Summary

Chapter 13 is a quick overview of Locke Setman’s progression as an artist and a description of his current state. By the time Setman was thirty, he had settled on painting as the truest expression of his spirit. Five years later he had already acquired a considerable reputation and had received several important awards. By this point, it was fashionable and expensive to own one of his paintings. By the age of forty, he was in the top tier of American artists and, we are told, was in danger of losing his soul.

No longer is Setman—called Set—able to paint what moves him, in the way that he is moved to paint it; increasingly, those who exhibit, praise, and purchase his work are determining what he paints and how he paints it, and this compromising of his own artistic vision represents a...