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rushthatspeaksrachelmanija sent me a package containing among other objects Prince of Tides by Pat Conroy, a Harlequin romance entitled Wedlocked: Banished Sheik, Untouched Queen, and a postcard of le portrait présumé de Gabrielle d'Estrées et de sa soeur la duchesse de Villars, 1594. (Painting link probably NSFW although in irreproachable taste due to its age, because a provenance of several centuries makes most things more respectable.) It's amazing how well this all goes together. The painting is, actually, a reasonable metaphor for Prince of Tides: over-the-top and trashy, but with surprising artistic technique and critical credibility, and a story that only makes the entire thing multiple magnitudes weirder. This is, you see, the portrait of Gabrielle d'Estrées made to serve as her announcement to her lover, the King of France, that she was pregnant. The child would of course be illegitimate, but royal, so she's holding but not wearing his signet ring. There's a woman in the background making baby clothes.
And she is of course naked in a bathtub with her sister groping her because her sister is demonstrating that she will be very good at feeding babies. No, really. This is a gesture you can see the Virgin Mary making on herself in various paintings when she's suckling Christ. Of course, the reason it is being performed by somebody else and both of them are totally undraped ladies is because when you are the maîtresse déclarée of the King of France you have something of a reputation to keep up, and also he was probably into that.
So it looks like an extremely formal portrait of sixteenth-century lesbian sex, BUT ACTUALLY it's an extremely formal portrait of sixteenth-century vaguely suggested lesbian incest serving as a note to a prospective baby-daddy AND a comparison of the subject to the Virgin Mary.
In a similar way, Prince of Tides looks at first glance as though someone has forcibly chained Tennessee Williams to a writing desk and informed him that he is to write Love Story. It is a fusion of the Southern Gothic with the Big Fat Seventies And Eighties Epic Novel, you know, from the people who brought you Shogun; a book that is meant to keep you more entertained than any other seventeen books by being as long as all of them put together and also by having the entirety of their content, pureed. It has a confusing amount of very good descriptions of food, a prose style that is not merely purple and not merely mauve but pretty much Fauvist, and characters who manage to be interesting enough despite the fact that the narrator is not as funny as he thinks he is and spends a bit too long in every chapter reminding you that his childhood was terrible, which, yes, we got that, a narration of events would have proved that. (I am not going to try to give you any kind of narrative summary of this novel. I told you, it has the content of seventeen novels shoved into it.)
Then you look more closely at it, and you go, this is a book in which an eighty-five-year-old man waterskiing forty miles on a bet to win back his suspended drivers' license is an interlude between the chapters in which melodramatic things happen. This is a book which contains, in its entirety, the text of a highly symbolic pseudonymous children's book written by the narrator's tormented-genius twin sister. This is a book which has not one but two scenes involving the narrator being very good at football which are genuinely emotionally effective, even if one does not know the rules of football (and I don't). THIS IS A BOOK IN WHICH SOMEONE BECOMING A VIOLENT ENVIRONMENTAL TERRORIST IS AN ANTI-CLIMAX BECAUSE THE THINGS THAT HAPPENED BEFORE THAT WERE SO MUCH WEIRDER.
This is, in short, a book in which the three escaped convicts who break into the narrator's house and rape him and his mother and his sister are then promptly EATEN BY THEIR BROTHER'S PET BENGAL TIGER, WHOSE CAGE HE DRAGGED TO THE FRONT DOOR OF THE HOUSE. And then, because this is Southern Gothic of the sort that Flannery O'Connor would on some deep level understand, they CLEAN THE ENTIRE HOUSE, BURY THE BODIES IN THE WOODS, AND NEVER TALK ABOUT IT EVER EVER EVER AGAIN until, fifteen years later or so, they all promptly and understandably go crazy.
I knew about this plot point going in. It was even more spectacularly odd than I had been told to expect. It was also genuinely disturbing, in that way where there is a lot of violence in this book and when you pile violence upon violence after a while you are kind of ready to buy something when it goes THAT FAR over the top. It would be way less disturbing if you could even see the top under your feet, you know? This scene is, by itself, so completely outside the boundaries of all plausibility that it almost makes the entire book emotionally believable.
I SAID ALMOST.
You see the analogy to the painting? I mean, that painting is so way the hell over the top that it only wound up in the Louvre.
It is true that, to date, of the things
rachelmanija sent me, so far only one has had the supreme artistic accolade of having a Barbra Streisand movie made out of it. It is, however, not too late. She may, after all, still get around to Banished Sheik, Untouched Queen. I can only hope*.
* (Look, I-- actually went through a Barbra Streisand period, as a young teen, where I saw everything I could get hold of containing her about fifty times each (though not this), and I still quite like her. I am one of the three human beings on the planet to have seen On A Clear Day You Can See Forever more than once. Having read this novel, I don't even have to look up what role she played to tell you that she was horribly, horribly, terribly miscast and that the whole thing cannot have ended well. But if she ever were to film that Harlequin romance novel, I would, in fact, see the movie. I thought I should make that clear at some point in here.)
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no subject
Date: 2011-08-22 08:52 am (UTC)Permission to
Btw, if you don't mind my asking for further exegesis: what's the half-covered painting over the fireplace in the background, and what's its significance?
no subject
Date: 2011-08-22 08:56 am (UTC)The painting in the background is of a mostly naked guy lying around being mostly naked with some red draperies. I assume it's to provide yet another reminder of sex and also may be trying to subliminally add some manliness in there.
no subject
Date: 2011-08-22 09:05 am (UTC)I keep feeling that I ought to recognize the background painting and be able to identify mostly naked guy as symbolizing Mars with Venus, or some such. But this could be because there are quite a lot of paintings of mostly naked guys lying around being mostly naked with red draperies from that era.
no subject
Date: 2011-08-22 02:59 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-08-22 05:03 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-08-22 05:18 pm (UTC)Additionally, the painting hanging in the background is of the lower body of a naked person, but contrary to rumor, he is not holding his penis with his left hand. A piece of red fabric is draped over his genitals.
Additional citations are, however, needed for verification.
no subject
Date: 2011-08-22 09:20 am (UTC)I think I've heard Pat Conroy called the poor man's William Styron, but I can't remember by whom. Mostly I remember him for Great Santini and Lords of Discipline, which really dates me, and not even the books, but the movies when shown on TV. He wrote some essays about military brats I'd love to get hold of, but they're hard to find, apparently.
(A BENGAL TIGER. REALLY. UH, GOODNESS.)
no subject
Date: 2011-08-22 05:08 pm (UTC)Warning for rape, obviously. Also emotional abuse and failure to delve into the total sketchiness of the central romance. (Okay yeah the hero is not technically the therapist heroine's patient, but his sister is and they have suspiciously therapy-like activities.)
no subject
Date: 2011-08-22 12:13 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-08-22 01:59 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-08-22 02:54 pm (UTC)On reflection, it's possible I have brutally repressed the memory of the rest of the plot...
here via the network
Date: 2011-08-22 05:12 pm (UTC)This is, in short, a book in which the three escaped convicts who break into the narrator's house and rape him and his mother and his sister are then promptly EATEN BY THEIR BROTHER'S PET BENGAL TIGER, WHOSE CAGE HE DRAGGED TO THE FRONT DOOR OF THE HOUSE.
I have read and loved this book, which is why I'm wiping the tears away from laughing so hard at all of this. Because yes. This. Exactly.
OH PAT CONROY NO.
no subject
Date: 2011-08-27 05:31 am (UTC)I am one of the three human beings on the planet to have seen On A Clear Day You Can See Forever more than once.
*raises hand* My parents are enamored of both musicals and Barbra, so I was exposed to that movie at an early age. But how could a person NOT love it? It's so trippy and wacky and has an excellent non-smoking agenda and Jack Nicholson as, well...was I the only one who saw him as a bisexual hipster with a thing for his sister? Plus past lives and excellent horticulture and Barbra's immaculate manicure.
Man, now I want to see it again.
no subject
Date: 2011-08-22 11:54 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-08-22 05:09 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-08-22 12:01 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-08-22 03:31 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-08-22 04:04 pm (UTC)Next project: you should write art history.
no subject
Date: 2011-08-22 05:05 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-08-22 04:50 pm (UTC)I am so going to miss these reviews.
Oh yes. That portrait of Gabrielle d'Estrées and her sister. Art historians love teaching that one. Wakes the class up on a Wednesday morning.
Much like your reviews. Something startling, impeccably and wittily set forth.
Nine
no subject
Date: 2011-08-22 07:17 pm (UTC)Word.
---L.
no subject
Date: 2011-08-22 05:00 pm (UTC)You enjoyed this book in basically the same way I enjoyed it - sincere appreciation of both artistry and WTF - and that makes me happy.