Art by Don Troiani

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Friday night, I came across this painting that was briefly shown in a YouTube history video I was watching. I really, really liked this painting. It is the first picture above, with the Union soldiers in blue, prominently charging from the right to the left.

So, I took some serious time to try to find out who painted this thing, and it took a while but I eventually found out that the artist, Don Troiani, is still around and still painting.

I located all of the books of his work on Amazon, added them to my Wish List, and prepared to maybe buy some in the future, someday. When I have a job. But for now, no. It is at $91 on Amazon right now.

I have been book shopping every week for many years, and if I’d seen a book of his work, I would have absolutely purchased it by now. But I’ve never seen one.

SO. Today, the very next day, Dad and I stop at an estate sale, that I’d thought was a garage sale. A lame garage sale. I sat in my car for ten or fifteen minutes while I waited for Dad, who was probably chatting up some people, and when I finally went to collect him, he promptly told me that there were history books inside. And, among those history books, of all things, was “American Battles: The Art of the Nation at War, 1754-1865, by Don Troiani.

$3.

Less than the shipping for the $91 they want for it on Amazon.

What are the odds? The only thing like this that I’ve experienced before is when I saw a great hockey jersey at a garage sale, and it was $15, and all I had in my wallet was exactly… $15. I had never before seen, and haven’t since, a hockey jersey, much less one I wanted, at a garage sale.

Anyway. I’m very happy about this. It also rivals that DVD set of “Nowhere Man” that is very expensive online at $89, out of print and forgotten, that I picked up for $6 at a thrift. I never thought I’d get to watch that show again, or ever find the DVD at a thrift. You never know.

The down side to all of this are the fruitless garage sales and thrift store journeys it takes to run across things like this. But at least they happen sometimes.

And also, the talent and work put into art like this only furthers my distaste (to put it mildly) of modern art, which always lacks skill, talent, and beauty. You don’t have to like the subject matter of Don Troiani’s work, but it is an objective truth that it has very high artistic value to it. Unlike the thirty seconds of splashed paint on a canvas which represents so much of “Modern Art.”

Don Troiani Historical Artist

The Mutiny of the Elsinore

I finished Mutiny of the Elsinore by Jack London, my first Jack London book. It is the oldest book I’ve read, published in 1914, the first year of the Great War (World War I).

This was a good read, and a slow burn as the actual mutiny doesn’t happen until the last fifth, or sixth of the book. But that was a good thing.

I always automatically assume that my favorite authors have the same general view on things that I do, but that isn’t so. H.G. Wells, George Orwell, Jack London, and especially most science fiction writers, but that doesn’t constrict them from telling really good stories.

This book required some of my special book glue for the cover, which was starting to come off. I have this copy on my list of books to possibly taking-apart-and-put-it-back-together, since the binding was, although still together, feels like it is about to fall apart. It is more than a hundred years old, after all. I still need some particular materials in order to attempt this.

One of the two errors I found!
Error number two!

Reading this felt a little like all of those original Hardy Boys books I read back in the day. Those were published in 1927, and the first one I read, which was when I was in the second grade, this copy is in bad shape and really needs work.

In any case, I started The Bounty Trilogy and it is very good at only thirty pages in. Three books in one volume, have to like that! This copy is from 1943, although they were originally published in the thirties. An interesting similarity aside from the mutiny aspect, is that both books have their ships make the journey in the difficult direction through the Drake Passage / Cape Horn, just under South America. In The Mutiny of the Elsinore, they were in a four-masted ship, but it was made of steel, and the book goes into how much more difficult it was for wood ships to make that incredibly dangerous journey. It is no picnic with modern ships today, much less what Drake and Magellan had, and going west was more difficult than going east because of how the winds flows and things like that.

I also picked up, by coincidence, a Jack London collection in my favorite format, leather-bound gilded pages, deluxe. It was only five bucks and has a lot of his works in it. Unlike these older books, the text is very small and covers more of the pages, I could be reading this book all year once I get to it. I talked to someone this weekend about Jack London and was told that he’s a very good writer, so we’ll see how far this goes. It does have the White Fang and Sea Wolf novels in it, which is great. For now, I’m just trying to get through all of the nautical books I have.