{"product_id":"stalking-shakespeare-a-memoir-of-madness-murder-and-my-search-for-the-poet-beneath-the-paint-9781982127145","title":"Stalking Shakespeare: A Memoir of Madness, Murder, and My Search for the Poet Beneath the Paint","description":"\u003cb\u003eA darkly humorous and spellbinding detective story that chronicles one Mississippi man's relentless search for an authentic portrait of William Shakespeare.\u003c\/b\u003e \u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003eFollowing his divorce, down-and-out writer and Mississippi exile Lee Durkee holed himself up in a Vermont fishing shack and fell prey to a decades-long obsession with Shakespearian portraiture. It began with a simple premise: despite the prevalence of popular portraits, no one really knows what Shakespeare looked like. That the Bard of Avon has gotten progressively handsomer in modern depictions seems only to reinforce this point. \u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003ci\u003eStalking Shakespeare\u003c\/i\u003e is Durkee's fascinating memoir about a hobby gone awry, the 400-year-old myriad portraits attached to the famous playwright, and Durkee's own unrelenting search for a lost picture of the Bard painted from real life. As Durkee becomes better at beguiling curators into testing their paintings with X-ray and infrared technologies, we get a front-row seat to the captivating mysteries--and unsolved murders--surrounding the various portraits rumored to depict Shakespeare. \u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003eWhisking us backward in time through layers of paint and into the pages of obscure books on the Elizabethans, Durkee travels from Vermont to Tokyo to Mississippi to DC and ultimately to London to confront the stuffy curators forever protecting the Bard's image. For his part, Durkee is the adversary they didn't know they had--a self-described dilettante with nothing to lose, the \"Dan Brown of English portraiture.\" \u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003eA lively, bizarre, and surprisingly moving blend of biography, art history, and madness, \u003ci\u003eStalking Shakespeare\u003c\/i\u003e is as entertaining as it is rigorous and will forever change the way you look at one of history's greatest cultural and literary icons.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eBinding Type:\u003c\/b\u003e Hardcover\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003ePublisher:\u003c\/b\u003e Scribner Book Company\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003ePublished:\u003c\/b\u003e 04\/18\/2023\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eISBN:\u003c\/b\u003e 9781982127145\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003ePages:\u003c\/b\u003e 272\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eSize:\u003c\/b\u003e 9.00h x 6.00w x 0.83d\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eReview Citations: \u003c\/strong\u003e\u003ci\u003eLibrary Journal Prepub Alert\u003c\/i\u003e 11\/01\/2022 pg. 19\u003cbr\u003e","brand":"Lee Durkee","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":42746003259573,"sku":"9781982127145","price":23.8,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0473\/0804\/6492\/products\/img_9b85b50c-bfa1-426b-bd93-c62c90cb8216.jpg?v=1676995607","url":"https:\/\/pastforward.org\/products\/stalking-shakespeare-a-memoir-of-madness-murder-and-my-search-for-the-poet-beneath-the-paint-9781982127145","provider":"Past Forward","version":"1.0","type":"link"}