Perfect portrait of imperfect artist
Imagine growing up the child of Pablo Picasso or Paul Gauguin. That alone might persuade you to read Tom Rachman’s third novel, The Italian Teacher (Viking, 352 pp., ★★★★), a poignant, touching tale about living in the shadow of brazen artistic genius.
Otherwise, reading Rachman is simply trendy if you appreciate literary fiction’s brightest, newest voices.
The story of The Italian Teacher begins in 1955 in Rome. Bear Bavinski, a noted American artist, has left a family in the States and moved in with aspiring ceramist Natalie — who is his wife and former model — along with their 5-yearold son, Charles, known as Pinch. At first, everything’s lovingly quirky — Bear smoking his pipe in the cramped studio, roughhousing with Pinch, Natalie neglecting her pottery to accommodate Bear’s manic fits of creativity. It’s everything you’d picture from the private life of an eccentric artist — almost.
While Bear is charming, a huge personality, he’s impossibly impulsive and self-centered. A flagrant philanderer, his appetites — sensual, aesthetic and culinary— are insatiable. Little surprise he’ll abandon a half-dozen wives and 17 children, including Natalie and Pinch, as unremorsefully as he burns his “unfit” paintings behind the studio. “Nobody wants a wellbehaved artist,” Rachman interjects.
Yet, everybody loves Bear, including Pinch. Pinch, the protagonist, is a bright, self-effacing, kindhearted son who idolizes his father and, throughout his life, seeks Bear’s love and attention while struggling to find his own place in the world.
The best-selling author of The Imperfectionists (2010) and The Rise & Fall of Great Powers (2014), Rachman writes compelling stories of the entangled lives of damaged, endearing characters and their struggles to discover who they are.
For Pinch, that means trying to become an artist. At 15, encouraged by the single, cherished art lesson Bear once gave him, Pinch paints daily, looking forward to showing his art to his father. When he does, while visiting Bear’s latest family in New York, Bear’s offhanded dismissal crushes Pinch: “I got to tell you, kiddo. You’re not an artist. And you never will be.”
Pinch’s next plan, to study art history in college and become Bear’s biographer, fails, too, sending him on a downward spiral of broken relationships and shattered dreams. Eventually, Pinch settles for a disillusioned existence teaching Italian at a London language school.
Rachman’s narrative is rich with wordplay, clever dialogue and subtle insights. His plot twists blindside you. And, his ensemble of lovable, misfit characters — from Pinch’s true love in college, sassy Cilla Barrows, to his best friend, self-styled bohemian Marsden McClintock — are unforgettable.
Nearing the end, an aging Bear is camped out at his rustic studio in France, still enraged that his large oils, close-ups of female body parts called “Life-Stills,” aren’t as acclaimed as the works of “that clown Picasso.”
Worried about his place in history, he entrusts Pinch with a valuable cache of never-shown Bavinskis, and designates Pinch keeper of his legacy. Pinch’s transcendent scheme to succeed at that, and create his own identity, is the brilliant finale that will leave you surprised, sad and uplifted.