Jim'll Paint It - a word of explanation
So, as you may or may not know, the great Jim’ll Paint It offered to paint me one of his amazing pictures to mark the publication of THE YEAR OF READING DANGEROUSLY. I thought about it for a bit and, partly as a nod to my first book TILTING AT WINDMILLS, came up with the following:
Dear Jim,
Please could you paint Dan Brown sinking to his knees in despair after being humiliated in a game of crazy golf by Herman Melville, author of ‘Moby-Dick’, much to the appreciation of a crowd of spectators including Jane Austen, T.S. Eliot, William Shakespeare and Michel Houellebecq.
Thank you,
Andy Miller
Several weeks later, Jim responded with this:
As you can see, the painting is very obviously extraordinary and I am incredibly lucky that Jim agreed to paint it for me, especially as he receives hundreds of requests every week for pictures. N.B. Putting Kurt Vonnegut in the back row was Jim’s idea and probably makes the painting, which is why Jim is an artist and I’m not. I know he laboured long and hard to get Houellebecq’s trademark parka just right.
In fact, the picture would more accurately represent what’s in the book if I had asked Jim to paint Herman Melville and Dan Brown shaking hands after a closely-contested and entirely respectful game of crazy golf which has ended in a draw. But where’s the fun in that? As it stands, thousands of people all over the world have already seen this image, which has acted as a sort of visual blurb/virtual ambassador for the book in the run up to publication, and I have something remarkable and hilarious to remember this week by.
Thanks Jim. If I ever write another book, it’ll only be so I can get you to paint it.
