I am often depressed by AS Byatt after reading the works, and not because of the works. What depresses me is her focus of narrative subject. She has the knack of selecting the least interesting participant of her stories as the one with which to identify. In The Matisse Stories, she successfully finds the most boring, dithery and dullest women on whom to lavish attention. What depresses me even more is that she disappoints me, in that she has an obvious and marvelous narrative talent, but no taste.I was once told by a dramatist that if you write about a dull character, you will write a dull story. All three women are indeed dull, but they are more than that in a lessening way. They are also tedious.In the first story the focal character is a somewhat successful semi-professional woman who goes to a hairdresser with the fine hope of being made to look far more glamorous than her efforts on herself have provided. She has no excitement, no elasticity of passion, and as a consequence of being shown how dreary she really is, has a hissy fit, smashing the property and successes of a man. Felt almost stock pseudo-feminist to lay the blame on a man, even a fay man she suspects of being gay -- oh how stereotypical -- before discovering herself surprised that he has an interest in a woman. Two women, actually. One the stock demanding harridan of a housewife and the other the stock sexy young thing he can't live without, but does.And therein lies the crux of my disappointment. She is a far better writer than this, I am sure of it. But every time I read AS Byatt, I leave depressed by her, and disappointed.In the second story, we have a prototypical Wendy-type married to a Peter Pan artist. And not just married, but saddled with. Every inch into this overly focused story reinforces the feeling we already know where the tale is going. She will find herself facing what she fails to face with great intention, that her man is not worthy of her, but in order to keep him she must not be worthy of herself. This, she insures, is done by continuing to lie to herself. Successfully, I might add. Meanwhile, the truly interesting character, the housemaid, works in secret, not only keeping herself secret from her employers but from us, even though when her fantastic-ness finally does get trotted out, we've guessed it twenty pages beforehand.Last of the three: there's the Chairwoman of Feminist Studies who must confront an eminent professional male artist about his alleged chauvinism and harassing practices as reported by a student. Doing so makes her oh so darn uncomfortable. By the way, to reinforce her discomfort of being hemmed in on all sides within the profession she has chosen, there's a lobster that doesn't fit his tank, his run-away legs to flimsy, his powerful claws too heavy to be employed. Nice but kind of heavy-handed, don't you think? Regardless, Byatt thumps us with the meaninglessness of feeling passionate about something that, in the face of death (her friend's) loses all meaning. Contemplations of suicide fuel her dissatisfaction. Most bothersome about this is that twice the man she has to confront uses the term "bitch" about the student, and both times she thinks to admonish him, but each time she lets him rail on. Now that's the kind of feminist we have come to love and admire.Maybe I'm missing something, but Byatt is a massive letdown on too many occasions. She is obviously a literary darling capable of creating "scenes [that] sizzle with chromatic intensity" (as the cover flap copy insists.) But I wish she could serve up a better platter than sizzling organ meats.
A ritual Japan celebrates every year is blossom viewing. Before it really becomes warm, everyone is daydreaming of a slow wave of cherry blossoms blushing from the south to the north of Japan, in the wake of the gradual thermal tsunami known as Spring. One can imagine that it is not the Japanese contemplating the cherry trees--but the trees themselves, opening their trillions of little floral eyes to take in the Japanese--that had long ago instituted the ritual of viewing the blossoms. In ancient times these blossoms would behold celebrated court beauties arriving in kimonos, with musicians playing flutes and drums, with handsome boys hanging brightly lit lanterns to glow amid the boughs as everyone quaffs their sake amid a tumult of glances, gossip and music. The blossoms would look out on nobles arriving by boat, with servants, musicians and courtesans waiting on their pleasure behind gauzy curtains, as illustrious Buddhist monks sitting on the prow become ever more drunk and prattle ever more loudly about Zen, as the moon climbs ever higher in the sky and the tumultuous hullabaloo of drunken voices reaches a crescendo, with everyone shouting into the face of someone else in order to be heard above all the rest. The blossoms would see that after the crowd thins and then disappears and the moon sets and the eastern sky begins to blush and the dawn breeze stirs--that neither they nor the moon have been truly appreciated for what they truly are. They would feel, in short, that the moon and themselves have been somehow abandoned. And thus each blossom watches sadly as the moon sets and disconsolate and trembling brother and sister blossoms shake themselves loose from the branches of this fleeting and insensitive world, abandoning themselves in flights of sheer oblivion to sail in swirling flurries and dizzying eddies through the indifferent air. Permeating this ritual is mono no aware the fundamental Japanese aesthetic category. It has been translated as 'an awareness of the Ah-ness of things' and as 'a certain sadness that arises when contemplating the evanesence of beauty.' This collection of stories, particularly the second, is guided by a similar meditation. The difference is that Byatt's characters lack the Buddhist acceptance of ageing that comes from a life of celebrating mono no aware not only in blossom viewing, but also as the underlying aesthetic category in Japanese literature. What I find fascinating is cultural differences in such realms. Although Byatt is adept at conveying a certain sensibility towards growing older, this collection would have been far more captivating had she contrasted that sensibility with other, more accepting, ones.
What do You think about The Matisse Stories (1996)?
I was drawn to this book of short stories because A.S. Byatt has been a favorite ever since "Possession."The title intrigued me because I have a very special connection to the art of Henri Matisse. So inspired by his paintings, I even named one of my cats after him. I was interested to see how the lives of the characters of these stories were affected by his art and colors as well.All three stories in the book are very atmospheric and filled with vivid imagery.My favorite story in the collection is the first one entitled "Medusa's ankles," the story of an evolving friendship between a woman and her hairdresser who has a Matisse print of a "rosy nude" hanging in his salon. Through their interactions, she reveals her inner girlish vulnerability and her need to recapture some of her youth and to be seen as she is within. The facade is soon shattered, both literally and figuratively, as she is forced to truly confront her own reflection, seeing that she is both old and inconsequential to the hairdresser she thought was the preserver of her beauty and youth.The final story, "The Chinese Lobster," is very unsettling.
—Elizabeth
I picked up this short collection of Byatt stories used at my favorite bookstore last weekend, mostly because I was intrigued by the premise of short stories inspired by Matisse paintings. In the past, I've found Byatt's novels to be rather clunky, wordy, and a bit pretentious, but I've liked her shorter works, and so I thought I would give this a try. Byatt is a true artist of words, and she writes beautifully. That being said, the first two stories in this collection didn't really hold my interest. My four star rating comes from the final story, "The Chinese Lobster", which was a fascinating and unsettling account of two university professors discussing a sexual harassment case that has come up within their art department from various angles. Very thought provoking, particularly in terms of the ideas of truth, perspective, screwed up self-serving academics, and suicide. I very much enjoyed this passage:"Any two people may be talking to each other, at any moment, in a civilized way about something trivial, or something, even, complex and delicate. And inside each of the two there runs a kind of dark river of unconnected thought, of secret fear, or violence, or bliss, hoped-for or lost, which keeps pace with the flow of talk and is neither seen nor heard. And at times, one or both of the two will catch sight or sound of this movement, in himself, or herself, or, more rarely, in the other. And it is like the quick slip of a waterfall into a pool, like a drop into darkness."
—Annmarie Sheahan
Reason for reading:While on holiday in the Yorkshire Dales I visited a number of secondhand bookshops and bought rather a lot of books… this was one of them. AS Byatt won the Booker Prize in 1990 for Possession. What would this offer? A quick glance and the concept had captured my imagination… an impulse buy that worked out well.About the book:Three short stories tied together in a straightforward way. All of them, to a greater or lesser degree, have an association with a painting by Matisse. Le Nu Rose hanging in a hairdresser’s shop and a middle-aged woman who eventually loses it destroying the place is the inspiration for Medusa’s Ankles. For the second tale, Art Work, Le Silence habite des maisons is the inspiration. A ‘home help’ for an artist and a writer becomes an artist herself, leaving them in the shade. La Porte Noir is the work tied into Chinese Lobster. It tells of a meeting between two staff at a university in a Chinese restaurant which follows a complaint of sexual harassment by a student against one of them – her art lecturer.Quote, unquote:She sat at home and shook, her cheeks flushed, her eyes bright with tears. When she had pulled herself together, she would go and have a shower and soak out the fatal coils, reduce them to streaming rat-tails. Her husband came in, unexpected – she had long given up expecting or not expecting him, his movements were unpredictable and unexplained. He came in tentatively, a large, alert, ostentatiously work-wearied man. She looked up at him speechless. He saw her. (Usually he did not.)What was good:I love Matisse so that helps. AS Byatt has a style of writing that is easy to like and these brief bite-sized pieces make an enjoyable trio. The description of the changed look in the hairdressers is wonderful. The portrayal of a middle-aged woman’s rage and then the killer comment by her husband to finish the first story is truly magnificent. There is irony aplenty in the punchline for the second tale, while the third has a wonderful central character who is present only through her letters as a third party to the conversation taking place.What wasn't good:Well, they are very short stories and fairly one-dimensional. Looking back a couple of months on, I can’t say my view of the world has been dramatically changed or given a new perspective by what I read. But then these stories weren’t intended to.
—Tim Cole
