A.S.
Byatt published The
Matisse Stories in 1993. Reading the work in 2012, I find it’s aged
well.
It’s
a small volume, only three stories, two shorter stories bookending a longer
one. All three are about color, and Matisse paintings, and how this time we
live in is one if displacement, where living by the rules doesn’t apply because
we only think they are rules, and when we learn that we find we don’t quite
fit, that something is missing or incomplete.
In
“Medusa’s Ankles,” an aging college professor becomes a regular customer at a
hair salon because her hair is aging along with the rest of her. A painting, or
print, by Matisse (largely pink) occupies a gray wall, and that is what first pulls
her into the salon. All goes well until the salon is remodeled, the Matisse put
away and replaced by photographs, and the owner makes an offhand comment about
his wife’s ankles.
In
“Art Work,” a magazine illustrator, her painter husband, and their two children
depend upon their housekeeper to hold their lives together. Only the
illustrator understands the importance of Mrs. Brown; her husband seems determined
to drive her away. What the family doesn’t know is how well Mrs. Brown comes to
understand concepts of color, and what she does with their cast-off clothes.
They are in for a surprise.
In
“the Chinese Lobster,” a college professor (also aging – I sense a theme here)
has lunch at a Chinese restaurant with a friend and colleague, to let him know
that a graduate student is accusing him of sexual harassment. The reader only
sees the student through their conversation and the recall of a longish letter
she’s sent. The student turns out to be anorexic, likely mentally ill, and is
working on an art project that she believes will destroy Matisse (and why she
wants to destroy Matisse is at the crux of the story).
Byatt,
who’s received the Booker Prize and other significant recognitions, has created
three stories in which at first little seems to happen; the plot structures lie
within the minds of the characters. But by the end of each, the reader comes to
understand that many things have happened, important things that transform the
characters’ lives.
Every
action, every word, plays a part in moving the story forward. The stories seem
almost effortless, like a Matisse painting, but the appearance is deceiving.
Each story is like a fine work of art, the complexity hidden behind the simplicity
of the storytelling.
Byatt
does not leave the reader hopeless, but neither does she leave a sense of hope
or even relief. The Matisse Stories
captures a sense of the displacement of contemporary life, seen through a lens
of art and color.
3 comments:
A.S. Byatt! I did my master's thesis on some of her fairy tale short stories. An amazing writer.
very interesting review. thanks, glynn.
This leaves me with a "yes and no" I'd like to read that feeling.
Post a Comment