Top 10s

Check out some interesting Top 10s lists at The Guardian. I've been busy watching the Olympics, but the Battle of the Sexes list caught my eye. I guess only modern fiction was on the agenda, but not including Taming of the Shrew is a missed opportunity.

Dolnick's The Forger's Spell

If this painting strikes you as being similar to a Vermeer, you're right. If this strikes as BEING a Vermeer, you're emphatically wrong. Above is the most famous painting by the most notorious forger of the 20th century, one Han Van Meegeren, morphine addict, womanizer, oh, and artist for Nazi Herman Goebbels.

The most fascinating aspect of this tale is that Van Meegeren's paintings were not even good. In fact, they were horrible (and made out of plastic). Van Meegeren's genius lay in his ability to play the best odds, and he really knew his audience.

Before Van Meegeren cast his net, The Dutch of the 1930s had fallen in love with Vermeer becuase of the calm, serene qualities of his paintings. The paintings that were popular then, and popular now, were his 'domestic' pictures: The Milkmaid, The Girl With a Pearl Earring. These paintings, however, were not as popular during Vermeer's lifetime, as people during the 17th century favored paintings of a more grander contemplation. Paintings of high quality back then depicted mythological or biblical themes, but Vermeer painted these, too, they're just not as popular, or as well known. Vermeer's early paintings are similar to Caravaggio's, an Italian painter known for his gritty scenes and chiarascuro. Vermeer's brilliant use of light probably stems from his early studies of Caravaggio's paintings.

By the time Van Meegeren came along, art critics were wondering about the connection between Vermeer's early biblical paintings and his later work. Van Meegeren, sly dog, provided the link. Notice in the above picture that the light comes from the left, as in many of Vermeer's later work. Yellow and blue are central to the color scheme, as they are in later Vermeer paintings. The pointilism on the bread (though really sloppy here) recalls the same element on the bread in The Milkmaid (a much more convincing example). However, the scene depicts Christ and his apostles, which provides the critical link to the earlier paintings. Oh, and it's a similar scene to one that Caravaggio painted.

Christ at Emmaeus fails in many ways, too, but Van Meegeren's victims would not discern these until later. The characters look like corpses with large eyes (considered popular in the 1930s), and the fabric of the clothes and tablecloth hang with the flexibility of wood. The figure in the front, in the yellow, has an inhumanly long arm hanging from a stovepipe sleeve. This, though, is the best picture of the six that Van Meegeren delivered to his gullible crowd. By the time the last painting was 'discoved,' it looked like perhaps Vermeer had painted the thing with his feet - while unconscious in a drunken stupor. Still, Van Meegeren would have gotten away with it, if Joop Pillar, an Amsterdam policeman, hadn't come come knocking at Van Meegeren's mansion door...

The best of Edward Dolnick's story is yet to come, and reading The Forger's Spell is a must for anyone who ever wondered about the forgery of fine art.

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Help Wordsmiths

I first went to Wordsmiths in Decatur a few months ago for the pub date of David Fulmer's most recent (and wonderful) novel The Blue Door. I'd heard about it for years, but hadn't made my way over there. When I walked in, I knew I'd been missing out. Wordsmiths is a beautiful bookstore with wide open spaces and plenty of shelves full of great books. It's tucked away in an old buiding right off the square in Decatur, and it's a grand place to wander with a cup of coffee on a Saturday afternoon.

The store is in trouble, and not because of low sales, but because of debt. The owner has asked for donations to keep the store open. He's not just asking for handouts, though, he's going to offer store credit or discounts in exchange.

Atlanta has some wonderful independent bookstores - Eagle Eye, Atlanta Book Exchange, Books Again, Wordsmiths - and they're worth preserving, whatever the cost. I grew up riding my bike with a few bucks and an empty bag to the Oxford Book Store on Peachtree. I would sit for a few hours and eat a blueberry muffin, drink a sprite, and read a book. Those are some of my fondest memories of childhood. Oxford is gone down now, and folks around here talk about the loss of the store like one would talk about a dead relative. Wordsmiths' has worked its way into Atlanta' s hearts and bookshelves like Oxford did, and I think it's worth a few bucks (or definitely more) to help save it. One could look at the situation as owner Zachary Steele just trying to save his own shirt, but a lot goes when an independent closes, and I would prefer not to see any more shut down around here. Atlanta's a funny town, we like our flash and new cars, but we also like community, and you find that in the good old independents - like Wordsmiths.

You can donate on the Wordsmiths homepage.

Gil Adamson's The Outlander

I lead a book club in town, and I get paid in ARCs (advanced reading copies), which is fine by me. In my perfect world, books are currency. After thumbing through a variety of novels to choose the ones I want after each meeting, it is shocking to discover that so many of the ARCs have been written by the same author. Nabakov famously said, and this is misquoted, that there are two authors out there: me and everyone else. I think he's right, though now I would say that there is only one - everyone else. The prose of so many modern novels is pathetically familiar and mind-numbingly boring. The "I" of so much modern fiction must surely be the same person. I could wax on in frustration for a while, but I'll get positive and talk about how refreshingly new The Outlander is.

With her poet's eye and razor sharp observations, it is as if the world has been recreated in Gil Adamson's beautiful novel. The haunted Widow flees headlong through the night, spying ghouls and nightmares on her journey. She is running from her brothers-in-law, who want retribution. The Widow has killed her husband, and the brothers have decided that she must pay. Along the way she meets various and sundry characters, each representing a phase of her former life. As she encounters them, she also encounters parts of herself.

If the suspense weren't stellar, or there at all, the lyrical language would drive you to keep turning the pages. Adamson's poetical triumphs stem from her ability to describe something just as exactly as it is, but in a completely original way.

You won't find this book in the big box stores, and it's possible that The Outlander could founder on a few dusty shelves somewhere without making it's way into our personal libraries, and this is a shame. Buy this book on Amazon or order it at your local independent. It's just that good.

Nathan McCall's Them

Them is a tremendous book, not only because it speaks to a major issue affecting inner-cities, but because it pulls back the veil between black and white cultures. McCall deftly investigates the stereotypes of the blacks and whites who live in urban areas. No one is safe from McCall's realistic pen: the community organizer/civil rights activist is really arrogant and motivated by personal aims; the white members of the neighborhood clean-up league would rather get together for a cocktail and talk about the dangerous community than work with their black neighbors. What you think makes a diverse neighborhood tick is not always the case, as McCall reveals the complex cultural negotiations that go on everyday in these mixed areas. At points humorous, at others maddening, this novel will change the way you think about your inner-city 'hood.

Vacay

Just swept back in from an awesome few days at the beach. Good times by the pool, on the beach, and on the boat.

Spent the majority of the reading time ensconced in Weir's The Six Wives of Henry VIII. Also made a visit to a used book store in Daytona Beach, FL. Picked up a few nice books, including Wharton's The Reef, Hoeg's The History of Danish Dreams, and a double biography about More and Wolsey called The Statesman and Saint by Jasper Ridley.

More bookish focused business tomorrow...

Tudor Trivia

As discussed in previous posts, I am obsessed with Tudor history, and I'm blissfully making my way through Alison Weir's Six Wives of Henry VIII. Here are a few interesting facts.

1. Anne Boleyn had six fingers. (One diplomat described it as an additional nail on one side of one of her fingers, but others, including Margaret Roper, Sir Thomas More's daughter, called it a finger.)

2. Katherine of Aragon was married to Arthur, Henry's older brother, for six months before he died of consumption (tuberculosis). He was ill the entire marriage. Many of Katherine's contemporaries and modern historians believe that the marriage was not consummated, which is hard to believe in this day and age. Arthur's bluffs, like "I spent the night in Spain," which he is reputed to have said the morning after his wedding night, were probably just bluffs - a young man trying to save face.

3. Katherine of Aragon was pregnant definitely six, but maybe eight, times. Only one child survived infancy - Princess Mary.

4. Both Henry and Katherine had blond hair. (She is always depicted in modern films has having black hair, but this might be because popular imagination expects a Spanish woman to have black hair. Plus, blond hair is considered a trait of the English, and she is not usually thought of as an English Queen. Her step-granddaughter, Elizabeth, the most English of Queens, is always depicted with having blonde hair, which she actually did.)

5. Katherine maintained her Spanish accent throughout her life. We know this because of her phonetic spellings of English words. (Spelling was largely unstandardized at the time.) For example, she spelled Hampton Court, 'AntonCurt.'

6. Before he became overweight and burdened with gout, Henry was about 6'2'' with long lean muscles and 'beautiful' calves, of which he was very proud. (He even boasted that there was no way the French King could have as beautiful calves as his.)

7. Anne Boleyn's bones were found in the 19th century during a renovation of the church where she was buried. Her head was neatly cut from her body, and she had 'small, delicate bones.'

8. Henry VIII was ironically pronounced Fidei Defensor, Defender of the Faith, by the Pope, a title that Elizabeth II still holds.

9. Henry VIII supposedly discussed divorce in the late 1510s, long before he met Anne Boleyn, because his conscience was so troubled about breaking Levitican law. According to Leviticus, no man should marry his brother's wife, or God would damn them childlessness. Henry believed that he was childless because he had no sons by Katherine, which proved to him that his marriage was sinful.

10. Katherine of Aragon was the daughter of King Ferdinand and Queen Isabella of Christopher Colombus fame.

(In the picture, Katherine of Aragon pleads with Henry for understanding during the trial to determine the viability of Henry's petition for divorce.)