I can't imagine why I requested this but I didn't like it at all and that's saying a lot. I can usually find something to like but not this time.

What is art? Alexander Maksik's new novel "The Long Corner" repeatedly asks this age-old question. The answer is usually short: sometimes it sounds like a slogan, sometimes like a statement of fact, sometimes like a provocative association with an inscription on the gate to Auschwitz.
A young zealous Jewish journalist, Solomon Fields, moves from Los Angeles to New York to fulfill his dreams of art. Following in the footsteps of the legendary Joseph Mitchell, he wants to write profiles. He accidentally manages to win the sympathies of the famous sculptor, and soon the first insightful profile is published to critical acclaim. But no more great profiles follow the first one. Perhaps, Sol wonders, "I was one of those people brave only in youth." Gradually, he changes his lifestyle - a new job at an advertising agency where the goal is to produce neat slogans. His new girlfriend encourages him to read men's magazines, take care of style and appearance, attend to the right vernissages, and maintain his body fat ratio. He should be happy, but he isn't.
Unexpectedly, Sol receives an intriguing invitation to visit an artist colony to observe and write an article about this strange place. And at this point, the novel takes on an eerie and claustrophobic mood. The founder and guru of the colony is a charismatic person, sometimes praising his disciples, sometimes harshly criticizing them, performing spectacular exits and entrances, and always full of slogans. Sol spends his first days in this beautiful, tropical oasis in isolation, sleeping, and eating, mainly mourning his grandmother. She was the most important person in his life, an extravagant, free-spirited woman who infected him with a love for art. Lina Klein emphasized that her grandson should spend his whole life among artists, even if it turned out that he was not an outstanding artist.
Gradually, Sol is drawn into an environment where theoretically, art is to be created, but in practice, it is the only art that satisfies the guru, Sebastian Light. It is fascinating to see how the different inhabitants of the colony react to this challenge, how, encouraged to abandon their names, they try to keep their artistic visions but at the same time are stressed by the expectations of the upcoming biennial. A bizarre cleansing ritual, rejection of conventions, the beautiful Hindu Siddhartha, the provocative and brave painter Cristalline - this all draws a reader deeply into a novel.
For me, this book is primarily a spell-bounding mood. The author leaves it for us to find our answer to what art is, just like Siddhartha leaves interpretations of his painting to the viewer. According to Sol's Baba, his grandmother: "Find a beautiful ship, bind yourself to it, sail and sail and sail and when the time comes, Solomon, bail water until you drown."