{"id":12046,"date":"2010-06-21T11:53:30","date_gmt":"2010-06-21T15:53:30","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/mookseandgripes.com\/reviews\/?p=12046"},"modified":"2016-06-10T16:01:11","modified_gmt":"2016-06-10T20:01:11","slug":"nicole-krauss-the-young-painters","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mookseandgripes.com\/reviews\/2010\/06\/21\/nicole-krauss-the-young-painters\/","title":{"rendered":"Nicole Krauss: “The Young Painters”"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"The Young Painters\"<\/strong><\/span>\r\nby Nicole Krauss<\/span>\r\nOriginally published in the June 28, 2010 issue of The New Yorker<\/em>.<\/span>\r\nClick <\/span>here<\/a> to read the story in its entirety on The New Yorker <\/em>webpage.<\/span><\/pre>\n
\"Click<\/a><\/p>\n
Last week’s double issue featured eight of the twenty authors selected in The New Yorker<\/em>‘s “20 Under 40.”\u00a0The other twelve authors will be featured in the next twelve issues, starting with this one where we get a very short work by Nicole Krauss.<\/p>\n
A few years ago, my wife read and enjoyed Krauss’s second novel History of Love<\/em>.\u00a0My recollection is that she didn’t enjoy it enough\u00a0that I wanted to read it right away. As happens, time keeps passing and I still haven’t picked it up. This may have to change now.\u00a0At any rate, I really want to read her forthcoming book Great House<\/em>, because I really enjoyed this short story, and this short story is part of that book.\u00a0“The Young Painters”\u00a0showed me that Krauss knows how to write and isn’t just stringing vapid sentences together as many others are, I feel.<\/p>\n
\"\"This story starts out within an interesting frame: some unknown narrator is speaking to a judge. When it begins, we have no idea why:<\/p>\n
Four or five years after we got married, Your Honor, S. and I were invited to a dinner party at the home of a German dancer, who was then living in New York.<\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n
It’s a simple opening made much richer\u00a0when we know the\u00a0narrator is\u00a0speaking to a judge.\u00a0The narrator goes on to tell the judge what occurred at this\u00a0dinner party. Basically, nothing.\u00a0It was normal.\u00a0But when the narrator sees a picture hanging in the home, she asks who painted it.\u00a0The German dancer said it was a friend, long ago, when they were both children, only nine, in fact. The friend and his eleven year old sister (who, the dancer says, probably did most of the painting) gave the painting to him\u00a0not too long before their mother\u00a0gave them sleeping pills and took them into a pine forest for a murder\/suicide.<\/p>\n
The narrator, we soon learn, is a writer and cannot let go of this story.\u00a0How could this happen?\u00a0It troubles her\u00a0for a long time.<\/p>\n
At that time, S. and I were thinking of having a child.\u00a0 But there were always things that we felt we had to work out first in our own lives, together and separately, and time simply passed without bringing any resolution, or a clearer sense of how we might go about being something more than what we were already struggling to be.<\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n
I think that is a remarkable sentence that ends with such a sad admission.\u00a0This story, this admission to\u00a0some silent\u00a0judge, is\u00a0very rich for these incites into the writer’s\u00a0life.\u00a0This is important because soon after hearing this\u00a0tragic story of murder and suicide, the\u00a0narrator writes it up\u00a0and publishes it, finally feeling some closure on that matter only to be shocked by a new feeling of guilt. She cannot bear to face the German dancer again, though she doesn’t really feel she has done anything wrong:<\/p>\n
Yes, I believed — perhaps even still believe — that the writer should not be cramped by the possible consequences of her work.\u00a0She has no duty to earthly accuracy or verisimilitude.\u00a0She is not an accountant, nor is she required to be something as ridiculous and misguided as a moral compass.\u00a0In her work, the writer is free of laws.\u00a0But in her life, Your Honor, she is not free.<\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n
The story is not simply about writer’s guilt.\u00a0This is a rich look at a narrator’s conscience as it is battered on several sides.\u00a0The writing is strong throughout and contains several layers.\u00a0One of the best of the bunch so far.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
This week’s New Yorker fiction is Nicole Krauss’s “The Young Painters.” Read the full post<\/u><\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":18626,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"libsyn-item-id":0,"libsyn-show-id":0,"libsyn-post-error":"","libsyn-post-error_post-type":"","libsyn-post-error_post-permissions":"","libsyn-post-error_api":"","playlist-podcast-url":"","libsyn-episode-thumbnail":"","libsyn-episode-widescreen_image":"","libsyn-episode-blog_image":"","libsyn-episode-background_image":"","libsyn-post-episode-category-selection":"","libsyn-post-episode-player_use_thumbnail":"","libsyn-post-episode-player_use_theme":"","libsyn-post-episode-player_height":"","libsyn-post-episode-player_width":"","libsyn-post-episode-player_placement":"","libsyn-post-episode-player_use_download_link":"","libsyn-post-episode-player_use_download_link_text":"","libsyn-post-episode-player_custom_color":"","libsyn-post-episode-itunes-explicit":"","libsyn-post-episode":"","libsyn-post-episode-update-id3":"","libsyn-post-episode-release-date":"","libsyn-post-episode-simple-download":"","libsyn-release-date":"","libsyn-post-update-release-date":"","libsyn-is_draft":"","libsyn-new-media-media":"","libsyn-post-episode-subtitle":"","libsyn-new-media-image":"","libsyn-post-episode-keywords":"","libsyn-post-itunes":"","libsyn-post-episode-itunes-episode-number":"","libsyn-post-episode-itunes-season-number":"","libsyn-post-episode-itunes-episode-type":"","libsyn-post-episode-itunes-episode-title":"","libsyn-post-episode-itunes-episode-author":"","libsyn-destination-releases":"","libsyn-post-episode-advanced-destination-form-data":"","libsyn-post-episode-advanced-destination-form-data-enabled":"","libsyn-post-episode-advanced-destination-form-data-input-enabled":false,"libsyn-post-episode-premium_state":"","libsyn-episode-shortcode":"","libsyn-episode-embedurl":"","_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"Nicole Krauss: \"The Young Painters\"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[94,214],"tags":[998],"coauthors":[505],"class_list":["post-12046","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-new-yorker-fiction","category-nicole-krauss","tag-2010-new-yorker-fiction"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/mookseandgripes.com\/reviews\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/06\/The-Young-Painters.jpg?fit=1063%2C1200&ssl=1","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pqqvZ-38i","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":false,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mookseandgripes.com\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12046","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mookseandgripes.com\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mookseandgripes.com\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mookseandgripes.com\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mookseandgripes.com\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=12046"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/mookseandgripes.com\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12046\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":18633,"href":"https:\/\/mookseandgripes.com\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12046\/revisions\/18633"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mookseandgripes.com\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/18626"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mookseandgripes.com\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=12046"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mookseandgripes.com\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=12046"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mookseandgripes.com\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=12046"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mookseandgripes.com\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/coauthors?post=12046"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}