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Winner of the 2024 Mississippi Institute of Arts amp Letters Award for Life Writing

A wickedly entertaining The New York Times detective story that chronicles one Mississippi mans relentless search for an authentic portrait of William Shakespeare

Following his divorce downandout writer and Mississippi exile Lee Durkee holed himself up in a Vermont fishing shack and fell prey to a decadeslong obsession with Shakespearian portraiture It began with a simple premise despite the prevalence of popular portraits no one really knows what Shakespeare looked like That the Bard of Avon has gotten progressively handsomer in modern depictions seems only to reinforce this point

Intensely readablewith bustout laughing moments Garden amp Gun Stalking Shakespeare is Durkees fascinating memoir about a hobby gone awry the 400yearold myriad portraits attached to the famous playwright and Durkees own unrelenting search for a lost picture of the Bard painted from real life As Durkee becomes better at beguiling curators into testing their paintings with Xray and infrared technologies we get a frontrow seat to the captivating mysteriesand unsolved murderssurrounding the various portraits rumored to depict Shakespeare

Whisking us backward in time through layers of paint and into the pages of obscure books on the Elizabethans Durkee travels from Vermont to Tokyo to Mississippi to DC and ultimately to London to confront the stuffy curators forever protecting the Bards image For his part Durkee is the adversary they didnt know they hada selfdescribed dilettante with nothing to lose the Dan Brown of Elizabethan portraiture

A bizarre and surprisingly moving blend of biography art history and madness Stalking Shakespeare is a gripping poignant and enjoyable The Washington Post journey that will forever change the way you look at one of historys greatest cultural and literary icons