Shadows on a Wall: Juan O'Gorman and the Mural in Patzcuaro

This book's striking cover caught the eye of many a potential juror as I read it while spending a day waiting to be placed on a panel of prospective jurors. What's more striking than the cover, though, is the prose inside and the artful way in which Masters has created scenes with the same photographic skill that has made his memoir, Last Stands, an American classic. The book is aptly described as part history, part fiction, all essay and one can't help but wonder that if the father of the essay had written a novella, this is surely what it would havve looked like. Time and memory and the way in which memory allows us to travel in time (but always in an altered, often better, condition) are often the subject of Masters's work. Here, though, one sees the inner workings of his process as he forges a coherent narrative out of scant details and very few recollections. Reading this book is like watching an accomplished mathematician work out a solution to a famous unsolved problem. Except, the solutions here are presented as scenes of what might have happened. And like a mathematician, Masters has the same up-front honesty: he acknowledges where his answers might be lacking. He hastens to add, however, that the truth is rarely as interesting as fiction, as what we remember: "My old friend and mentor Wright Morris once told me," he writes, "pass any fact through the human mind and it immediately becomes fiction." Artists, affairs, robber barons and one giant attempt at a meaningful narrative produce a great read that never disappoints and often surprises.