The Great Man: A Novel [Hardcover]

 

 

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I'm rather amazed by some of the cover blurbs. Because really, what's inside does not merit such acclaim.

There is a helluva lot of 'telling' going on here. A ton of didactic spewing of information that is, at its core, waaaaay too primitive for a writer with the talents of Ms Christensen. Considering the premise, the characters she's created, some of the interplay between them is so frustrating, so shallow...

*takes a deep breath*

I was expecting much more than superficial mush. Where, oh where were her editors in all of this...?

Christensen's The Great Man begins with a newspaper obituary on the self absorbed, narcissistic and totally egotistical, artist Oscar Feldman. Driven by painting the various permutations of the female body, women for Oscar were the ultimate expression of truth and beauty and he painted them as complex and earthy, and never idealized or purely sexualized.

Oscar was also a self-confessed womanizer and hedonist, and throughout much of his life he left a trail of emotional wreckage behind him, particularly with regard to the three women who most influenced the tangled web of his life. Oscar's mistress, the glamorous Claire "Teddy" St. Cloud, ultimately thought of Oscar as the biggest human baby in all of history, and spent much of her life propping up his ego.

Once a prestigious secretary, Teddy now spends most of her days reminiscing with her best friend Lila and feeling mostly "like a well-worn old leather handbag." Her mind packed with memories containing full half-formed doubts and subtle truths about her life with Oscar. She's also wary of Oscar's two new biographers Henry Burke and Ralph Washington who are nosing around Oscar's family and friends and stirring up the pot in hopes of getting information about him for their respective books.

While Teddy willingly admits that never really grieved for Oscar; she just went on after he died, Oscar's wife Abigail has become a cloistered and aging widow, left to care for their severely autistic son Edgar who is now in his forties who ended taking up all of her time and energy.

Life for Abigail is about books and regret (she once had planed to get a graduate degree in literature and become a professor) and the sudden realization that, although she loved Oscar, he wasn't really the type of husband that she could have wished for and part of the issue was probably that he just couldn't live without a woman in his life.

Meanwhile, Maxine, Oscar's octogenarian lesbian sister holds an unexplained grudge against Teddy. For years she has ignored Teddy's daughters and when asked why, she says she just chalks it up to a complete lack of interest. She also views Teddy as "that little husband thief," who ended up being so controlling of her brother. For her part, Teddy suddenly wants to reconcile with Maxine after so many years of this unofficial "cold war."

A long-thwarted ambitious person who tends to be suddenly much nicer when she gets the attention she feels she deserved, Maxine is a truculent, bitter and bombastic old maid who was once a sort of artistic rival to her brother. She's also the first to admit to Henry and Ralph that Oscar was not as nearly as smart as he thought he was - he had an inflated opinion of his own intellect, and he had no idea how limited he really was.

Kate Christensen, does an entertaining job of skewering each woman's point of view as they try to set the record straight and in the process paint a picture of a quick tempered and passionate man, who, while he loved his women, didn't really treat any of them that well. Of course, when the unexpected suddenly comes to light among the living, the inevitable confrontation takes place and the sticky web of Maxine's long held grudge is gradually revealed.

As with her earlier novels, Christensen's strength is in her ability to present fully fleshed out and flawed characters, while also imbuing them with a witty and sardonic intelligence that it is impossible not to admire even when they are not particularly likable. We know that Maxine is tired and bitter and somewhat resentful of her brother's fame and that Teddy has enjoyed her independence and freedom over the years, but also regrets Oscar's commitment to her.

Meanwhile, the poor Abigail has spend the latter half of her life selfish for small moments of comfort and security in a world that seems to be rapidly devoid of both. Her main feelings about Teddy, besides a natural and uncontrollable jealousy, had been curiosity. Teddy had been the antithesis of Abigail for Oscar, a type of "overflow valve" to catch all of Oscar's excess appetite and energy their marriage failed to absorb and feed.

A mélange of astute observations on the New York art world and also a wry and cynical look at the power of love and the balance of authority in relationships, The Great Man absolutely brims with verbal dynamics as these three "leftovers" from Oscar's life must face some inevitable truths about him, even when it is just too painful.

This novel is about the overblown artistic ego as these "four smart old bags," with plenty to think about, fixate on a putz of a brother, who's been dead for almost five years, and in the end, wasn't particularly nice to any of them. Mike Leonard August 07.

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