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| Suggested alternate title: The Selfie Painter. A decent story that unintentionally sheds much light into the narcissistic trends of contemporary American women. |
For my next book, however, I decided to go a completely different route, and try something contemporary. After all, I intend to be a contemporary writer, since I can be no other kind, and it behooves me to some degree to keep abreast of certain trends and fashions, if not to imitate them, but at lest be aware of them.
As it happens, the Kindle provides one with plenty of suggestions for current fiction by means of the splash page when the device is inactive. Moreover it is always handy with "suggestions for you" when you are on your own library page.
When I saw The Art Forger, a recent work of fiction by B.A. Shapiro, listed among the suggestions for me, I knew immediately that this was the next book I wanted to read.
It happens that I had actually seen the author speak, three and half years ago as part of the Tucson Book Festival while I was visiting my aunt and uncle in March 2013. My Aunt Marie suggested I would enjoy the festival, which takes place annually on the University of Arizona campus, and I readily accepted the suggestion, driving over there one day while I was in town. I wrote a blog post about it at the time.
The author, B.A. Shapiro, was speaking in three-woman panel of authors on the subject of the writing of historical fiction. Her novel takes place in the present day, which it has flashbacks to a hundred years in the past in the world of the French community of artists associated with Degas. For this and other reasons, Shapiro was compelled to do much historical research for the book, and in the talk I saw, she was giving pointers to other people.
Given the irony that I was now living in Arizona, and was in the midst of pursuing my own historical fiction project, it seemed like the perfect thing to do, to pay homage to that original roundabout inspiration, and that chapter of my life, by reading Shapiro's book.
The book is an imaginative and entirely fictional story based on the real-life unsolved art theft at the Isabella Stewart Gardner museum in Boston in 1990.
The protagonist is a young woman, a talented artist, who is secretly hired to make a reproduction of one of the stolen paintings. The painting she is hired to reproduce is a fictional work of Edward Degas.
The story has the feel of a page-turner, detective story. It does not purport to offer a solution to actual theft. Instead it explores a fictional relationship (via fictional letters and journals) between the real Isabella Stewart Gardner and Edward Degas, to explain the origin of the fictional Degas work.
Thus in considering the story as historical fiction, we have truly fictional historical fiction. By this I mean that the history within the story entirely outside of reality. There is no grounds to suppose that any relationship existed between Isabella Stewart Gardner and Edward Degas. It is all imagined. Pretty much the only thing that is real is the theft.
I make this distinction between the project I am undertaking is definitely not of this kind of historical fiction. Instead it is intended to be the kind of historical fiction that hews as closely as possible to known fact, and which fictionalizes only when necessary to (1) bring color to the narrative of characters by actions, thoughts and dialogues; and more significance, (2) explain by conjecture the motives and relationships between characters
Shaprio wanted to write a compelling page turner. I have a completely different objective, which is to bring to life personages of history such as to shed light on history itself, so as to bring a new and fresh interpretation to known people and events. I am not historian, but a storyteller. So I must fictionalize.
All my "history" must be fact, as solidly as possible. I feel at liberty to fill in gaps, but I don't want to pave over fact with fiction. If something is unknown, then I can make a conjecture in that gap. But I must know that it is not known. I must determine as much where fact and history leave off, so that I can cantilever fact into a hypothetical situation that brings light into the dark and unknown places in a way that is plausible.
For example, before I knew the address of William Harriman's business at 95 Thames Street, I was formulated possible fictional locations, because I didn't know that in fact it was known. Once I did find out this fact, it was incumbent upon me to hew to this fact in the story. This is not a burden but a joy since it turns out that reality furnishes far more interesting twists and turns that my imagination could conjure. But this requires diligent research to find out where fact ends and the blankness of the unknown begins. Only at that edge can I begin to fill in the gap with conjecture.
I consider myself in this way to have the same kind of task as a prosecutor at a trial, who must furnish a hypothetical scenario of a crime based on known evidence. In this case, we expect the prosecutor to fill in the gaps of motive by conjecture if necessary, to build a case. But the evidence itself must be fact, and we must know when we are in the realm of conjecture.
All of this is extremely important for me, for reasons I cannot explain at the moment, not the least of which is to furnish something as near to history as possible.
All historical movies are historical fiction in this way. We never know "exactly what happened." A movie about Abraham Lincoln, for example, cannot duplicate his exact words and his exact movements. It must necessarily fictionalize (Lincoln will be a character in the Harriman story, most certainly).
As for Shapiro's novel itself, like I said, it was a good page-turner. But reading it reminded me of how little reward I find in reading most contemporary fiction. Among other things, the heroine was completely empty and unsympathetic to me. Despite the interesting plot, I really didn't care what happened to the protagonist. I didn't buy at all that she was a real person, let alone a real artist.
"It's the same woman in every book," I told Red, in reference to the trends of contemporary fiction that I had exposed myself to over the last few years.
"She's always young, pretty, smart, talented more intelligent than all the men around her. She's hip and self-aware about it in everything she does. And completely self-absorbed. She begins the story by swearing off relationships altogether, but in the end, she has fantastic sex. She is worldly and well traveled. She inspires jealously in other women. She hangs around with cool people and does cool things. The world is her oyster. Men are at her feet. Everything she does is meant to elucidate the response---aren't I so awesome? She has no true frailties or weaknesses that give one traction to see her a s real person. She's the perfect model for the narcissistic and vacuous young young women of the Facebook generation trolling for likes with her selfies."
Red unfortunately knew exactly what I meant, even though she couldn't remember details of the book from when she read it a couple years back.
Even in the subject matter of the book---a fictional painting of nude woman in a bath, we get a hint towards the selfie obsession of modern young women. In the end, the world revolves around me. In that way the novel is a more informative about our times without a meta awareness of this importance. But isn't literature always that way?
That's what sells right now I guess. At least it makes for an easy read. It took three weeks to read Moll Flanders. I didn't want to go any faster than that. I got through The Art Forger in two days. Like I said, a good page turner. Shapiro can tell a good story, and as a creative mind to make up history out of whole cloth. I did not regret reading it, and I would read another of her books, but my time is so freaking precious.
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