“It was Sunday, and Mumma had gone next door with Lena and the little ones.”
This long novel comes from Patrick White, Australia’s sole Nobel Prize winner, and it was more or less the last book he wrote before winning the award, which probably means it played a role in the win. The book is a portrayal of the life of Hurtle Duffield, who becomes a famous artist over the course of the novel, and while it sometimes is about his art and his way of creating art, it’s more a portrait of the man himself, almost irrespective of the art, except in some important ways. My copy is 617 pages, and within that there’s ten chapters. Of the chapters two are 10 or so pages and the others are very long. I mention this because when you are in a moment, even one that lasts for months or years, you are very much within it. The novel is in general episodic, often circulating about Duffield’s relationship with a woman in his life. This includes his birth mother, and then soon after an adopted mother (and father) who adopt him to be a companion to their disfigured daughter. This daughter, now sister, also plays an important role, eventually giving way to his first real romantic relationship with a sex worker. Later we’re shown a relationship with a rich widow/art patron, and then her friend, and finally with a teen girl. (It’s not a comfortable book, and given that one of the book covers is a close up of eye surgery, you might have guessed as much).
The novel is called the vivisector because of his almost preternatural cruelty to cut people down to their bare essence, and treat them within this new space. In some ways, this is like an Iris Murdoch or John Fowles novel in reverse, showing us the mad genius (though not so mad really) as they storm through the world. He’s not unsympathetic, but he’s also not very sympathetic.
