[Penguin Readers Level 4]Detective Somerset has only seven more days before he retires to a new, peaceful life on the countryside, but before he can leave he and his partner Mills have to find a murderer who is killing people in the most horrible ways.
As Bruno Munari wrote in 1961, “The biggest hindrance to understanding a work of art is wanting to understand.” And so he has written this diminutive book of theorems, this witty, sincere book of enlightening poems, for the struggling art viewer. To excerpt from individual poems written between 1945 and 1960: if leonardo's gioconda/had legs/she would leave art/and return to reality ... is the choice of subject important?/raphael's marriage of the virgin/art/john brown's marriage of the virgin/not art/art isn't the subject ... a hundred lovers can even understand realism/a million admirers/will reject concrete art/with all their might ... in italy art is supposed to be italian/in poland polish/in turkey turkish/and if a turk goes to paint in poland/what sort of art should he do?/and what if poland occupies turkey? ... ministers and dictators/noblemen/the bored rich/sportsmen/dissatisfied professionals/worldly galleries/obliging critics/welcoming newspapers/opening cocktails/lots of people/art no.
The world of Patricia Highsmith has always been filled with ordinary people, all of whom are capable of very ordinary crimes. This theme was present from the beginning, when her debut novel, Strangers on a Train, galvanized the reading public. Here we encounter Guy Haines and Charles Anthony Bruno, passengers on the same train. But while Guy is a successful architect in the midst of a divorce, Bruno turns out to be a sadistic psychopath who manipulates Guy into swapping murders with him. “Some people are better off dead,” Bruno remarks, “like your wife and my father, for instance.” As Bruno carries out his twisted plan, Guy is trapped in Highsmith’s perilous world, where, under the right circumstances, anybody is capable of murder.The inspiration for Alfred Hitchcock’s classic 1951 film, Strangers on a Train launched Highsmith on a prolific career of noir fiction, proving her a master at depicting the unsettling forces that tremble beneath the surface of everyday contemporary life.
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