Sex=Lies; Art=Transcendence (2012).Winterson, Jeanette. (1994). Art & Lies. New York:VintageIdly, I picked up this book in a used book shop. The publisher’s blurb on the back said it was “…a daring novel that burns with phosphorescent prose on every page.” I thought, “Yeah, sure.” I opened the book at random and to my amazement, every page I read burned with phosphorescent prose. Is it a novel? Not in the Aristotelian sense. There is no plot, no storyline, no climax, no epiphany, no denouement. But there is life-drama, mystery, strong characterization and beautiful language. In fact the work could be read as a series of extended prose-poems.Alternating chapters describe the lives of the three main characters, Handel, a physician-priest, Picasso, a young woman who paints, and Sappho, the pre-Socratic poet of sexuality. The three lives mildly intersect from time to time, unknown to the characters. A fourth, minor, enigmatic character who does not get her own chapters, is an aging prostitute searching for her boyfriend/john/pimp.All these characters are on a train, going to their future, fleeing their past. The train represents the arrow of time that moves each character through their lives. It’s not a real train and time is not real time. Sappho, the actual poet, represents herself, with a lifespan of 2000 years. Picasso is not Pablo, just a young woman with that moniker, and Handel is not the 18th century composer, just a guy named Handel, (Although the prostitute’s sought-after boyfriend is named Ruggerio, a character in one of the real Handel’s operas). In Handel’s life story, I had a sense of 19th century England, but other allusions, especially in Picasso’s story, place us at least in the 20th century. The location seems vaguely European (perhaps because there are more trains there). So: no fixed time or place.All the characters are fleeing themselves. Handel is trying to escape and forget a tragic surgical mistake in which he amputated the wrong breast in a botched mastectomy. That cost him his career. He’s also trying to escape his childhood, which involved long-term sexual abuse by a Catholic priest who nevertheless genuinely loved and educated him.Picasso, literally running away from home, flees a childhood of incest forced on her over the years by her brother, and a tyrannical, dismissive family, and attempted suicide. She seeks to lose herself in her painting but may be losing her mind.Sappho is the most difficult character. She resents that her poetry has been misunderstood or bowdlerized through the centuries. She claims to be a pure sexualist, not a romantic, not a metaphorical poet. “Say my name and you say sex,” she says. Sex alone is her topic, including its inevitable deceptions. She pontificates, beautifully, on the nature of art, despairs at the lack of passion in modern life, but it is not clear what her “mission” is, or from what, if anything, she flees. Her chapters are dreamlike.I should read this book again, two or three times. It is laden with allusions, historical, and inter-textual references. Alas, life is too short. Based on a single read, my thought is that the title reveals the controlling theme: Art and Lies. Those are the only two elements, that drive a life. The mundane, embodied life, is full of lies, lies mostly about sex. But the life of the flesh is transcended in art, which spiritually lifts one to another plane.The three biographies demonstrate this theme. In Sappho’s case, the argument that life is lies, is well made, less so the argument for art; except that, in the Sappho chapters, the lyrical language is so intense, it intoxicates the reader, proving in fact, not by telling, but by direct demonstration, that art lifts one above the plane of flesh. That’s a brilliant innovation.Here are samples, selected literally at random, of the kind of writing that drew me in:Handel: “I like to look at women. That is one of the reasons why I became a doctor. As a priest my contact is necessarily limited. I like to look at women; they undress before me with a shyness I find touching…When a woman chooses me above my numerous atheist colleagues we have an understanding straight away. I have done well, perhaps because a man with God inside him is still preferable to a man with only his breakfast inside him.”Picasso observes: "On the dark station platform, lit by cups of light, a guard paced his invisible cage. Twelve steps forward twelve steps back. He didn’t look up, he muttered in to a walkie-talkie, held so close to his upper lip that he might have been shaving. He should have been shaving. Picasso considered the guard; the pacing, the muttering, the unkempt face, the ill-fitting clothes. In aspect and manner he was no better than the average lunatic and yet he drew a salary and was competent to answer questions about trains.”Sappho prefers: “To carry white roses never red. White rose of purity white rose of desire. Purity of desire long past coal-hot, not the blushing body, but the flush-white bone. The bone flushed white through longing. The longing made pale by love. Love of flesh and love of the spirit in perilous communion at the altar-rail, the alter-rail, where all is changed and the bloody thorns become the platinum crown."The prostitute is described in third person: “Doll Sneerpiece was a woman, and like other women, she sieved time through her body. There was a residue of time always on her skin , and, as she got older, that residue thickened and stuck and could not be shaken off.”
#32Athanor \Ath"a*nor\, n. [F., fr. Ar. at-tann[=u]r, fr. Heb. tann[=u]r an oven or furnace.] A digesting furnace, formerly used by alchemists. It was so constructed as to maintain uniform and durable heat.ardour n 1: a feeling of strong eagerness (usually in favor of a person or cause); "they were imbued with a revolutionary ardor"; "he felt a kind of religious zeal" [syn: ardor, elan, zeal] 2: intense feeling of love [syn: ardor] 3: feelings of great warmth and intensity; "he spoke with great ardor" [syn: ardor, fervor, fervour, fervency, fire, fervidness]aussichtspunkt German, Lookout pointbaize n : a bright green fabric napped to resemble felt; used to cover gaming tablesBawd \Bawd\, n. [OE. baude, OF. balt, baut, baude, bold, merry, perh. fr. OHG. bald bold; or fr. Celtic, cf. W. baw dirt. Cf.Bold, Bawdry.] A person who keeps a house of prostitution, or procures women for a lewd purpose; a procurer or procuress; a lewd person; -- usually applied to a woman.hautbois n : a slender double-reed instrument; a woodwind with a conical bore and a double-reed mouthpiece [syn: oboe, hautboy]Omber \Om"ber\, Ombre \Om"bre\, n. [F. hombre, fr. Sp. hombre, lit., a man, fr. L. homo. See Human.] A game at cards, borrowed from the Spaniards, and usually played by three persons. --Pope. When ombre calls, his hand and heart are free, And, joined to two, he fails not to make three. --Youngbedesman n : a person who is paid to pray for the soul of another [syn: beadsman]Aruspex \A*rus"pex\, n.; pl. Aruspices. [L. aruspex or haruspex.] One of the class of diviners among the Etruscans and Romans, who foretold events by the inspection of the entrails of victims offered on the altars of the gods.Logos n : the divine word of God; the second person in the Trinity(incarnate in Jesus) [syn: Son, Word, Logos]
What do You think about Art And Lies (1996)?
"The doctor said he could find nothing wrong. She was healthy, she had work, she came from a good family. Her heart beat was normal. Was it? Well, perhaps a little too fast.Heart attack. Had her heart attacked her? Her heart, trained at obedience classes from an early age? Her heart, well muzzled in public, taught to trot in line. Her heart, that knew the Ten Commandments, and obeyed a hundred more. Her disciplined dogged heart that would come when it was called and that never strained its leash. Her heart, that secretly gnawed away it's body's bones. Her heart, too long kept famished now consumed her. Her heart turned.I saw her heart turning over and over through the somersaulted air.I saw her heart ignore its bounds and leap. It was her heart I pounded with both hands, my knees across her, my mouth that shouted "Live! Live!"This book is way beyond stars -- it is something else.
—Cheryl
This book is beautiful, and lyrical, and it holds together very well even without a standard plot. Winterson can at time become too fond of her own voice, but not in this novel -- I would call this easily the best book she's ever written, followed perhaps by 'Written On The Body.' The three characters are all distinct and likable, their flaws and stories gradually coming clear as the story progresses. The real crowning glory of this book is the prose, which is at times more like poetry. I keep coming back to this book, and find new lines and phrases to love every time.
—Nyna
I lacked a book while visiting family over the holidays, and decided I could bulk up on my contemporary British fiction with this. It struck me as very... Winterson-esque. Some very lovely passages, some very compelling moments, but I ultimately want things to come together a bit better, or be more fully elaborated. It seemed too long to be a perplexing novella, and too short to weave together the density it needed to. And I got a bit lost, reading but not taking much in, in some of the less concrete passages (especially in the Sappho sections). I don't think I fully "get" Winterson. But I am glad I read it.
—Kara Donnelly
