Given the extent of my literary backlog, I could not have justified adding Steve Martin’s An Object of Beauty to the pile of novels that I hope to read at some point between now and dying. So it was all for the best that I managed to read the book before I had to decide what pile to store it in. I swallowed it whole, in one long, late, sleepy December evening, having bought it only hours before. Why did I buy it? I can tick off a few reasons. The 92nd Street kerfuffle is the querelle du jour — it’s essential to have an opinion about last week’s “interactive talk,” no matter how little you know of what actually happened. More weightily, Martin’s topic this time is art collecting, a field with which he seems to be as familiar as he is with the world of entertainment. Shopgirl, which I rather liked, is written in a clear, agreeable prose by a writer who knows how to stay out the way of his own story. Most of all, the new book’s heroine already has a terrible reputation.

An Object of Beauty tells the story of an ambitious young woman’s career in the New York art world, from the early Nineties to the present. Lacey Yeager is smart and well put-together, and she has the somewhat steely charm that pretty, clever girls from the South somewhat invariably possess. The problem is that Lacey is not very interested in romantic love. This is not her problem, of course, and neither is it a shortcoming of the novel’s imaginative world. It’s a problem because, for all that we’ve allowed women to shape their own lives in recent decades, we still expect them to value intimacy and long-term connections — and Lacey doesn’t. She is also a bit of a crook. But it is hard to disagree with the conclusion of a former lover: “I think Lacey is the kind of person who will always be okay.” And, if she’s not the most lovable character in the world, she is still admirably self-directed and disciplined. She puts looks before comfort, and she has a way of showing up late for work that highlights the previous day’s coup. I found her impossible to dislike. If pressed, I would have to say that I found Lacey’s tireless eagerness to learn very appealing.

Lacey’s tale is told by a college classmate and one-night lover, an art critic whose own trajectory is very different from Lacey’s (although at one key, “offstage” moment he serves as her accomplice). As narrative devices go, Daniel Franks is an ingenious one. He knew Lacey “when”; he found out what she was like in bed (but luckily — you can feel his relief — got back together with his girlfriend before Lacey’s “tentacles had time to attach”); and he knows her New York world. Daniel makes a informed but not exhausting cicerone to the world of auction houses, galleries, chic restaurants and small apartments that make up the art-worker’s world. He saves his observer’s loupe for the transactions, iffy at best and at least once criminal, that buoy up Lacey’s material fortunes — which, Daniel makes clear, Lacey ploughs back into her career. In one of those post-modern moments that hearken back to Defoe and Sterne, Daniel tells us, at the very end, why he has written Lacey’s story down. Not for her! 

What does Lacey want? We’re never told in so many words, but a clue that’s palpable for me is tucked into her understanding of what motivates art collectors (a passage that, we ought to bear in mind, has been written by one):

What lifted a picture into the desirable category was a murky but parsable combination of factors. Paintings were collected not because they were pretty, but because of a winding path that leads a collector to his prey. Provenance, subject matter, rarity, and perfection made a painting not just a painting, but a prize. Lacey had seen the looks on the collectors’ faces as they pondered various pictures. These objects, with cooperating input from the collector’s mind, were transformed into things that healed. Collectors thought this one artwork would make everything right, would complete the jigsaw of their lives, would satisfy eternally. She understood that while a collector’s courtship of a picture was ostensibly romantic, at its root was raw lust.”

Lacey collects collectors; more precisely, she collects moments in which collectors fall upon their “prey.” Unlike them, however, she is under no illusions about eternal satisfaction. The very idea bores her; she is like the many men and few women who don’t see the point in having sex with the same person twice. It is very easy to dismiss this kind of passion as frivolous and empty — to deny that it is a passion at all. But whether he meant to do so or not, Steve Martin graces the pages of his novel with a woman possessed by a vivid hunger for excellence. She may be pragmatically dishonest, but her sins are venial. I refuse to count her lack of interest in romantic love among them.

How does An Object of Beauty measure up as a novel? The question seems, perversely, philistine. I’m obliged to confess that I never felt the uprush of enlarged perspective that, for me, constitutes the mark of the “great” novel — but, so what? Steve Martin’s book combines the timeless excitement of a penetrating Vanity Fair profile with the insight of an exemplary novel. Because a good deal of its power comes from elision and understatement, readers will be arguing forever about whether intention or accident was the firmer guide to its composition. Discussion of “artistic merits” is premature. Lacey Yeager is truly an object of beauty.

Drop me a line at rjk@dailyblague.com
This entry was posted on Tuesday, December 7th, 2010 at 12:01 am.