The Art of Youth
“The Art of Youth is a brilliant book about the power of youth to make great art, itself suffused with youthfulness, with wisdom and diligence and hope…Dazzling in detail and amazingly well-informed.”
Paul Theroux, New York Times bestselling author of The Lower River
The Art of Youth is a moving inquiry into the nature of artistic prodigies who did their major work at an early age. Renowned novelist Nicholas Delbanco gives us a triptych of indelible portraits: the American writer Stephen Crane (immortalized by The Red Badge of Courage), the British artist Dora Carrington (called “the most neglected serious painter of her time”), and the legendary composer George Gershwin (Rhapsody in Blue, Porgy and Bess).
All three lived colorful, productive lives before dying early, at an average age of thirty-five. In this learned and elegant book, Delbanco discovers what it is we mourn in artists who pass away so young, and muses on his own life—one marked by both early success and longevity.
Praise