Chapter One
Narrative Connections, the Heart of an Illustrator
We tell ourselves stories in order to live.
Joan Didion, The White Album
Norman Rockwell was not sadistic. He was, however, expert at
creating desire, both in his public and in his private life. His
family, who too often felt themselves to be "living out the cover of
a Saturday Evening Post," as his oldest son, Jarvis, once expressed
it, were routinely seduced by his invitations of intimacy, though
the artist established a subtle but impermeable distance when they
tried to respond. His real sensitivity was reserved for his art, his
empathy lavished on his easel, day after day, for over six decades.
As do many artists, he tended to exorcise his internal tensions in
his paintings, so that the energy that might have been expended on
the work of rearing three sons born within six years of each other
exploded into the narrative stories on his ...
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