I’m thinking about Gordon Parks a lot lately because his birthday just passed at the end of November. He would have been 98. Another reason he’s been on my mind, I just recently spent three nights in a row in bed with his novel “The Sun Stalker.”
“The Sun Stalker” is so good, the story held me in its grip both as a reader and a writer. The main character is JMW Turner, the British landscape painter (1775-1851) whose achievements in art have been compared to Shakespeare’s in the realm of literature. It is simply breathtaking to witness how he renders the glare of the sun over land and water, and captures atmosphere and light in his seascapes and in his historical and mythological subjects. Turner was also a prolific artist, producing more than 20,000 paintings and drawings in his 60-year career.
Gordon Parks, possibly the most famous of Life magazine photographers, once told me that Turner had been an important influence in his own work. Turner was also an inspiration to the Scottish poet, Harry Craig, who said he once saw a Parks photograph in an exhibition that immediately reminded him of Turner’s painting, A Storm at Sea.
Together, the photographer and the poet tried to interest Hollywood in a movie about Turner’s life and work. But they got nowhere. One producer even nixed the idea, mistaking Turner the painter, with Nat Turner, leader of a slave rebellion and subject of a novel by William Styron. Before his death, poet Craig made Gordon promise to keep pursuing their movie idea. Though the movie never materialized, the idea morphed into Gordon’s novel.
In his handling of “The Sun Stalker”, Gordon is a cinematic story teller. He sometimes cuts from one scene to another in the way a movie director might film them. And no wonder. Gordon Parks was a filmmaker in addition to his many other talents: poet, composer, musician, memoirist, documentary maker.
Gordon, a black American man, was born into a harsh life on the Kansas prairie just 12 years into the 20th century, and details of his life are well known. By contrast, details of Turner’s real life remain mostly a mystery beyond the fact that he was the son of a London wigmaker. Despite their differences, the two artists had in common their rich imaginations and their keen observations of the telling details.
That Gordon could so fully imagine the trials and triumphs of a painting prodigy, make believable the people, places and events he might have experienced, and transport the readers to that other time and place and hold them there reveals a fabulous story teller at work. It’s what I think we all hope for as writers and readers. I know I do. I’m so grateful to Gordon Parks for leaving the legacy of his inspiring words and pictures.
“The Sun Stalker” is so good, the story held me in its grip both as a reader and a writer. The main character is JMW Turner, the British landscape painter (1775-1851) whose achievements in art have been compared to Shakespeare’s in the realm of literature. It is simply breathtaking to witness how he renders the glare of the sun over land and water, and captures atmosphere and light in his seascapes and in his historical and mythological subjects. Turner was also a prolific artist, producing more than 20,000 paintings and drawings in his 60-year career.
Gordon Parks, possibly the most famous of Life magazine photographers, once told me that Turner had been an important influence in his own work. Turner was also an inspiration to the Scottish poet, Harry Craig, who said he once saw a Parks photograph in an exhibition that immediately reminded him of Turner’s painting, A Storm at Sea.
Together, the photographer and the poet tried to interest Hollywood in a movie about Turner’s life and work. But they got nowhere. One producer even nixed the idea, mistaking Turner the painter, with Nat Turner, leader of a slave rebellion and subject of a novel by William Styron. Before his death, poet Craig made Gordon promise to keep pursuing their movie idea. Though the movie never materialized, the idea morphed into Gordon’s novel.
In his handling of “The Sun Stalker”, Gordon is a cinematic story teller. He sometimes cuts from one scene to another in the way a movie director might film them. And no wonder. Gordon Parks was a filmmaker in addition to his many other talents: poet, composer, musician, memoirist, documentary maker.
Gordon, a black American man, was born into a harsh life on the Kansas prairie just 12 years into the 20th century, and details of his life are well known. By contrast, details of Turner’s real life remain mostly a mystery beyond the fact that he was the son of a London wigmaker. Despite their differences, the two artists had in common their rich imaginations and their keen observations of the telling details.
That Gordon could so fully imagine the trials and triumphs of a painting prodigy, make believable the people, places and events he might have experienced, and transport the readers to that other time and place and hold them there reveals a fabulous story teller at work. It’s what I think we all hope for as writers and readers. I know I do. I’m so grateful to Gordon Parks for leaving the legacy of his inspiring words and pictures.
