Vermeer in Bosnia

There are writers who specialize in the strange and others whose genius is to find the strangeness in the familiar, the unexpected meanings in stories we thought we knew. Of that second category, Lawrence Weschler is the master. Witness the pieces in this splendidly disorienting collection, spanning twenty years of his career and the full range of his concerns-which is to say, practically everything.

Only Lawrence Weschler could reveal the connections between the twentieth century's Yugoslav wars and the equally violent Holland in which Vermeer created his luminously serene paintings. In his profile of Roman Polanski, Weschler traces the filmmaker's symbolic negotiations with his nightmarish childhood during the Holocaust. Here, too, are meditations on artists Ed Kienholz and David Hockney, on the author's grandfather and daughter, and on the light and earthquakes of his native Los Angeles. Haunting, elegant, and intoxicating, Vermeer in Bosnia awakens awe and wonder at the world around us.

In Lieu of a Preface: Why I Can't Write Fiction

A Balkan Triptych

Prelude: The Dikes of Holland
Vermeer in Bosnia
Henry V at Srebrenica
Aristotle in Belgrade
Coda: The Market on the Tuzla/Brcko Road

Three Polish Survivor Stories

The Brat's Tale: Roman Polanski
The Troll's Tale: Jerzy Urban
The Son's Tale: Art Spiegelman

Grandfathers and Daughters

My Grandfather's Last Tale
Sara's Eyes
A Season with the Borrowers
Why Is the Human on Earth?
A Fathers and Daughters Convergence: Occasioned by Some
Portraits by Tina Barney
My Grandfather's Passover Cantata


Three L.A. Pieces

An L.A.High School Youth: Robert Irwin
The L.A. Quake
The Light of L.A.

Three Portraits of Artists

True to Life: David Hockney's Photocollages
The Past Affixed Also: The Kienholz Spokane Series
A Parkinsonian Passion: Ed Weinberger

A Final Vermeer Convergence

A Girl Intent:Wislawa Szymborska and the Lacemaker

Acknowledgments