Writer Rick Gekoski.
(Profile Books $36.99)
The universal appeal of the "What If" speculation underpins this fascinating collection of artistic losses ranging from historic thefts to works that never actually realised. What if Max Brod had obeyed Kafka's wishes and destroyed his manuscripts? What have we lost by the burning of Byron's memoirs? What treasures of literature went up in smoke in the destruction of the library at Alexandria?
Not one of the 15 chapters, many of them extensions of Gekoski's popular broadcast series on BBC4, lacks drama. The fate of the jewelled edition of the Rubaiyat Of Omar Khayyam outstrips fiction, with the first example going down with the Titanic and the next melting in its strongbox in the heat of a World War II bombing raid on London. The theft of the Mona Lisa from the Louvre in 1911 has strong echoes of Inspector Clouseau in its bumbling incompetence.
Merely recounting the facts of the cases would make good reading but Gekoski does more than tell the tales.
The issues he raises about the nature of artistic ownership pose complex problems and he has little patience with the idea that there are simple solutions.
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