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Still Life With Psychotic Squirrel
By C.B. Smith
Combining memoir with artistic and philosophical musings, C.B. Smith recounts and reclaims the pieces of a fractured life through a 19th-century Spanish still life.
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Description
Although at first glance this slim volume, Still Life With Psychotic Squirrel, appears to be a nothing read, it should be lingered over and reread to uncover the full depth of its nauseating beauty and certifiable insight. Combining memoir with artistic and philosophical musings, CB Smith begins by confessing his incomprehensible obsession with the 19th-century Spanish still life that serves as the title of this book. As he analyzes the items depicted in the painting, he skillfully introduces his thoughts on our intimate relationships to objects and subsequently explains how they are often tyrannically bound to the people, places, and twisted relationships of an individual lifetime. Further defined by imperfections attained from use, each object from a dilapidated Formica table to a chipped green and maroon carnival platter forms a springboard for reflection. Smith intersperses personal reminiscences of his terrifying childhood throughout, but he always returns to the subject of still-life painting and its silent eloquence. Smith's observations on balance, grief, beauty, space, love, and time are imparted with wisdom and poetic grace. This little book is a gem.
