Neil Harris in his book on J. Carter Brown’s directorship of the National Gallery (Culture Capital) explains how our nation’s capital came to be appreciated through graphic and literary presentations. Samuel F.B. Morse painted Congressional proceedings, but cartoonists provided caricatures of politicians that encouraged interest in the “farcical as well as tragic features of government” (Harris 40).
Films and plays, however, really helped rally interest in the workings of government with themes “reflecting attitudes toward partisanship, corruption, power, and pretension” (Harris 41). Before television, government was a largely mysterious affair, occurring at a great distance from most every day lives. Films like Mr. Smith Goes to Washington, Born Yesterday, and State of the Union provided peeks into these places of power.
Television has changed some of that by providing us closer looks at Congress and the White House, but still we must remember how much we are influenced by what we see, or rather are given to see. There are parts of the world that I have never seen, but that I can describe because I have seen them in film and on television. We cringe at critical remarks in the 19th century about ‘exotic’ locales and people that are often derived from the Romantic imagery of the painters who visited, composed, and returned with canvases in hand. Art and stories do tell us something about a culture and a time, but sociological research also reveals those things that remained unacknowledged.
I feel compelled to mention this here because I am such an advocate for the role of poems and stories in encouraging interest in art and artists. I really do think we can use them to tell us about responses to certain works and movements over the years, why and how they have continued to appeal. There is a place in the history of art for the stories of art. BUT, all that being said, we must also remember that these are fictional accounts. They have dramatic requirements that allow them to warp evidence to the contrary. After all, as I’ve said before, why ruin a good story for want of a few facts?
A good story is a good story and over wine or on a Sunday night before a busy week ahead, that is what I want. I want drama! Give me House of Cards! But, Monday morning, don’t expect me to believe it. A peek into a place of power is not a good solid look. That requires more than sitting on the couch. It requires the hard work of investigative journalism, whose tales are far longer and more warped than any novel or film, and which we often ignore until it becomes entertainment…
All the President’s Men, Lincoln, The Butler, Selma.
These are fictions. But if well done, they might just make us wonder about what we’ve seen, what we think we see, what we might see if we looked more carefully.
Book Review: Capital Culture, J.Carter Brown, The National Gallery, and the Reinvention of the Museum Experience by Neil Harris
Capital Culture is a detailed account of J. Carter Brown’s influence as Director of the United States National Gallery of Art in Washington D.C., but Neil Harris’ fifteen chapters also offer a view of the changes that occurred in museum culture during the 23 years of his tenure. The book centers on the changes that Brown was able to impose during his time at the National Gallery, by using specific shows and internal situations as case studies for the transformations that helped turn the gallery into a world class museum. The blockbuster exhibitions that Brown spearheaded were often met with disapproval despite their public success. Harris is even-handed in presenting critical declamations, both aesthetic and political, alongside his archival research into the driving reasons for the National Gallery’s efforts into these shows.
The emphasis on museums as sites of cultural education rather than excited engagement stems in part from the origins of survey museums arising out of princely collections. Brown’s move away from this pedagogical tradition incited much criticism, and though such departures have grown common place, they are still treated with hesitation, attitudes which may not serve to encourage contemporary audiences who increasingly arise out of a culture of choice rather than instruction. J. Carter Brown was an innovator and the book argues on behalf of his successes, despite any failures, for making the National Gallery an important cultural center. Harris convincingly claims that Brown’s vision transformed the museum stage and readers will likely find inspiration in Brown’s dynamic belief in art for all.
A full review will be available at the Journal of Curatorial Studies in the summer of 2015.
CAPITAL CULTURE: J. CARTER BROWN, THE NATIONAL GALLERY, AND THE REINVENTION OF THE MUSEUM EXPERIENCE, NEIL HARRIS
Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press (2013), 616 pp., Hardcover, ISBN: 978-0-226-06770-4, US$35.00
The emphasis on museums as sites of cultural education rather than excited engagement stems in part from the origins of survey museums arising out of princely collections. Brown’s move away from this pedagogical tradition incited much criticism, and though such departures have grown common place, they are still treated with hesitation, attitudes which may not serve to encourage contemporary audiences who increasingly arise out of a culture of choice rather than instruction. J. Carter Brown was an innovator and the book argues on behalf of his successes, despite any failures, for making the National Gallery an important cultural center. Harris convincingly claims that Brown’s vision transformed the museum stage and readers will likely find inspiration in Brown’s dynamic belief in art for all.
A full review will be available at the Journal of Curatorial Studies in the summer of 2015.
CAPITAL CULTURE: J. CARTER BROWN, THE NATIONAL GALLERY, AND THE REINVENTION OF THE MUSEUM EXPERIENCE, NEIL HARRIS
Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press (2013), 616 pp., Hardcover, ISBN: 978-0-226-06770-4, US$35.00
Fashion in the Museum
I know that there are some who think that fashion doesn't belong in the museum and that there are others who mostly go to museums to see the fashions, whether on mannequins or in paintings.
The Boston MFA has placed costumes from Hollywood’s Golden Age on display with a wall showing clips from the films where the costumes were worn. The costumes appear remarkably different in person from the screen. In person, I noticed the dresses’ beadwork and color, but saw them for their structure and movement in the black and white films. If museums serve to help us become more visually aware, then this show reminds us that what we see on screens, film, television, or computer, may not be what we would experience in person.
No bad thing in that.
As I attend a talk at the National Arts Club (tonight, Friday 1/23 7pm) on the fashion designer Bill Halston, I will also confront the club’s own uncertainty about the committee. They often organize some of the more popular events, and yet they are derided as a “light” committee, unconcerned with real art. Almost all the clothes that we wear do not constitute art, but I would be hard pressed to reject all fashion across time as having no place in a discussion of art.
Fashion is intimate and it most obviously accepts our superimposed desires, but is that truly reason to dismiss it? Hasn't other art done the same?
The Boston MFA has placed costumes from Hollywood’s Golden Age on display with a wall showing clips from the films where the costumes were worn. The costumes appear remarkably different in person from the screen. In person, I noticed the dresses’ beadwork and color, but saw them for their structure and movement in the black and white films. If museums serve to help us become more visually aware, then this show reminds us that what we see on screens, film, television, or computer, may not be what we would experience in person.
No bad thing in that.
As I attend a talk at the National Arts Club (tonight, Friday 1/23 7pm) on the fashion designer Bill Halston, I will also confront the club’s own uncertainty about the committee. They often organize some of the more popular events, and yet they are derided as a “light” committee, unconcerned with real art. Almost all the clothes that we wear do not constitute art, but I would be hard pressed to reject all fashion across time as having no place in a discussion of art.
Fashion is intimate and it most obviously accepts our superimposed desires, but is that truly reason to dismiss it? Hasn't other art done the same?
What Do You See?
Charles Sheeler’s View of New York (1931) is obviously not a view of New York City.
It is an interior painting of his studio, with a window through which we see a blue sky outside. Inside, an empty chair, an unlit lamp, and a covered camera are not only signs of the artist not working, but are made dismal by the gray walls and tone that cover the main body of the painting. The covered camera was indicative of Sheeler’s work as a photographer, though he was switching to painting. I am amused by the window centerpiece with the blue sky outside because of the fact that artists so often sense that their worlds trapped inside a studio are gray and lifeless, where outside, where they cannot be, is full of color and vibrancy. Those of us on the outside might not always agree, but Sheeler’s painting highlights that narrative to an amusing degree.
Sowing Victory
Mostly from the United States, the posters also include some from France, England, Russia and Germany. They urge citizens to buy bonds in support of the war cause, but some also encourage men to enlist, often using guilt to pressure. A picture of a father with children on his lap and a caption that reads “Daddy, what did you do in the war?” or a picture of several hats (fedora, straw, ad so forth) with a navy cap in the center and the question “Which hat will you wear?”
Most intriguing to me, however, were the posters about rationing, and self-subsistence by planting “Victory” gardens. Somehow, support of the country has shifted away from the notion that we be careful about our consumption. Since Ford decided to recall troops from Vietnam in TK to suggest the end of the war there, even though United States presence continued for a while, as a nation we have been adverse to military engagement unless quick and easy. This is understandable, but it means we delude ourselves that we are not at war, as say our continued military engagement in Iraq for over a decade should be considered. Since we are not at war, we do not think of ourselves as having to minimize or economize as if we were at war. Our economy depends on excess spending, I understand that, but unfortunately, it makes us wasteful and inconsiderate of the real costs of sustained success. You an’t win a war you aren’t fighting. You can’t avoid waste if a surplus is assumed. We are at war, and I’m struck by the ease with which we live our lives. I’m not sure that planting gardens, or rationing meat and flour and sugar, would do anything for our troops or the military, but these posters did make me note how the two were once linked.
The Change You Want To See In The World
In the Gordon Parks: Back to Fort Scott exhibit currently at the MFA, through September 13, 2015, I heard a woman my age explaining to a little girl, maybe around six years old, that these pictures depict a time when kids of different color had to go to separate schools.
"Separate schools?" Incredulity mingled with confusion as the adult sighed, "Yes."
But the little girl looked perplexed rather than upset, and I was glad that she found it odd and attached no personal significance to this fact.
She was the change that many in the exhibit had hoped for. Elderly couples walked hand in hand looking at the photographs that Gordon Parks took in his hometown of Fort Scott, Kansas, in 1950. They show the way racism and segregation still quietly defined the life of those he knew. That would change soon, but not soon enough. The photographs were supposed to be published in Life magazine in 1951, but were suspended. The 42 photographs on display have never been seen before. The exhibit includes examples of his typewritten pages from his novel, The Learning Tree (1963). Parks confronted racism at every stage of his career, working in Chicago, but then also during his fellowship for the Farm Security Administration in segregated Washington DC, no better at the war office, and certainly not once he left those bureaucracies and tried fashion photography, though he was able to get freelance work from Vogue.
His work is an implied indictment of racism by showing the humanity of those so rudely dismissed. Given the racism the United States that still confuses the United States, the show could not come at a better time.
"Separate schools?" Incredulity mingled with confusion as the adult sighed, "Yes."
But the little girl looked perplexed rather than upset, and I was glad that she found it odd and attached no personal significance to this fact.
She was the change that many in the exhibit had hoped for. Elderly couples walked hand in hand looking at the photographs that Gordon Parks took in his hometown of Fort Scott, Kansas, in 1950. They show the way racism and segregation still quietly defined the life of those he knew. That would change soon, but not soon enough. The photographs were supposed to be published in Life magazine in 1951, but were suspended. The 42 photographs on display have never been seen before. The exhibit includes examples of his typewritten pages from his novel, The Learning Tree (1963). Parks confronted racism at every stage of his career, working in Chicago, but then also during his fellowship for the Farm Security Administration in segregated Washington DC, no better at the war office, and certainly not once he left those bureaucracies and tried fashion photography, though he was able to get freelance work from Vogue.
His work is an implied indictment of racism by showing the humanity of those so rudely dismissed. Given the racism the United States that still confuses the United States, the show could not come at a better time.
Goya: Order and Disorder, Boston MFA
On one hand he is known for his portraits of aristocrats, such as the full length Duchess de Alba in a lace mantilla and wearing traditional Spanish clothes as she points down to the sand at her feet where “Sole Goya” is written. Shockingly similar to that painting is the seated portrait of an actress, Antonia Zarate y Aguirre, also wearing black, also covered in a lace mantilla (though not quite as delicate or ornate), and placed against a brown and gold background. Eavesdropping on two conversations in front of the piece, I heard different objections to it. One was dismayed that the silver ribbon at her rib cage clashed with the gold background, as did the black and brown. This on the principle that you do not wear silver and gold or black and brown together. The other objection found that a curl of hair on her forehead appeared to extend her already bushy eyebrow, made worse by the fact that some skin had been painted visible through the curl and looked like an unfortunate beauty mark. “I wouldn’t like it if it were me,” exclaimed the woman to her friend.
There are many ways to criticize art, and this personal approach is one. A friend who had seen the show objected to the lack of biographical material, as he was left wondering more about Goya. To my mind, this is the show’s success, building interest in an artist such that visitors would seek out information on their own. Biographies are both accessible and easy to find for the common museum audience, where the type of information the show relayed about technique required visual examples to explain. Goya’s work also required some historical contextualization since Goya’s presence as Court Painter made him a witness to the rise and fall of courtiers, while the Napoleonic invasion during the Peninsula War are significant to his posthumously published Disasters of War print series.
The etching They Do Not Want to (No quieren, Plate 9 from Disasters of War) depicts a soldier attempting to rape a young woman with an older woman coming from behind to stab him. The rape and pillaging of towns devastated Spain and Goya knew much about it from his own countryside visits, including to his home village. The lines marking the left side of the crone’s skirt emerge out of the wall behind the figures, while the right front side of her skirt sweep down to connect with the ground lines beneath the two struggling figures. Her strength comes not only from the presence of the knife but also the way Goya has her circling the environment of the two central figures. The contour lines around the soldier make him stand out, and provide a dark background against which the young woman has all the innocence of mostly untouched blank paper (with only the required lines to depict her form). The crone is all shading that, I will go so far as to suggest, gives her the ambiguity of wisdom, the gray tonality that accepts both black and white, murder as protection.
This woman made me realize the deep respect that Goya shows for aged women, whether as witches or protectresses. The show explained in a wall text that old age was associated with vanity, avarice, and lust, but that is far better seen in his depiction of old men. They are swinging, a metaphor for sexual license, gorging themselves on food in the dark, and generally foolish. I did not spot a work that presented old men as wise in the Goya show, and remain intrigued by the lack of imagery and tales in general presenting men as aging gracefully.
The show was divided thematically, with walls dedicated to youth, old age, power, allowing the curators to combine paintings and prints. One large room was dedicated to his portraits, including one with questionable attribution thereby allowing viewers to witness the challenge of certainty. The show culminates with a freestanding wall of prints from Disasters of War, though the room behind it includes several more works. Goya’s prints of war, madness, and nightmares contrast to his polite portraits. As Enlightenment philosophy gained strength, ridiculing the superstitions of religion, it must have been all the more horrifying to see the savagery of the revolutions, the dismantling of governments, the massacres that followed. How could this mankind espouse reason on one hand, and yield such violence with the other? The question remains for us as we declare ourselves a global community and witness human violations on mass scales around the world.
Goya was brilliant not simply for his technique, but for his ability to draw what we still refuse to see.
Nevermore: The Imaginary Life and Mysterious Death of Edgar Allen Poe at New World Stages
A musical about Edgar Allen Poe? That makes no sense. Musicals are light and frothy; Poe is dark and dreadful. But, this show, now open at New World Stages in New York City after a successful production in London, reminds us that both musicals and Poe might yet stretch our imagination more.
Poe notoriously inspired Baudelaire, but the costume designs of Nevermore might make you think of Tim Burton but they are also a reminder that he too was inspired by Poe. Things come full circle. The songs and choreography do not obscure the hardships of Poe's life, but tell the story with high Gothic drama that allows for the needed chortle every now and then. Poe's own rhyhtmic rhyme schemes are often duplicated in the songs, which reminds us of the remarkable simplicity underlying Poe's nightmarish imagination.
The show had a Poe historian to consult but this is fiction not documentary, and Jonathan Christenson, the writer and composer, makes allowances for the story. Poe's adoptive mother in the production leaps to her death from the asylum where her husband places her when she starts to lose her mind. This is actually a merger of two important figures from Poe's adolescence but provides the loss that helped create the distance to his adoptive family.
Those who are familiar with Poe's stories may enjoy identifying allusions to the stories within the dialogue and songs. The script does an impressive job of moving between the facts of his life and the realities of his fiction to create a show that will satisfy any Poe enthusiast–so long as they don't require strict biographical authenticity...and really, who wants to ruin a good story for want of a few facts? For that you can read a book.
The book on Susan Jaffe Tane's significant collection of Poe manuscripts is available in the lobby (beside very soft t-shirts) if you want some information. But how many people who love Poe, do not love the man, but the author? It's not easy to love a depressive alcoholic afterall.
All this to say, I really enjoyed the show. Apparently some members of the audience thought it was depressing. I entirely disagree. The show is about a depressed man, but not itself depressing. Perhaps his dark tales populated by strange and evil characters destroyed him, as the ensemble sings in one of the final numbers, but they were also his company in times of duress and gave him life long after his had died of desperation.
If you think you like Tim Burton, gothic tales, forboding tales of creative genius, let alone the master himself, Edgar Allen Poe, Nevermore will also make you rethink musical theater, and jump at the shadows creeping along the side of your brain all the way home.
The show opened last night and more information for tickets can be found at:
http://nevermoreshow.com/
Poe notoriously inspired Baudelaire, but the costume designs of Nevermore might make you think of Tim Burton but they are also a reminder that he too was inspired by Poe. Things come full circle. The songs and choreography do not obscure the hardships of Poe's life, but tell the story with high Gothic drama that allows for the needed chortle every now and then. Poe's own rhyhtmic rhyme schemes are often duplicated in the songs, which reminds us of the remarkable simplicity underlying Poe's nightmarish imagination.
The show had a Poe historian to consult but this is fiction not documentary, and Jonathan Christenson, the writer and composer, makes allowances for the story. Poe's adoptive mother in the production leaps to her death from the asylum where her husband places her when she starts to lose her mind. This is actually a merger of two important figures from Poe's adolescence but provides the loss that helped create the distance to his adoptive family.
Those who are familiar with Poe's stories may enjoy identifying allusions to the stories within the dialogue and songs. The script does an impressive job of moving between the facts of his life and the realities of his fiction to create a show that will satisfy any Poe enthusiast–so long as they don't require strict biographical authenticity...and really, who wants to ruin a good story for want of a few facts? For that you can read a book.
The book on Susan Jaffe Tane's significant collection of Poe manuscripts is available in the lobby (beside very soft t-shirts) if you want some information. But how many people who love Poe, do not love the man, but the author? It's not easy to love a depressive alcoholic afterall.
All this to say, I really enjoyed the show. Apparently some members of the audience thought it was depressing. I entirely disagree. The show is about a depressed man, but not itself depressing. Perhaps his dark tales populated by strange and evil characters destroyed him, as the ensemble sings in one of the final numbers, but they were also his company in times of duress and gave him life long after his had died of desperation.
If you think you like Tim Burton, gothic tales, forboding tales of creative genius, let alone the master himself, Edgar Allen Poe, Nevermore will also make you rethink musical theater, and jump at the shadows creeping along the side of your brain all the way home.
The show opened last night and more information for tickets can be found at:
http://nevermoreshow.com/
Film Review: Blackhat OPENS FRIDAY 1/16/2015
I am writing this review on a word processor that is connected to a computer that sets the type for the Sun-Times. If I make an error, the computer will tell me. Observe. I instruct it to set this review at a width of 90 characters. It flashes back: Margin too wide. Now things get interesting. I ask it to set the width at 100 characters. It flashes back: Margin too narrow. That's because it's reading only the first two digits of my three-digit number.
So wrote Roger Ebert in 1983 to start his review of Wargames, a film about a computer whiz kid who mistakenly breaks into a computer in the Department of Defense. Hacker films are thrilling because most of us don’t understand the machines that run our lives. We depend on the connectedness of the machines, but the code is mysterious, and when it doesn’t do what we want, frustrating. As Ebert pointed out, word processors, or computers now, are constantly trying to fix what they deem to be errors, even when we want it our “wrong” way. Only a few seem to have the ability to move through those networks with the speed and ease of a New Yorker racing through rush hour streets. If only we knew what to do, we too could destroy our enemies and balloon our bank accounts. Hacking, despite the fact that its reality is long boring hours typing and fixing code into a computer, is therefore a perfect topic for an action packed adventure. Thus, the hacker adventure flick subgenre.
Blackhat picks up our most recent fears from the opening sequence when we become aware that our beautiful blue Earth is wired by electric networks, with everything from nuclear power plants to the stock market, our national security and our bank accounts, dependent on computers and the code running those circuit boards. When a hacker sets a virus into a Chinese power plant with a consequent meltdown, then follows that catastrophe with a stock market run on soy, the Chinese government requests to partner with the FBI, suggesting Nicholas Hathaway, a convicted hacker played by People’s Sexiest Man of the Year Chris Hemsworth, be released from prison to help them track this blackhat.
The term blackhat refers to hackers who break into a computer network with malevolent intent, destroying data or stealing information for their own purpose. Blackhats will take advantage of a known entry point to exploit the company, nation or service dependent on the network. Is the film an accurate depiction of hacking? Well, yes and no. Michael Mann did spend time with Mike Rogers, who was head of the House Intelligence Committee, and hired Kevin Poulsen, a senior editor at Wired who was sent to jail for being a blackhat with a three year ban on any computer use after his release, and Christopher McKinlay, the mathematician who hoped to find love by hacking OKCupid last year, to serve as consultants on the film. They ensured that the code on screen looked authentic, but the fact is that code writing or deciphering is long, boring work that does not make for good film, and so the film requires a willingness to suspend disbelief at the speed with which our actors identify and break through the various information roadblocks.
Hathoway (Hemsworth) was a hacker but as he insists he never robbed people, only banks, making it easier for all of to rest assured that we are rooting for Robin Hood. When he hacks into the NSA, we agree it is the right move. Hathoway helped write the code that is causing all this damage while he was at MIT, before he went to prison for hacking into a bank, and so he’s not only a computer genius, but also in perfect shape to fight singlehandedly his way out of a Korean restaurant, have a shoot out on the docks on Hong Kong, followed by another one on its streets, chase and hunt down the man who would hack his way through civilization. All this and have a love affair too. Don’t be fooled by Hathoway’s reading material, which includes Derrida and Lyotard’s The Postmodern Condition. This film won’t deconstruct anything, but it will blow up a few buildings and people. Blackhat sets out to be a cyber thriller and it succeeds, as long as you don’t take it too seriously.
This may not be one of Michael Mann’s great films but it has all the elements that he does so well. The tensions between two opposing governments, as well as police and criminal forces is classic for the director of Heat, Collateral, and Miami Vice. Since the term blackhat is rooted in Western movies, where the bad guys often wore black hats, this might be seen as Mann’s ode to the genre. Roaming from Chicago, to Hong Kong, Los Angeles, Kuala Lampur, and Jakarta, the film is mostly shot on location with electric cityscapes, and panoramic exteriors of the mines in Kuala Lampur. The music supports the three narrative changes from international cyber-crime scare, to renegade team who can only win by ignoring direct orders, to the personal vengeance that fuels the final portion of the film.
Michael Mann’s visual aesthetic remains gripping whether for the fight scenes or the initially awkward love story. The bad guys are really bad. The good guys are really sensitive and caring. There are two women: the smart FBI lead played by Viola Davis, who does much with the little she is given; the impressive financial software designer (Wei Tang) whose intelligence is secondary to her passion for our hero. The contemporary hacking scares, or the concerns about encouraging women to go into technology might have elevated this film but honestly, this is a good old-fashioned, cyber-crime, race-against-time, action-adventure, hero-with-love-interest story. For 135 minutes, you will forget about your comparatively unimportant problems, and if you don’t think about it too much, you’ll enjoy it all the way home and forget about it by the time you finish changing all your passwords.
Blackhat, directed by Michael Mann opens Friday, January 16, 2015
Book Review: Broken Colors by Michele Zackheim
The book opens with the early life of Sophie Marks, whose parents died during the First World War, living with her artist grand parents in the English Midlands. She moves to Paris to go to art school, falls in love, and upon returning to her grandparents gives birth to a child she does not want, but eventually grows to love until air raids bomb her home and everyone she knows. Shell-shocked, she is hospitalized for several years. Any hesitation that I felt about the opening tragedy was allayed by the beauty of the language. Though sympathetic to the plight of the characters, the story never descends into melodrama.
The book has just laid its underpainting at this point, as Sophie must yet become an artist, and build a life as such. Across love and success, the story maintains a gorgeous calm. The chapters are brief and evocative of each step she takes, loving, losing, moving here, then there, in search of some indescribable sense of self, and all the other trite material of life that is never so trite for those living it, or for good fictional characters. The happy is satisfying not because it is a trite, happily-ever-after farce, but because the reader has come to believe that Sophie, nearing eighty, might yet be able to learn something, accept what she had refused, and find contentment.
The focus on Sophie makes some characters, like Nico, a little too simple, but since the reader is strongly positioned within Sophie's point of view, I was willing to ignore the occasional shallow quality in that character as an aspect of how Sophie saw them. She had not the knowledge, self or otherwise, to see them completely, and so neither do we.
I read this book within 24 hours, on the subway, while walking, ignoring family or friends after the holidays, because the book carries the magnificence of a Tolstoy life without the volume as a burden, and I wanted the satisfaction of knowing, in the end, the life of Sophie Marks completely.
The book has just laid its underpainting at this point, as Sophie must yet become an artist, and build a life as such. Across love and success, the story maintains a gorgeous calm. The chapters are brief and evocative of each step she takes, loving, losing, moving here, then there, in search of some indescribable sense of self, and all the other trite material of life that is never so trite for those living it, or for good fictional characters. The happy is satisfying not because it is a trite, happily-ever-after farce, but because the reader has come to believe that Sophie, nearing eighty, might yet be able to learn something, accept what she had refused, and find contentment.
The focus on Sophie makes some characters, like Nico, a little too simple, but since the reader is strongly positioned within Sophie's point of view, I was willing to ignore the occasional shallow quality in that character as an aspect of how Sophie saw them. She had not the knowledge, self or otherwise, to see them completely, and so neither do we.
I read this book within 24 hours, on the subway, while walking, ignoring family or friends after the holidays, because the book carries the magnificence of a Tolstoy life without the volume as a burden, and I wanted the satisfaction of knowing, in the end, the life of Sophie Marks completely.
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