Chapters 1-5 Summary

The fictional Abstract Expressionist artist Rabo Karabekian kicks off his memoirs saying the document is both his life autobiography and current diary.

At the outset, Karabekian relates the very basics of his life. Both of his parents had come to America to escape a massacre of one million Turkish Armenians. His father had hidden in the trench of a latrine to sidestep death, while his mother had been in a group shooting and endured being at the bottom of a pile of corpses for a day and managed to escape with some jewels. The couple was conned into buying a non-existent house in San Ignacio, California, and they made the journey overseas before discovering they were duped. This is how Rabo Karabekian came to be born in 1916 in San Ignacio.

Before World War II, Karabekian honed his skills as an artist...