowment for the Arts.
Lock can be contacted by email at normanglock [at] gmail [dot] com.