Masters and Servants

“Michon demonstrates the independence of voice that marks a true writer. . . . His supple prose, dappled with chiaroscuro effects, is used in straight forward chronicles. But his writing can at any time lift or lower into semi-hallucinatory effects that recall Arthur Rimbaud’s assaults on conventional perception.”—Roger Shattuck, The New York Review of Books
-- Roger Shattuck * The New York Review of Books *

"From the silence of paintings Pierre Michon evokes marvels. A portrait becomes a person of such complex depth as to suggest the mentality of an era. A color becomes an idea. A painting becomes the painter, and words become painting. Most generally, in the flow of Michon's meditations and narratives, the visionary becomes actual, and the actual becomes visionary. These are critical moments to which such names as van Gogh or Goya are attached, names that suggest the poignancy and pathos of art amid the beauty and incoherence and destructive nightmare of life. Wyatt Mason’s translation is excellent in its energy and precision.”
—Leonard Michaels
-- Leonard Michaels
“An incredibly special literary work in that it truly does bring art to life.”—Three Percent * Three Percent *