The Caricaturist

The uneven 11th entry in Lock’s American Novels series (after The Ice Harp) opens as the lucrative sugar trade draws the U.S. into Cuba’s battle for independence from Spain. It’s 1897 and aspiring artist Oliver Fischer, a student at the Philadelphia Academy of Fine Arts, attempts to create a photographic replica of Manet’s Le Déjeuner sur L’herbe, a scandalous depiction of nude women and clothed men sitting outdoors, for his final project. He stages the scene in what he thinks is a secluded rural location but one of his naked models, fleeing a wasp, interrupts a riverside baptism. Newspaper reports of the incident get Oliver expelled from the academy and disinherited by his banker father, and he winds his way into a caricaturist job at a newspaper just before America declares war on Spain. Oliver is then sent to Key West to illustrate the run-up to the invasion, where he has a brief encounter with reporter Stephen Crane. Lock successfully mimics Crane’s impressionistic style in his marvelous depictions of late 19th-century America, but Oliver’s aimlessness makes for a disjointed narrative. Lock has made better use of his strengths in previous installments. (July)