A wealthy media mogul with too much money and little time left to live hatches an unusual scheme: to bring true creativity back in all art forms, writing, music, etc. Under the aegis of New renaissance, the company posits that a group of young creative geniuses can be isolated during their formative years and carefully educated in the arts, at the same time undergoing systematic deprivation of the happiness most people enjoy, resulting in a surplus of angst-generated creativity such as the world has never seen.
Enter six-year old Vincent, one of 457 children chosen for the New Renaissance Academy. Each child is assigned a handler, a reverse "guardian angel"; Vincent's handler is Harlan Eiffler, a 28-year old cynic whose job is to thwart every opportunity for happiness and direct Vincent's creative flow. Vincent dances to the music of his puppeteer, churning out plays, screenplays, musical arrangements and novels, all well-received by the public. New Renaissance is making a fortune. Vincent's work is brilliant, even though his personal life is in a shambles, eventually reaching critical mass.
But humanity is what it is and this is essentially an experiment fraught with pitfalls and doomed to fail. One day Vincent and Harlan find themselves staring across an abyss, face to face with revelations that change their relationship forever, bitter truths colliding after years of subterfuge and dishonesty. Paradise Lost.
Torture the Artist is a difficult novel to describe. The closest I can come is a combination of incendiary superhero comics with subtle shades of pornography, along with the naiveté of childhood, the images as bold as the strokes of the cartoon artist's pen. Goebel attacks his theme with fervor and enthusiasm, daring the reader to ignore his radical ideas. Stuck in a jaded and sophisticated world, this young author strikes a blow for his own voice, load and clear, a cross between Boogie Nights, Animal House and Quentin Tarantino's limbic brain. Luan Gaines/2004.