The Goldfinch by Donna Tartt - rvw by P Budgie for Treedown Gotobed blogspot
Donna Tartt does not churn them out - this is her third novel published in the last 30 years - The Secret History announced the literary sensation to the world in 1992 - selling 5m odd copies. In the 760 pages of the hardback edition of her latest work, she is attempting to deal with many weighty subjects of the day, which is not easy. Our world is changing ever faster with the development of communication technology. When you consider the works referred to in The Goldfinch it is apparent she is aiming high from the company she seeks to keep. The picture itself is a masterwork by an obscure Flemish artist - Fabritius - who is the direct link between Rembrandt and Vermeer. The book itself uses the caged bird as an emblem in the same way as Keats, Shelley and Blake;
To see a world in a grain of sand
And a heaven in a wild flower
Hold infinity in the palm of your hand
And eternity in an hour
But a robin redbreast in a cage
Puts all heaven in a rage...
As for prose, there is clearly one book this must be compared to; Dostoyevsky's The Idiot. She alludes to it as the tale nears its conclusion in the same place it begins - Xmas time Amsterdam. "Well, Idiot was very disturbing book to me," says central character, Russian moral loose canon Boris. The ensuing discussion summarises the Idiot's theme; to do good does not always mean good things will result. How much more difficult are these moral dilemmas in 2014 than they were in 1860, 1950 or any other time in history. The Goldfinch is based around a morally questionable act, the taking of a masterpiece from the MOMA in the chaos and debris following an explosion in the bookshop. This is the only time the book reflects that most 21st century threat, the third world terrorist destroying buildings and inevitably killing strangers in the name of religion.
The characters are all such 21st century beings, our teenage narrator, Theo, struggles terribly. His attachment to Boris results in endless drinking, thieving, and girl obsessions. Only Hobie, the furniture and art restorer to whose orbit our narrator is drawn, represents past centuries' certainties; working the wood and grain of a table leg, re-varnishing a picture in the same way it's always been done, even with a hint of a cheat to make it look older than it is, perhaps concealed within his work. Theo, travels from NYC and trust fund wealth to a weird and wild few years with Boris his only friend, living on the fringes of the desert with his father, who is making a shaky living as a gambler in the casinos of Las Vegas. And then back to New York, to be reunited with the security and social stultification of The Barbours, who take him in as an orphan, and an engagement to one of the offspring. And all the while the stolen painting lurks in the background, stashed away, hopefully safe from damage, debt collectors and dodgy teenagers.
The explosion not only has the effect of giving Theo the eponymous masterpiece, he also loses his life's one real constant, his rock; his mother. Its third consequence is to introduce him to his life's love - the young girl at it's time - Pippa.
Theo becomes a drug addict almost by accident, pecking at a snatched bag of pills like they were smarties - how about a red one ? or a green one? And his beloved painting becomes mixed up in the shady world of drug deals, sex deals and people deals that go on in the realms of today's dark side. The one ever constant in this world of shifting sands, rough seas, of betrayal, double dealing and dishonesty, is the things, the art we leave behind. For some, life becomes entwined with the preservation of these objects of desire and beauty. But to the work of art, to The Goldfinch,and the artists that create them, we are mere ciphers of the future.
Here's a couple of extracts from this tremendous page turner..The first is almost thrown away , nothing much is happening, but Theo is in the midst of drug withdrawal and some of the certainties on which his self confidence depends have been whisked from under him, like a table cloth pulled so fast it leaves all the cups and saucers still standing on the table, but the tall glasses are wobbling precariously . This paragraph is magic, its sweep a microcosm of the vast array of human experience, works and thought that is touched on in the book, pointing to the infinities Blake may be referring to in the poem quoted above.
This second page is another lovely example of Donna Tartt's talent of bringing a clever idea about art into the centre of the action, without any feeling you are in a digression. This idea that all great art touches you on a personal level is so skilfully delivered. And how true it is of books like this one, as well as bands, plays, poems, songs. They speak to you . Tolstoy would regularly hold the action in War and Peace while he inserted long essay about military tactics. Dostoyevsky similarly would divert from the narrative to insert passages about ideology. That other great tome known to all graduates of American Literature, Moby Dick, has chapters devoted purely to the various processes that were part of the whaling profession in the 18th century. Tartt repeats herself slightly in the enjoyable last 10 pages that act as a summary of ideas. The action has concluded to all intents. The delightful piece on the way The Goldfinch has been created, the use of the brush and the blunt, scalpel like application of some of the paint, has already been discussed in Horst's drug den, in a joyously intellectual and knowledgeable level at odds with the environment. But I enjoyed the analysis of the work so much, I was happy to read it again.
Having finished the 760 pages in about three weeks, I immediately returned to the beginning to start again. My main objective was to find out when you first learn the sex of the narrator. I still cannot identify anything within the first ten pages. You try.
