THE NAKED & THE NUDE

Pete Najarian writes prose in the very particular American tradition that includes Thomas Wolfe, William Saroyan, and Jack Kerouac. The Naked and the Nude is, by my count, the seventh volume in his epic autobiographical narrative that works the territory between lyrical autobiography and the novel to tell his story and the story of his generation. Najarian’s subject—like Wolfe’s, Saroyan’s, Kerouac’s—is the male artist and the unsortable way in which a mix of sexual hunger and literary ambition, the hunger for a home and a belief in the transformative power of art, become both a wound and a way in the world.  In Najarian’s case this story has as its ground Armenia, the story of the early twentieth century genocide, an immigrant life in America, and a fierce current of damage and love that works its way through the generations. As for art—it also matters that Najarian is a remarkable painter which makes The Naked and the Nude as much a book about seeing and making as it is a book about sexuality. The intensely vivid paintings and drawings reproduced here are reason enough to have the book on your shelf. — Robert Hass