Book Description

Aleixo de Queiroz Ribeiro, a Portuguese sculptor whose remarkable personal and professional trajectories took him to places as diverse as Paris, Lisbon, Sofia, Addis Ababa, Chicago, Philadelphia, and New York at the end of the 19th century and beginning of the 20th, is My Art and My Stetson's main character. Based on real people and events, the novel is primarily a work of fiction structured between two alternating narratives: the first, based on the final years of the protagonist's life in the United States and the North of Portugal, constructed according to the different, and at times contradictory, viewpoints that swirl around this contentious and paradoxical figure; the second, centered on his formative years in Paris and Lisbon, according to Aleixo's own perceptions. Intrinsic to the narrative itself, the history of the era simultaneously emerges, not as mere background scenery, but rather as it is witnessed and experienced by the actual individuals who lived it: the fall of the Portuguese monarchy and the turbulent early years of the Republic, the Spanish-American War, the Paris Universal Exposition of 1900, the First World War, etc. From the end of the century Parisian effervescence to his interaction with the high society of Philadelphia and New York, from early artistic devotion and persistence to a certain mature dandyism in the later years, from public recognition to critical derision, from sensibility to pragmatism, and from ambition to disappointment, My Art and My Stetson dramatically conveys the conflicts and yearnings of a charismatic, controversial and misunderstood man, as well as the numerous contradictions inherent to the epoch during which the narrative takes place.