The Aim of Art

How does a straight soldier come home from a tour of duty in Iceland with The Works of Oscar Wilde as his cherished souvenir? The answer is the story of Michael Lenihan, an orphan with an eighth-grade education who spent the Great Depression on the bum, and Jay Gold, an art student from Chicago who takes a special interest in Michael and introduces him to the world of art and literature before going off to England and Normandy. Their friendship illustrates the Wildean aphorism from The Picture of Dorian Gray, "To reveal art and conceal the artist is art's aim."