Preparatory Notes for Future Masterpieces: A Novel

by Maceo Montoya

Selected as one of the San Francisco Chronicles' 15 best books of 2021From critically acclaimed author Maceo Montoya comes an inventive and adventurous satirical novel about a Mexican-American artist’s efforts to fulfill his to paint masterful works of art. His plans include a move to Paris to join the ranks of his artistic hero, Gustave Courbet—except it’s 1943, and he’s stuck in the backwoods of New Mexico. Penniless and prone to epileptic fits, even his mother thinks he’s crazy.Ernie Lobato has just inherited his deceased uncle’s manuscript and drawings. At the urging of his colleague, an activist and history buff (Lorraine Rios), Ernie sends the materials to a professor of Chicanx literature (Dr. Samuel Pizarro). Throughout the novel, Dr. Pizarro shares his insights and comments on the uncle’s legacy in a series of annotations to his text and illustrations.As Ernie’s uncle battles a world that is unkind to “starving artists,” he runs into other tormented twentieth-century artists, writers, and activists with ambitions to match his a young itinerant preacher (Reies López Tijerina); the “greatest insane artist” (Martín Ramirez); and Oscar Zeta Acosta who is hellbent on self-destruction. Will the fortuitous encounters with these prophetic figures result in his own genius being recognized? Or will hisuncompromising nature consign him to what he fears most?Told through a combination of words and images in the tradition of classic works such as Don Quixote and Alice in Wonderland, Preparatory Notes for Future Masterpieces features fifty-one vivid black-and-white pen drawings. This complex and engaging story also doubles as literary criticism, commenting on how outsiders’ stories fit into the larger context of the Chicanx literary canon. A unique and multilayered story that embraces both contradiction and possibility, it also sheds new light on the current state of Chicanx literature while, at the same time, contributing to it.Propulsive, humorous, and full of life, this candid novel will be loved not only by Beat fiction fans but by contemporary fiction lovers as well.

Genres: Fiction, Book Club

315 pages, Kindle Edition

Published April 27, 2021

Reviews

[Lark Benobi · Rating 5 out of 5]

I wish people didn't say "laugh out loud funny" when they don't mean it because I literally laughed out loud with disarming-to-my-family regularity as I read this unique, delightful, hilarious novel. Even though it's January 1 as I write this, I have a feeling like this is going to be one of my favorite reads of the year.

Why it makes me laugh: I'm completely disarmed and surprised at how the darned sentences end! What happens is so unexpected. As I read along I kept feeling continuous leaps of delight. The humor is rueful and sly, and also true in the way only humor can be. I'm overwhelmed by this novel's sense of play about serious things. It felt like a cross between Candide and The Life and Adventures of Joaquín Murieta: The Celebrated California Bandit by John Rollin Ridge--which you should also read, after you read Preparatory Notes for Future Masterpieces.

I loved everything about the novel and intend to buy the book and to recommend it to my library. My thanks to University of Nevada Press for allowing me an early look, and my sincere thanks to Maceo Montoya for writing this novel.

[John Dodd · Rating 5 out of 5]

"He killed himself because he loved you, because he believed in the world as you see it."

This is but one line of a novel that will change the way any creative looks at what they do, this is a story of wasted potential, of love and loss, of hope and sorrow, and throughout it all, the understanding that we have only the gifts that we have.

It is the story of an unnamed narrator who sought to be creative, who took what chances they could, and spent their life in quiet desperation, never knowing truly what they possessed till it was too late for them to enjoy it. There are notes written in the margins, much like JJ Abrams and Doug Dorst when they came up with S, and these sometimes put the truth, sometimes the lie to the story.

Throughout there are powerful words, that go beyond the telling of the story at hand and into a greater truth, that of creatives everywhere. I loved this, in ways I cannot easily articulate, the narrator is not a lovable character, they are not always honest, nor forthright, nor even good, but those around them give the perspective of what it is to be driven by demons you do not understand, to need to do something even as you don't understand how it is that you do it.

The Illustrations make perfect the story and make clear the scene even more than the writing that accompanies it, and while many think that adding pictures is only done when the prose cannot be relied on, in this book, not only are the illustrations useful for the story, they are necessary.

This story is not an easy read, and for many creatives, will be a harsh light upon which to look at life and how you live it, but it does not need preparatory notes to be a masterpiece.

I don't often hand out five stars, this is worth every one of them.

[Jonathan · Rating 4 out of 5]

There's a lot to like about this. There's a lot of good satire and the drawings contained within beautiful.

[M Concha · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is a book I found completely on a whim, but very quickly fell in love with. Incredibly funny, yet so very depressing at times. The protagonist/narrator is a scoundrel and a tool, yet also capable of empathy and deep friendships and relationships, if only in brief spurts. And the trip through Chicano history is really fascinating. A lot of the book is a bit like the protagonist, really. Perhaps snide, but deep down totally sincere—both in the reverence for the characters, especially the historical, yet also in the disappointment and sadness for their flaws, and the ultimately tragic endings they all face, historical and fictional.