LETTERS From CAMP Rehoboth |
Booked Solid |
by Constant Reader |
VANITAS, Joseph Olshan, Simon & Schuster, 288pp, $23.00 At one time or another many of us have fallen in love with a painting. But to fall in love with the subject of a painting? Thats the premise that Joseph Olshan sets for protagonist Sam Cardamon in this, his most current, novel. Dying with AIDS, art dealer Elliot Garland has made the decision to publish his memoirs. After a terse interview in his art-filled apartment, he hires Sam Cardamon to be his ghostwriter. It develops that Garland has quite a few secrets in his life, including a falsely authenticated 19th century French painting that nearly destroyed his career. His contentiousness and insistence that this and much else that is not flattering in his life places Sam in an uncomfortable predicament for someone committed to the truth in telling the story. Hanging on the bathroom wall of Garlands apartment Sam sees a fine charcoal pencil drawing of a male nude, "lying in bed, the torso impeccably drawn with shadows that suggested the ridges of musculature, as well as the hollows of armpits and pubic hair. The head of the nude was half-hidden by the wreath of arms crossed above like a dancers port de bras. The right leg bent at the knees, and the left leg, massive and muscled, splayed outward. The figure itself was cradling a skull that was half-swathed in a rich-looking fabric." Sam is transfixed. Asking Garland about the drawings origins, Sam is told that it is done in the tradition of Vanitas, Latin for vanity. Garland goes on to explain, "Vanitas is a theme in painting that was particularly popular in seventeenth-century Holland. In those days painters would place such things as clocks and dying flowers and skulls in the midst of vibrant scenes of village life to remind us that the everyday secular world was mortal, whereas the world of the spirit was everlasting." Sam is told that the painting is contemporary and done by an artist now living in England. Sent by Garland to London to do interviews and deliver a package to artist Bobby LaCour (yes, it is a somewhat obvious name), Sam stays with an old girlfriend and her five-year-old daughter. Having been lovers but remaining friends, his contact with Jessie and her daughter awakens within him questions about his own bisexuality and desires of parenthood. Meeting and becoming romantically involved with LaCour complicates his questioning about whether it is possible to be in a conventional relationship and have the sense of purpose that can come with being a husband and a father, and at the same time have sexual gratification. Olshan explores these seemingly disparate themes with skill and objectivity. Near the novels end we learn of a singular sexual encounter that Sam has with a beautiful man whom he has idealized and thinks of as an "angel." The imagery haunts him, especially when he learns that the angel has died of AIDS. Their erotic encounter was unprotected sex, making Sam realize his angel could be the angel of death. For years he has stubbornly resisted being tested for HIV because he fears not so much the disease, but rather that testing positive would negate what he feels is one of the most important events of his life. Into this tapestry of modern life and its inevitable dilemmas, Olshan has woven considerable information about the art world and the restoration of paintings. It provides another layer of interest in a book that displays contemporary lives with compassion and the understanding that personal growth can be achieved through agony as well as ecstasy. |
LETTERS From CAMP Rehoboth, Vol. 8, No. 13, September 18, 1998. |