Brett Bale is living well for a Richmond artist. A big Scott’s Addition warehouse studio, an agent pushing his work, and his paintings are fetching good prices, attracting critical examination and entering museum collections. But he hovers on the verge of eviction from his studio as property values rise, and his agent's occasional strange ideas about where his work should be displayed affect his income. His friend Paco needs startup money for a Brazilian kebob food cart.
And then there’s Olivia Martin, who as a young woman harbored artistic predilections that were quashed by her mother — a woman who, when Olivia makes a fuss about having to leave an art museum, says in stern terms how an artist's path "is one step removed from a bum, not some fairy tale life like it's told in that marble art palace." Olivia possesses a knack for numbers, and pursues that course until she makes a hasty exit from the brutal financial canyons of New York to her Richmond home, at loose ends between jobs and confronting some serious family issues. Olivia gets shoved into Brett's easygoing life first as a student and a possible assistant-in-training. Then things get complicated.
Such are the intertwined fates and fortunes of the characters in “The Medium of Desire,” the new novel from Alex McGlothlin, who will sign books at an event Friday, Aug. 3, at 8 p.m. at Quirk Hotel. His effort is set amid the galleries and alleys of Richmond. Accustomed as we are to our assortment of exhibition spaces and street art festivals, which distinguish us, using these materials for a fictional interpretation may prove a challenge.
It is, then, through the eyes of McGlothlin, something of a newcomer to Richmond from the southwestern Virginia town of Grundy — the hometown of renowned author Lee Smith — that the story is told. McGlothlin moved here in early 2014 after meeting his Richmonder wife, Sara Seward McGlothlin, and chose to make the city, and its culture, the featured player in his first "real" novel.
McGlothlin explains, “There’s also a comparison/contrast between the arts and the pressures and demands of that marketplace and the financial world, and how those two clash and coexist.”
The center of the story is the love triangle of art, commerce and materialism. What causes an artist to commit to a piece — or give up and walk away — is as much about painting as it is about any creative discipline or entrepreneurial endeavor.
McGlothlin is an inveterate keeper of journals who wrote through a number of apprentice novels that were, he felt, far too personal. Others were high-concept and literary. He ultimately didn’t want to put out work that few readers would find accessible.
While he was getting the necessary self-exploration out of the way, he earned degrees in law and business from the University of Virginia, West Virginia University and Georgetown University. He also hit the books about about the art and craft of writing.
He's a natural storyteller — it comes with the territory, being from Grundy. Capturing that flair and feel in writing is the intimidating aspect of the process.
“You can go back and make sentences more powerful, but if you don’t have a story with enough conflict to interest the reader, you’re stuck with rewriting or scrapping the whole thing,” McGlothlin says.
He found friends among artists, and he admired our city’s painting-tattooed walls. He wrote a draft in three months, revised it about five times, then submitted the manuscript to Richmond editor Joni Albrecht. She, in the meantime, founded her own publishing company, Little Star, and is representing McGlothlin’s novel.
Now comes the part of getting the book into stores and the hands of potential readers.
“When you want to move from writing as a hobby, you have to open yourself up to objective criticism,” McGlothlin says. “You want to take a good product to the market.”
His hope is that, besides readers feeling compelled to follow the story, that “The Medium of Desire” fosters greater appreciation of how the arts in Richmond help make the city a character to fall in love with.