Painting characters into tight spots
a Alive in Shape and Color, review.
A theory: All else being equal, the narrower an anthology’s theme, the richer the work in it will be.
Last year’s wonderful In Sunlight or In Shadow was a vivid argument for the idea, a collection of mystery stories each based on a different painting by Edward Hopper. Edited by the legendary Lawrence Block, its authors all somehow captured Hopper’s sense of loneliness and longing — feelings uniquely suited to the mystery genre, already full of lost souls — from different angles.
The result was a triumph of the form, at once varied and coherent. Its follow-up is Alive in Shape and Color: 17 Paintings by Great Artists and the Stories They Inspired (Pegasus, 307 pp., eeeE) and it is not quite as good. Block, still at the helm, has again assembled a fine roster of bold-name talent, from Michael Connelly to Joyce Carol Oates, but this time has asked them, more vaguely, to write from paintings of their own choice.
The first result of this is too many Impressionists (a curse on our culture generally) and the second is a lack of urgency, a feeling that the stories don’t especially resonate with one another. There are standouts, to be sure. The difficulty is that they stand out.
The strongest story here is “Girl With a Fan” by Nicholas Christopher, which walks a Gauguin backward and forward through time, until its narratives magically coalesce around a single enigmatic painting; the cleverest is “A Significant Find,” in which Jeffery Deaver deploys the famous cave paintings at Lascaux as the ultimate red herring.
Mixed in with these are a few charming quick-hitters, the best of which are Lee Child’s “Pierre, Lucien, and Me,” about a con man who develops a deathbed conscience over Renoir, and Block’s meditation on Michelangelo’s David, featuring the inimitable Matthew Scudder.
The longer stories are mixed in quality. Oates has a nicely surreal horror riff on Balthus, exactly the artist (the creepiest genius of the last century?) I’d have chosen for her. Sarah Weinman and Joe Lansdale contribute pressing stories that pivot smartly against the expectation their frontispieces create. There are a number of passable tales, and a few extremely weak ones, whose names it is probably kinder not to mention.
Alive in Shape and Color ultimately can only be judged in this piecemeal way. It’s a lovely book to handle and look at, beautifully illustrated, glossy and heavy, full of excellent writers — but no real sense of the relationship between painting and mysteries emerges from it. What would these diverse writers have made together of the artist who inspired Lansdale’s story, Norman Rockwell, one wonders? Or Rembrandt, with his human gaze? Vija Celmins? Kara Walker?
Just not Monet, please.