@deb922 I read the book about three weeks ago, and I thought Harrison really formed a bond with Eli, almost a friendship, and, grieved his loss.
I recall, the moment I knew Eli was a fraud, during airplane ride, Eli’s skin took on a strange red glow in the sunlight! I knew then. Did Harrison? I can’t recall.
Phoebe’s choice of school seemed perfect. I thought it was a gap year for intellectuals, a place to discover your own path, which fit in with Jhk’s continuing plug for the “ forty schools that change lives” focus- The author really promoted that book- !
Absolutely, that’s beautifully put, and Salo’s collecting makes sense to me, too. The author of the WP article was basically asking the question of why we look at art and dancing around that answer. Of course, art isn’t everybody’s thing–people find salvation in different things–but for Salo it was a lifeline.
This is the painting that gave him the “art attack”:
Eli recognized something in Harrison that made him know that he could draw him into his web of lies … beyond the obvious “beliefs.” What do think it was?
To be honest, that piece of art looks a little like his family’s life! Disjointed, scattered and spattered! (I actually kind of like the painting though)
I don’t have my copy of the book with me today, but will be reunited with it tomorrow, but the book had me looking up artists regularly. Salo had interesting taste in painting. Mostly stuff that doesn’t speak to me. They also referred to Twombly’s blackboard paintings.
I think Phoebe will have a great time at Roarke - it will probably be a good place to get all the classics that Walden didn’t provide. We don’t actually know that much about what Phoebe is really like, only that she wanted to have a family.
I was pretty sure Eli was a fraud but didn’t guess what the fraud was until ephraim started talking about his research and I realized what it must be. Eli clearly fabricated the Carlos story because Carlos was getting too close to the truth - again I realized that but wasn’t sure then what the con was. Harrison was flattered by Eli’s attention so decided to take his side though it wasn’t clear he ever really believed the charges against Carlos. I think later they were genuinely friends though obviously with a pretty big secret on Eli’s side.
I think this is the line @jerseysouthmomchess was referring to: Eli “remained in his seat with his eyes closed, and the light through the window lent his skin a distinct note of rose” (p. 229). Very subtle – I would never have picked up on that.
From the start, Harrison wanted to be part of Eli’s inner circle.
Did he like Eli? It was not the pertinent question. What Harrison had really wanted, what he had wanted from the very first moment in that New Hampshire parking lot, what he had likely wanted from the day he sat down with Against Youth, eighteen months earlier, was for Eli to like him (p. 161).
I don’t think that feeling ever really changed, so it must have made Harrison blind to the truth.
I was sure Carlos was innocent, but I think Harrison really believed in Eli and I didn’t have any idea why Eli would make something up. Were we given enough clues at that point in the store that the rest of Eli’s story was fake. I certainly didn’t have a clue, but I am notoriously bad at mysteries.
It took me a bit, but I eventually realized what was up. I was sure by the time Lewyn questioned Eli’s backstory about descending from a Black family in Appalachia that was left alone during the Civil War:
Lewyn frowned. He had never heard of escaped slaves being “left alone” anywhere in the Antebellum South, but for merely the thousandth time in his life, he decided Harrison must know better.
“So Eli is Black?”
“I can’t believe you even asked that,” said Harrison unkindly. “Race is irrelevant.”
At one point, Eli’s con is compared to that of Rachel Dolezal. From Wikipedia:
Dolezal reasoned that race is more fluid than gender because race is an entirely social construct. She stated, “I feel that I was born with the essential essence of who I am, whether it matches my anatomy and complexion or not … I’ve never questioned being a girl or woman, for example, but whiteness has always felt foreign to me, for as long as I can remember.” She added, “I didn’t choose to feel this way or be this way, I just am. What other choice is there than to be exactly who we are?” Critics took issue with Dolezal’s logic.
Haha, I bet they did.
Eli’s con seems particularly egregious because he didn’t just drift into the scam, he deliberately changed his skin color using “Ammi majus, or bishop’s weed, a psoralen-containing annual plant (possibly in conjunction with ultraviolet light)” (p. 415).
You’re completely right about the reasons Lewyn was attracted to Mormonism… It was less of a religious conversion and more about filling the emptiness in his life.
I was hung up on the religious conversion part and couldn’t understand it because of the three, he seemed the most secure in his beliefs.
Yikes, is right about Twombly’s painting and the whole genre of “outsider art”-
Here is an article listing top ten outside art artists, and each one led an extreme life, on the edge, on the fringe of society.
Often the produced thousands of items, discovered after the artist’s death, or confinement to mental institute or other such tragic life story.
Salo, was so moved by this art, having an “ art attack” as mentioned by Mary13, he related to these artists, these damaged souls, on a visceral level. He was one of them.
@Mary13 Thanks for the link to the painting that so stunned Salo. I admit it doesn’t do anything for me, but I’m really not a fan of most “modern” art.
as mentioned by Mary13, he related to these artists, these damaged souls, on a visceral level. He was one of them.