Madrid. Unfinished. Man dying.
A great painter lies on his deathbed, synapses firing, writhing and reveling in pleasure and pain as a lifetime of chaotic and grotesque sense memories wash over and envelop him.
In this bold and brilliant short work of experimental fiction by the author of
Grief Is the Thing with Feathers
and
Lanny,
Max Porter inhabits Francis Bacon in his final moments, translating into seven extraordinary written pictures the explosive final workings of the artist's mind. Writing
as
painting rather than
about
painting, Porter lets the images he conjures speak for themselves as they take their revenge on the subject who wielded them in life.
The result is more than a biography:
The Death of Francis Bacon
is a physical, emotional, historical, sexual, and political bombardment—the measure of a man creative and compromised, erotic and masochistic, inexplicable and inspired.