Miss Edith is known in certain circles for not giving a holy fuck about art or museums in general; that is to say, she thinks they’re all well and good, and noble, etc. etc.; just don’t take her to one unless you don’t mind her spending all her time in the gift shop.
So Edie isn’t real likely to actually give a hoot about whether a painting is a Caravaggio or not.
However, she notices a certain fortuitous timing for young art theft expert Noah Charney, who’s been profiled in the New York Times Magazine and who Edith actually had the pleasure of hearing speak a couple of years ago. Mr. Charney is particularly knowledgeable about Caravaggio, it seems, and is happy to stand around being handsome and charming while telling you a million things you never really cared to know about the dead painter. Mr. Charney is a guy who will doubtless go far. He’s got everything going for him. If Miss Edith was willing to sit and listen to him talk about art, then all things are possible.
One of the many things he’s got going for him is that he’s got a novel coming out this fall, The Art Thief, from Simon and Schuster. But books like this can have all the publicity in the world and fail. (Witness: The Interpretation of Murder.)
What Mr. Charney’s got, too, is the recent headline announcing that an art restorer claims to’ve stumbled on an unfinished Caravaggio painting.
If this story can be kept alive for just a few weeks, a few precious weeks, to meet the release date of Mr. Charney’s novel… Does anyone wonder if perhaps this merging of news stories is merely a coincidence? Or is Miss Edith being overly cynical?
I wouldn’t say that the possibilities are endless. And I haven’t looked into this, but I will assume that a film deal is in the works…
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I post this as a sort of postscript; it occurred to me to wonder if anyone had read an ARC of Noah Charney's book. I came across one commentary on it which struck me as... well, the kind of thing I used to feel a lot back when I had to read ARC's a lot (the following is from http://so-many-books.livejournal.com/13028.html:
"...I decided to go for a bit of a palate cleanser so I picked up my ARC of The Art Thief by Noah Charney. This is a galley that was hyped in Publisher's Weekly, and I was excited to grab a copy at BEA. It's about Europe, art, and thievery, so I figured it would be thrilling. It is not. (Disclaimer: I've only read 20 pages, and I will read 30 more for the sake of the 50 page rule. The copy I have is not the final copy. Although I doubt it's going to magically improve by publication.) It is crap. It's pretentious (the author bio alone screams "I'm a tool! Look at me! Are you looking?!") yet poorly written. The descriptions are highly overwrought, and it's offensive not only to those who may not like modern art, but also to women. ("It's not my time of the month!") The characters are all cliches...the whole book is a cliche, as if it's trying to ride the coattails of The DaVinci Code, which, sadly, is why I can see this being popular. I want to send the author a copy of The Book Thief with a note saying, "THIS is how it's done." It comes out in September. My verdict: don't bother."
Thank you.
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