Preparatory Notes for Future Masterpieces (University of Nevada Press, April 2021) by Maceo Montoya is a satirical novel about a Mexican American artist's struggle to create great works. His plans include a move to Paris to join the ranks of his artistic hero, Gustave Courbet — except it’s 1943 and he’s stuck in the backwoods of New Mexico. Penniless and prone to epileptic fits, even his mother thinks he’s crazy.

Told through a combination of words and images in the tradition of classic works such as Don Quixote and Alice in Wonderland, Preparatory Notes for Future Masterpieces features 51 vivid black-and-white pen drawings. This complex and engaging story also doubles as literary criticism, commenting on how outsiders’ stories fit into the larger context of the Chicanx literary canon. A unique and multilayered story that embraces both contradiction and possibility, it also sheds new light on the current state of Chicanx literature while, at the same time, contributing to it.

Professor Montoya is a writer and visual artist who teaches courses on Chicana/o culture, the novel, creative writing and community muralism in the Department of Chicana/o/x Studies and the Department of English and its Creative Writing Program. 

View the book at University of Nevada Press