More Pricks Than Kicks
More Pricks Than Kicks is made up of ten short stories that present the life of the same character, from his student days to his sudden death. Belacqua Shuah, a lazy anti-hero and an womanizer, is a reader of Dante, and it is in the Divine Comedy that the origin of his name is found: his namesake is an indolent craftsman who gives up seeking salvation. The publisher Biblioteca Azul has a tradition of commissioning artwork on their Samuel Becket’s book covers. I decided, together with the publisher, to invite visual artist Guilherme Ginane to create the image for More Pricks Than Kicks. Ginane’s heavy and doughy brush strokes paints figurative works that border on abstraction. It may symbolizes this atmosphere of disenchantment with hints of sarcasm that we find in the book. The character who defines himself as a boomerang and who is never stopped in the same place or doing something concrete, is represented there in the artist’s landscape.
Biblioteca Azul, 2022
co-authorship: Guilherme Ginane (commissioned artistist)
14 × 21 cm
