Mark Rothko sought to make paintings that would bring people to tears. “I’m interested only in expressing basic human emotions—tragedy, ecstasy, doom, and so on,” he declared. “And the fact that a lot of people break down and cry when confronted with my pictures shows that I can communicate those basic human emotions….”
This is almost a challenge. I love art, but a painting has never made me cry (or experience any version of Stendhal Syndrome). There’s a collection of Rothko paintings nearby at the Art Institute, so I’ll have to check them out.
It’s hard for me to see “tragedy, ecstasy, doom” in any of these. They fall into the “I don’t get it” category, but maybe on some level I’m too close-minded to appreciate them. Do you think connecting to Modern Art in that way is a learned language? Or does it rely on an immediate visceral reaction?
I also wonder if the variations of Stendhal syndrome only happen if viewing an original work of art in person – that I’ll never “get it” if looking at reproductions in a book or online.
I saw the Maier exhibit at the Chicago History Museum last year and really enjoyed it. She is an outsider artist “outlier” because her work doesn’t have the common characteristic of illustrating “extreme mental states, unconventional ideas, or elaborate fantasy worlds” (per Wikipedia). Her photos are just great–and abundant–candid shots of regular people making it through the day. For example:
Vivian Maier took everyday moments and transformed them into something extraordinary. A discarded newspaper, a child resting her face in the sunlight of a ferry window, a scowling woman licking an ice cream cone outside a department store window―Maier’s photographs on the streets of Chicago and its suburbs encourage viewers to look beyond the ordinary. https://www.chicagohistory.org/exhibition/vivian-maier-in-color/
@jerseysouthmomchess, “Junebug” is a great movie. I had forgotten the outsider art connection, but I thought about the disturbing family dynamics for a long time. Coincidentally, the primary story focuses on the sibling rivalry and resentment of two very different brothers.
It’s interesting that art played such an integral role in our last two selections, even though the books couldn’t have been more different.
Shifting gears for a minute to another aspect of The Latecomer: We’ve talked about how unlikeable most of the characters are (at least at certain points in their lives) – with the exception of Phoebe. I’d also like to give a shout-out to Rochelle Steiner. I really liked her. She was a bit of a glutton for punishment to want to marry back into the Oppenheimer mess!
I was sure when Rochelle left that scene on the beach that she would reappear at some point in the novel. When Sally began her apprenticeship of clearing out houses, I just knew in my gut that one day she would be the one to clean out Rochelle’s mom’s house.
That was another tidbit that I was surprised I didn’t put together - Sally and her job and Rochelle and her mom’s house.
I found myself nearly always being a Lewyn supporter. It seemed at home he could do no right as the brother of the more exuberant Harrison so he just…existed. At Cornell, I think he hoped that he and Sally would lean on each other more and enjoy the journey together…but she booted him out of her life quickly. He was always pushed aside. That garnered a bunch of sympathy from me.
And even at home with his mother, I don’t recall him being trouble or nasty to her …just awkward. The whole family thing was awkward for him as he didn’t know his place in the family. He was even guarded about calling his roommate and his friends “friends” - often insisting they weren’t friends - as if he didn’t understand that there are different levels of friendship. Rochelle was the first person who make him “seen” - and he clung to that and as a result both emotionally and physically (it was noted that he lost weight and seemed to mature physically as their relationship progressed) matured.
Back to the art world, I loved this aspect of the book. I paint in a fairly traditional style currently influenced by Chinese art (see avatar), but I’ve loved art and making art for as long as I can remember. The big abstract expressionist work like Rothko or Jackson Pollack (and incidently also Monet’s late waterlily paintings) are completely different in person than in a book. The Rothko Chapel in Houston Rothko Chapel - Wikipedia is just such a beautiful serene place as is the room at the Phillips Collection in DC. The Rothko Room
I’m pretty sure that the painting described as “a mustard color with a thin vertical greenish stripe on the left edge and a crosshatch of lines at the top,” that was supposed to depict an L.A. artist’s view of his city. Is one of the Diebenkorn paintings. I didn’t see a ringer, but something similar to this:
This is part of the Ocean Park series which was inspired by Santa Monica/Los Angeles. Most of that series does not feature a lot mustard. He’s one of my favorite painters.
We currently live in the Boston area and have been to both the MFA and Harvard Art Museums multiple times. The first time we went to the Harvard museum, it had just been newly renovated/expanded. We were astonished at some of the art they have, especially a room of American art given by 1 alum. As an American Studies major in college, I took an in-depth American Art course. The course included “modern art,” but I’m still not a fan of much of it.
Re: 9/11 – At the time we were living in lower Fairfield County, CT. There were so many families in our town and surrounding area affected … One of my friends’ husband worked at Cantor Fitzgerald, a financial services firm with offices in one of the towers. Although he was out of the office on 9/11, the firm lost close to 700 employees, visitors and contractors. He had a very hard time coping with the aftermath.
I was just in the car, running an errand for work, and ended up behind a graffitti-ed bread truck. The first thing that flashed into my brain was, “Outsider Art. Looks like a Twombly.”
Thanks, @mathmom! Diebenkorn must be the third painting (I KNEW somebody here would figure it out!). But like you say, it fits, but isn’t a ringer–I think Korelitz (with Steve Martin) described things these artists COULD have painted, but didn’t, not exactly. So creative–I am imagining them sitting around talking about art, drinking wine, Steve Martin tweaking things (“I know–let’s take an Ocean Park painting and put a crosshatch of lines at the top!”-- it sounds so fun!
And thanks for mentioning the Rothko Chapel, because I think that is the inspiration for the vertical gray rectangles painting in the book. As it happens, I will be helping my younger son move to Houston in a couple of weeks, and he’ll be living right near that neighborhood. Hopefully I can sneak in a visit. Also to the Menil Collection nearby, which has a whole little Twombly BUILDING!
And @jerseysouthmomchess Thanks for the link to Black Mountain College, and the movie info!
Salo Oppenheimer’s family was supposedly descended from Joseph Süss Oppenheimer, aka Jud Süss, a “court Jew” in the 1700’s and the subject of what is considered one of the most anti-semitic films of all time. On p. 122-123, Lewyn talks at length to his roommate about his ancestor and the film (“It was a big hit, all over the Third Reich. Bigger than Titanic!”)
If you consider film to be art (and I do) then the “Jud Süss” backstory fits with the themes of The Latecomer in that it illustrates, once again, the power of art – but in a very dark way. It’s not art as salvation, but as propaganda.
In an interview JHK discusses how many times her publisher returned her book, instructing her to edit, rewrite ect
A section she deleted was about the family going to Germany to research their connection to Jud Oppenheimer .
Your link to the movie, elevates the significance of their ancestor, which I didn’t understand .
So glad JHK edited that excursion out of final edition.
“Religious “beliefs ( or lack of them )were a recurrent theme.
What did you think of the Sedar and the Christian prayers at the end of the event! I was on the edge of my seat saying “ oh no, oh no no no no “
I did find the Mormon pageant fascinating history! No idea about that event !
I thought the Mormons came off pretty well in this regard (considering how they could have been skewered). Lewyn’s roommate Jonas did not proselytize, was not judgmental about other religions, and had a calm, unwavering faith. And the Mormon officials were very kind to Lewyn when they found out he was a fraud (a sincere, well-meaning one, but a fraud nonetheless).
I knew some Mormons when I was in grad school and they were invariably intelligent (it was a competitive program) well spoken and just nice to be around. I was a liberal cynical New Yorker so it was a good lesson to me. Of course it was a different era politically - you could still overlook some things in those days - but we mostly didn’t discuss politics or religion though it wasn’t off the table either.
I could see this as a scene played for laughs if The Latecomer is ever a movie. Which apparently it will be – eventually! It’s not yet been cast or scheduled for filming. Jean Hanff Korelitz joked in an interview that she wants to see Nicole Kidman and Hugh Grant as Johanna and Salo Oppenheimer (the couple in the popular “The Undoing” – an adaptation of Hanff Korelitz’s novel You Should Have Known).
@jerseysouthmomchess, you might need a magnifying class, but this interview has a photo of the Hill Cumorah Pageant. Hanff Korelitz has been to it five times.
Which of your characters is your favorite?
In The Latecomer , it’s… the “latecomer.” This person—to be named later—solves the riddle of their profoundly damaged family and brings its members back together with… “a twitch upon the thread.”
The quote she references is the epigraph to The Latecomer:
I caught him with an unseen hook and an invisible line which is long enough to let him wander to the ends of the world and still bring him back with a twitch upon the thread.
-C.K. Chesterton, via Evelyn Waugh
I had to look up the reference and it’s a surprisingly religious one. Surprising because I don’t think of wrestling with spirituality as being a big focus of The Latecomer. Even Lewyn’s years trying to embrace Mormonism are all “off-screen.” But the fact that Hanff Korelitz added the “via Evelyn Waugh” part indicates that she had God on her mind. Here’s the background – excuse the long quote, but it seemed relevant:
In Evelyn Waugh’s novel, Brideshead Revisited , nearly all of the characters spend their lives wrestling with Catholicism in some form or another. Cordelia, the youngest daughter and the most pious of them all, remarks to Charles that “the family haven’t been very constant, have they?” But, surprisingly, her family’s impiety does not seem to trouble her. She assures a disbelieving Charles that “God won’t let them go for long, you know”. Then she goes on to quote a passage from a G. K. Chesterton Father Brown story which Lady Marchmain had read aloud to the family years before. In the story, the detective says that he had “caught [the thief] with an unseen hook and an invisible line which is long enough to let him wander to the ends of the world and still to bring him back with a twitch upon the thread”…This image of God’s grace as an invisible, inescapable line sheds light on the spiritual conflicts within several of the main characters—especially Sebastian, Julia, and Charles—and their roles as runaway thieves on the thread of God’s grace. “A Twitch Upon the Thread”: Grace in Brideshead Revisited — FAITH & CULTURE
There are four siblings in Brideshead Revisited (one of whom is gay): two boys and two girls. And the youngest, Cordelia, is calmly certain that the three who have strayed will be gently pulled back home. Sounds familiar, right? In the case of Brideshead, the tug is from God to bring the siblings back to the faith. The Latecomer has more of a secular bent, but there’s still something transcendent about the way they were able to unite in the end.
What a fascinating post ! Kudos in deciphering that phrase - “ and pulled them back with Twitch upon the thread” -
Similarities with Brideshead is significant - she quotes Waugh
“ They all find, eventually, that no one on this thread is ever far from God, or from each other, and that God’s grace is what surrounds and makes sense of the whole world. ”
One of the things that I thought about as I was reading was the randomness of which eggs ended up as the first 3. Phoebe could have been one of those, but what a different life she had as a result of not having been. All the siblings were both who they were (nature) and where they were (nurture). It just made me wonder who she would have been had she been “a triplet” vs “the latecomer”. And then who the others may have been too…
That randomness, whether a roommate, running into someone at an event, choosing a flight, seemed evident throughout. Of course it’s a part of life, but the author seemed to highlight it.
