The Aim of Art: Corrected Edition

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 Pict...