The Blue Period

by Luke Jerod Kummer

  My picture of the Exposition Universelle was rendered primarily from Paris 1900: The Great World’s Fair by Richard D. Mandell.

  During the course of my writing, I also stumbled upon a copy of Edith Kunz’s enjoyable Fatale: How French Women Do It and benefited from her insights.

  To get a sense of the situations that the characters who are portrayed in this book may have encountered, I read Wendy Chapkis’s Live Sex Acts: Women Performing Erotic Labor. The backstory I fashioned for the character of Odette was influenced by the semi-anonymous women Chapkis interviewed and profiled.

  The chapter that deals with bullfighting draws (somewhat tongue in cheek) from Ernest Hemingway’s Death in the Afternoon and Adrian Shubert’s Death and Money in the Afternoon: A History of the Spanish Bullfight.

  As I mentioned in the dedication at the beginning of this book, I feel an abiding affinity for Lydia Csató Gasman’s exhaustive and moving analysis of Picasso’s oeuvre, written texts, and life story. I want to credit her with anything in The Blue Period relating to cosmology or sex or good and evil or creation and destruction or the necessity of art for the endurance of humanity and the universe in spite of the powerful forces of decay constantly eating at us all—in other words, basically everything.

  The account of Carles’s death is shaded by translations of Josep Pla’s Vida de Manolo, which is based on interviews with the sculptor Manuel Martínez Hugué.

  I also drew on Dr. Louis Jullien’s book Libertinism and Marriage, which is reflected in the dialogue.

  My depiction of the character based on Ambroise Vollard and the galleries on Rue Laffitte were colored by his memoirs, Recollections of a Picture Dealer.

  Moishe Black and Maria Green’s translations of Max Jacob’s works, as well as their study of the French writer, were most informative.

  The included recipe for fudge is a variation, of course, of the one recounted in The Alice B. Toklas Cook Book, by Alice B. Toklas.

  I learned a great deal about the craft of painting and the people dedicated to it from James Elkins’s What Painting Is, and the idea that a young artist might initially fret that the colors get in the way of the lines I owe to a passage in this enlightening book.

  Likewise, I am indebted to Victoria Finlay’s Color for much of the material about pigments in my novel. The encounters that Pablo has with ochre were inspired by Finlay’s own search for this mysterious substance. Her relating a superstition surrounding the color blue in Spain was invaluable.

  In a similar vein, I paid many visits to the Brooklyn Museum’s exhibit “Infinite Blue,” to meditate on that which has transfixed people throughout the ages.

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  I would not have written this book without David Blum. I thank him dearly.

  I am also deeply grateful to Carmen Johnson, who inherited an unruly creature when she became Little A’s editor. You were patient and thoughtful and gave me the space and support to tame this animal.

  Simone Gorrindo edited this novel with such diligence and concentration that chatting with her was like conversing with a different part of myself. She helped me find ways to accomplish what I needed to do. Every writer should be so lucky.

  Production editor Emma Reh’s steering was nimble and steadfast. I was delighted to have her at the wheel.

  Michelle Horn’s talented copyediting and Michael Schuler’s and Erika Avedikian’s sharp-eyed proofreading were outstanding. They indulged my quirks, saved me from an inexplicable collective pronoun, and always put readers first.

  I can imagine no more tangled of an assignment than to be charged with fact-checking a work of fiction. Karla Anderson took on this ironic task with precision and care.

  Isaac Tobin, who designed the book cover, I’m bewildered and stirred by the image you conjured.

  Thank you, also, Merideth Mulroney for the art direction and appealing presentation overall.

  Kristin Lunghamer and Katie Kurtzman, I am humbled that you saw in these pages something worth sharing with more of the world. I am grateful for your labors.

  To Katharine Spence, thank you for your soulful translation of Carles Casagemas’s poem “Amor Gris” and for helping me render Catalan phrases into English.

  I much appreciate the generous review of the book’s foreign-language text elsewhere that was conducted by Aurélie, S. C., and G. M.

  Juan Carlos Villars and Wesley Harris, gracias and merci, also.

  Shanoor Seervai, who was kind enough to read an early version and be insightful in her critique, and Sophie Joslin-Roher, who was thorough and incisive about parsing a later one, you have my lasting appreciation.

  Thank you, Mara Altman, for lending an ear when I needed someone to talk to, granting wisdom, and being my friend.

  Jordan Michael-Smith, I am obliged to you for advice on several occasions.

  Keach Hagey Harris, who sat in a diner and heard the entirety of this novel over a very long breakfast and then concisely summed up what was boring and what was interesting, this book became more interesting because of you.

  To Scott Adkins and the Brooklyn Writers Space, thank you for providing me with a quiet place and abundant coffee.

  Lastly, and most importantly, to my family—who made countless sacrifices for this to be possible—know that you mean the world to me.

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  Photo © 2017 Kristy May Photography

  Luke Jerod Kummer has worked as a reporter, an editor, and a travel writer. His nonfiction pieces have appeared in the New York Times, the Washington Post, New York magazine, New Republic, the Washingtonian, and the Village Voice. This is his first novel.