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Max Porter
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The Death of Francis Bacon: Max Porter Hardcover – January 7, 2021

by Max Porter (Author)
3.8 3.8 out of 5 stars 225 ratings
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A bold and brilliant short work by the author of Grief is the Thing with Feathers and Lanny.

Madrid.

Unfinished.

Man Dying.

A great painter lies on his deathbed.

Max Porter translates into seven extraordinary written pictures the explosive final workings of the artist's mind.

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  1. Print length
    80 pages
  2. Language
    English
  3. Publisher
    Faber & Faber
  4. Publication date
    January 7, 2021
  5. Dimensions
    4.37 x 0.2 x 7.01 inches
  6. ISBN-10
    0571366511
  7. ISBN-13
    978-0571366514
  8. See all details
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Product details

  • Publisher ‏ : ‎ Faber & Faber; Main edition (January 7, 2021)
  • Language ‏ : ‎ English
  • Hardcover ‏ : ‎ 80 pages
  • ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 0571366511
  • ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-0571366514
  • Item Weight ‏ : ‎ 2.31 pounds
  • Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 4.37 x 0.2 x 7.01 inches
  • Customer Reviews:
    3.8 3.8 out of 5 stars 225 ratings

About the author

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Max Porter

Max Porter

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Max Porter is the author of four novels. His work has been translated into thirty languages. His first novel, Grief Is the Thing with Feathers, won the Sunday Times/Peters, Fraser + Dunlop Young Writer of the Year, the International Dylan Thomas Prize, the Europese Literatuurprijs and the BAMB Readers’ Award, and was shortlisted for the Guardian First Book Award and the Goldsmiths Prize. His second novel, Lanny, was a Sunday Times bestseller and was longlisted for the Booker Prize. His third book, The Death of Francis Bacon, was described by the Irish Independent as a "little masterpiece". He wrote the short film All of this Unreal Time for the actor Cillian Murphy, and the pamphlet It’s Going to Be a Bright New Day with Bonny 'Prince' Billy. He frequently collaborates with artists, theatre-makers and musicians. He lives in England.

Customer reviews

3.8 out of 5 stars
3.8 out of 5
225 global ratings

Top reviews from the United States

Mojosaica
4.0 out of 5 stars Porter’s Bacon doesn’t sizzle, but it does satisfy.
Reviewed in the United States on June 21, 2021
Verified Purchase
I ended up enjoying Porter and Bacon much more than I thought I would, esp. the end where he compares him having lived about 30 years more than he might have. He could have just as easily been killed in any alley by gay haters as by more slowly killing himself off—a great Porter touch. He did die in Madrid, having followed and waited for his last lover to return to him, from having fled Him to Madrid. It was never going to happen.
Edward was his only real straight friend, which I’m sure annoyed Bacon. He inherited everything from him, followed his wishes, and also donated Bacon’s studio to Dublin to serve as some kind of museum/memorial.
This paragraph summed it all up for me. Just narcissistic enough to express his own arrogance and self-loathing. Bacon wants us to be just as disturbed and lost as he is, and that’s all he wants. No healing or redemption necessary. I think Porter met his own challenge successfully, and no one is any the wiser. It would be very helpful for readers to watch the BBC doc on Bacon and his relationships before reading this obscure piece.

“You’re going to be a person spilling out of a trap, and I’m going to be a person who is fatherly, fuckable, and this is going to upset you, exhilarate me and interest scholars.”
5 people found this helpful
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Constance Slings-Arrows
4.0 out of 5 stars Fever Dream Cemetery
Reviewed in the United States on September 26, 2021
"Confounding" is perhaps the most frequently used word in descriptions of this important work. The best art, be it painting or writing, takes us "where we would not go," to quote an 18th century writer whose name escapes me. For those familiar with Bacon's career, there are sign posts galore in this book that lead us back into the paintings, personalities and Baconian zeitgeist. Some of this musing is rough stuff, which is inevitable, phrasings dripping with, well, dripping with the stuff of desire and loathing as well as art. It is useful to remember that at the outset of his storied career, a painting that Bacon submitted for consideration was rejected by a French Surrealists exhibition as "insufficiently surreal."
In hindsight, it's like dismissing Jesus for being insufficiently Jesus. It is a marvelous irony that Bacon spent his last hours in the care of nuns in that most Catholic of capitals Madrid. Fixated as he was on the crucifixion as the seminal image for mankind, Bacon, in the end, wound his way unwittingly onto the perpetual cross of critical opinion. 'Champagne for my real friends, real pain for my sham friends,' indeed.
4 people found this helpful
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Top reviews from other countries

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R. Coane
1.0 out of 5 stars DOA
Reviewed in Canada on July 8, 2021
Verified Purchase
Expect not Francis Bacon, painter. Dreadfully disappointing. Should have returned it the moment I got and opened it.
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Alysson Oliveira
4.0 out of 5 stars Escrevendo a pintura
Reviewed in Brazil on March 4, 2021
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A arte do irlandês Francis Bacon é estranha. Em suas pinturas, as pessoas parecem humanos deformados, as cores são fortes, e o traço marcante. Parecem sempre tentar traduzir em imagens um desconforto da existência. Em The Death of Francis Bacon, o inglês Max Potter tenta traduzir em palavras a experiência de se estar em frente a um dos quadros dele. É um estilo experimental que atravessa as 80 páginas do livro – fosse mais longo, talvez fosse insuportável.

Bacon morreu na Espanha, no começo dos anos de 1990, quando foi para lá visitar seu último grande amor, um jovem banqueiro, a quem pintou em seus últimos quadros. Doente, acabou sendo levado para um convento-hospital, e ficou na UTI por 6 dias. Potter tenta sensorial e impressionisticamente criar esse período. O livro, praticamente um conto, é um sonho febril de um homem agonizante, no qual vida e morte se misturam.

Há um momento em que Potter e Bacon parecem se digladiar num diálogo, no qual o escritor explica os motivos para escrever tal livro. Criador e criatura, que também é um criador. Talvez seja o ponto alto do livro, que, em si, é uma narrativa que depende de algum conhecimento de Bacon e sua obra. Há um site oficial, com suas obras, que é bastante completo e eficiente para isso.
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John Mccutcheon
5.0 out of 5 stars Poetic study of death
Reviewed in the United Kingdom on January 11, 2021
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A challenging and engrossing work. Not for the faint hearted. A poetic tour de force. A linguistic masterpiece to be read and reread.
One person found this helpful
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Douglas Bruton
4.0 out of 5 stars Bravo
Reviewed in the United Kingdom on January 9, 2021
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Bravo to Max Porter and his experimental writing - pushing the boundaries of what prose can be, what prose can do. There is a lot to like in what Porter does here and I applaud the spirit of this work. I have only a passing acquaintance with Bacon and his art, but that is enough to 'get this', a meditation on an artist's life and death and art. There is a visceral quality to this slim volume, the smell of blood and cum and turpentine. The writing is vivid and remarkable but might not be everyone's cup of tea. I do wish, however, that as well as the writer's experiment there had been an eye on the reader too and that Porter had been a little kinder to the reader's experience and that he'd maybe given the reader a little more help in approaching this work - even an introduction of some sort, a preface that would have helped with the context. As it is the reader will have to do a bit of work first (on reflection perhaps that's as it should be) - and maybe the more work a reader does the more will be got from the work. I can't wait to see what Porter does next - for sure it will not be lazy prose and it will be new and challenging and exciting.
15 people found this helpful
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Allan Hildon
3.0 out of 5 stars Mercifully short
Reviewed in the United Kingdom on October 18, 2022
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Seriously, I think this is a case of the Emporer's New Clothes. The worshipful praise is a mystery to me. It's poetic and occasionally inventive, but falls far short of the seductive prose Porter delivered in Lanny and Feathers. I also feel it's a rather prudish portrayal of the last morphine fueled thoughts of a man who's life and artistic expression was an homage to masochism and excess.
I sincerely hope Porter's next subject isn't Michel Foucault.
4 people found this helpful
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