{"id":9302,"date":"2013-05-06T12:01:05","date_gmt":"2013-05-06T16:01:05","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/mookseandgripes.com\/reviews\/?p=9302"},"modified":"2013-05-07T12:58:51","modified_gmt":"2013-05-07T16:58:51","slug":"fiona-mcfarlane-art-appreciation","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mookseandgripes.com\/reviews\/2013\/05\/06\/fiona-mcfarlane-art-appreciation\/","title":{"rendered":"Fiona McFarlane: “Art Appreciation”"},"content":{"rendered":"

Click here<\/a> to read the abstract of the story on The New Yorker<\/em> webpage (this week\u2019s story is available only for subscribers). Fiona McFarlane’s \u201cArt Appreciation\u201d was originally published in the May 13, 2013 issue of The New Yorker<\/em>.<\/p>\n

\"May<\/p>\n

Betsy<\/strong><\/p>\n

Fiona McFarlane makes this remark to interviewer Deborah Treisman about Henry,\u00a0her\u00a0main character in “Art Appreciation”:<\/p>\n

I had in mind a line from \u201cBrideshead Revisited,\u201d in which Julia Flyte says of Rex Mottram, \u201cHe wasn\u2019t a complete human being at all. He was a tiny bit of one, unnaturally developed.\u201d I wanted to take a man like that — a blank sort of man, living a fairly circumscribed life with quiet arrogance — and see what he would make of something extraordinary.<\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

The question is, does Henry realize what it is that is extraordinary?\u00a0He thinks it is the little lottery winnings his mother has won and is willing to share with him.\u00a0What is extraordinary, though, is that any girl would have him.\u00a0It is possible that by the end of the story his fianc\u00e9 has wrought some changes in him\u00a0— but then again, maybe not. The prose is so understated that the reader\u2019s job is sort out McFarlane\u2019s attitude.<\/p>\n

Ellie is the girl who is willing to have Henry.<\/p>\n

Why would we want to see a girl choose a man who isn\u2019t a complete human being? Perhaps it is because McFarlane means us to see how Ellie is poised at the edge of a cliff\u00a0— how perhaps she might be able to save herself from Henry, \u00a0given that she has this lifeboat —\u00a0her idea of art. Or perhaps Henry is such a nonentity that he will give Ellie plenty of room to maneuver, and she has chosen him somewhat knowingly.<\/p>\n

Henry is a dreary kind of man who lives his life with boring regularity: the dog track on Friday nights, respectful time with his mother, and a mistress \/easy girl for Sunday nights. He is the kind of man who is defined by his taste in restaurants:<\/p>\n

He went to a place near the station where he often liked to eat after work. The whole establishment felt boiled — boiled meat, wet raincoats and the undersides of shoes.<\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Ellie has chosen a safe man with what looks like safe habits, although the reader is not particularly convinced that he is also not going to be dangerous to Ellie\u2019s health.<\/p>\n

Unlike the reckless vision of Lethem\u2019s tale last week, we have in McFarlane\u2019s story limits on tone, limits on access to Ellie\u2019s character, limits to the main character himself, and limits on vision. There\u2019s a complicated novel here for the reader to write about the possibilities for growth in either Henry or Ellie or their marriage. Whether Henry is capable of tolerating Ellie\u2019s growth does not appear actually possible. What is possible, though, is that Ellie might choose to limit her own growth to save her marriage. What will happen after the curtain falls is what\u2019s interesting.\u00a0Ellie has married a very narrow man, and she has thus put herself in a fair amount of danger.\u00a0At the same time, I have to wonder if it is Ellie who has made the knowing match, and if it is Henry who is in danger.\u00a0The severe understatement of this story provides numerous lines of inquiry\u00a0— if you can stick with a story that starts with a man who isn\u2019t really, in the author\u2019s description, \u00a0\u201ca complete human being at all.\u201d Finally, the story forces you to ask if Henry, Ellie, or their marriage will have what it will take to survive the sixties.<\/p>\n

Trevor<\/strong><\/p>\n

Thanks, Betsy, for getting your thoughts up here so quickly! I have never heard of Fiona McFarlane before, so I’m excited to get to know her work. Her first novel, The Night Guess<\/em>, comes out in October, and this is apparently not an excerpt! It’s a relatively long story, but I’ll have\u00a0my thoughts up soon (I know I said that last week, but after hearing what others thought of “The Gray Goose” I lost steam and haven’t even tried it yet — I will read this one soon).<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Click here to read the abstract of the story on The New Yorker webpage (this week\u2019s story is available only for subscribers). Fiona McFarlane’s \u201cArt Appreciation\u201d was originally published in the May 13, 2013 issue of The New Yorker. Betsy Fiona McFarlane makes this remark to interviewer Deborah Treisman about Henry,\u00a0her\u00a0main character in “Art Appreciation”: … Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"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":"","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":[412,94],"tags":[],"coauthors":[],"class_list":["post-9302","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-fiona-mcfarlane","category-new-yorker-fiction"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pqqvZ-2q2","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":false,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mookseandgripes.com\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9302","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=9302"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/mookseandgripes.com\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9302\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":9336,"href":"https:\/\/mookseandgripes.com\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9302\/revisions\/9336"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mookseandgripes.com\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=9302"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mookseandgripes.com\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=9302"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mookseandgripes.com\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=9302"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mookseandgripes.com\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/coauthors?post=9302"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}