Utah. The San Rafael Swell, as the sun came up, unrolled in inhuman vistas like Mars: sandstone and shale, gorges and desolate rust-red mesas. —Page 356
I’m late to The Goldfinch. Last year, when this novel was really buzzing, I downloaded a sample of it onto my Kindle, but never got to it. The buzz became extraordinary right when I was deep into work on The Bonding Ritual. I was vaguely aware that everyone in the book world was talking about The Goldfinch, but mostly wrapped up in the plot of my own novel.
When I heard book won the Pulitzer Prize I knew I would be reading it eventually. The last time I can remember when a novel was both a commercial smash and a Pulitzer winner was The Adventures of Kavalier and Clay, and (in my opinion) that’s one of the great novels of our time.
After I finished The Bonding Ritual I turned to the huge to-be-read pile that had accumulated while I wrote the book. Last week The Goldfinch’s turn came up.
Count me among the people who totally get why the world went crazy for this book (as opposed to the people who think the mania is misguided). When I look at this book as a writer, it really sings.
People don’t like that the book is so plot driven. Critics say there are too many unlikely coincidences that move the plot forward. Some critics don’t like the narrative voice.
I have no quibble with any of those critics.
But I do take exception to Julie Myerson’s review of the novel in the Guardian. Among her many critiques was this one:
Every scene, every character’s face and clothes, every new place or aeroplane or bus or room, whether ultimately relevant or not, is described at such voluminous length that you honestly begin to wonder who the writer is trying to convince – you, or herself?
To me, this is like criticizing Beethoven for making the endings to his symphonies so decisive, or saying Mondrian used too much color.
The long, beautiful descriptions are what make The Goldfinch such a special book. Scan the 5-star reviews on Amazon and you’ll see, over and over again, that people who recommend this book talk at length about how much they enjoyed it. If you can set aside whatever it is you want from a heady piece of literary fiction, be it strong themes, compelling characters, biting social commentary…whatever, and instead, just zero in on the question: Did I enjoy it? you allow yourself the opportunity to receive whatever it is the writer is trying to give you. In The Goldfinch, Donna Tartt is giving us a lengthy first-person view of life through the eyes of someone who needs art in order to cope with all the world throws at him. Reading it, I am quite certain that Tartt is the same way, and we’re getting a glimpse at life through her incredibly perceptive eyes.
The lead in The Goldfinch is a young man who has a unique relationship with a painting. He is a man who sees the world with such precision that a painting, a piece of visual art, provides great comfort to him. He has a gift. It’s never mentioned that way explicitly in the text, but it is there. He sees much more clearly than most. He feels more deeply.
He needs art to help him cope.
Reading it, I can sense the author’s own struggles with a similar gift. Donna Tartt is someone who sees the world in incredibly expansive tones. How could it be otherwise when she is able to write passages of such beautiful clarity and precision? They’re just everywhere. Every page of the novel is littered with descriptions that most writers can only dream of pulling off. Here are a few, found totally at random.
Lying very still under the eiderdown, I breathed the dark air of dried-out potpourri and burnt fireplace wood and — very faint — the evergreen tang of turpentine, resin, and varnish. –Page 376
I was sitting on the side of my bed, staring out the window onto Tenth Street — people just getting off work, going out to dinner, shrill bursts of laughter. Fine, misty rain slanted in the white circle of street light just outside my window. Everything felt shaky and harsh. — Page 499
Did she ever have the sense of observing herself from afar, as I often did, as if they explosion had knocked my body and my soul into two separate entities that remained about six feet apart from one another? — Page 383
I think it’s just great stuff, and every once in a while, Tartt allows herself to roll with her talents for longer stretches. That’s when the novel really takes flight, like in this passage:
Lexington Avenue. Wettish wind. The afternoon was haunted and dank. I walked right by the stop on Fifty-First Street, and the Forty-Second stop, and still I kept going to clear my head. Ash-white apartment blocks. Hordes of people on the street, lighted Christmas trees sparkling high on penthouse balconies and complacent Christmas music floating out of shops, and weaving in and out of crowds I had a strange feeling of being already dead, of moving in a vaster sidewalk grayness than the street of even the city could encompass, my soul disconnected from my body and drifting among other souls in a mist somewhere between past and present, Walk Don’t Walk, individual pedestrians floating up strangely isolated and lonely before my eyes, blank faces plugged into earbuds and staring straight ahead, lips moving silently, and the city noise dampened and deafened, under crushing, granite-colored skies that muffled the noise from the street, garbage and newsprint, concrete and drizzle, a dirty winter grayness weighing like stone. — Page 524
You get the point. You may or may not like The Goldfinch. 800-page works of literary fiction are like that. They speak to some people and not to others. The Goldfinch really speaks to me.
