...a deathly serenade...

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legally VERIFIED 2013 Paris Review interview,
unless stated otherwise, and as his last interview
six months before his death provides much
insight into this complex character. Although, I
do not adhere to a few segments of this interview,
I categorise much of this in the realms of
exaggeration of a man I found sensitive to much.
"Rather sensitive," said Ellis Bema, in a
newspaper interview a few months before his
death, speaking of Franz as a person. Sensitive to
criticism, I markedly remember Franz taking
offence when, that same writer, Robert Howarth
of The Times, who had praised his work the year
before, one year later then declared his work,
"morbid" in another feature. Franz, infamously,
had many spats with famous journalists and for
long periods would not take any interviews,
deciding instead that the work, "should speak for
itself." Masterpiece after masterpiece it is
apparent that his Artistic convictions were always
right, "only with time to marinate can work of
such stature be truly understood," he said in one
of his letters to myself, and as mentioned in his
epigraph he saw many of the-powers-that-be as
"mercenary's" that look in the mirror and can't
see themselves, for their despondency and
constant desire to build Artists up and break them
down.
"If everyone is going left, I want to go right.
That's just the way I am an Artist," he said.
Rebellious, after the breakout success of Vanity.
Ares ― selling millions of copies, Franz decided
that he wanted to make a statement with the
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