Everyone has something that school managed to ruin for them. For me it was football (okay, this one’s a joke), calculus (can’t say I’m too upset) and F. Scott Fitzgerald.

Now, the latter is a bit of a mystery. I know I read The Great Gatsby in school and was almost certainly forced to deconstruct it down to the molecular level and then document the carnage.

Strange thing is that I remember none of this, but I’ve had an absolute aversion (think Clockwork Orange) to Mr. Fitzgerald for ages. This puzzles me. Usually, I can explain in great ranting detail why I don’t like something.

For hours if left unchecked.

But I cannot tell you why this aversion to FSF. So last night I pulled an (unread) copy of the Viking Portable collection (edited by Dorthy Parker) and read a short story called Absolution. It was magnificent. (Doubly recommended if you had a Catholic upbringing.)

I absolutely refuse to give a summary, because I can’t stand that kind of review and also because nothing that I can say will give you any idea about it. You just have to read it. But I will give you one sentence:

“There was something ineffably gorgeous somewhere that had nothing to do with God.”

Go find a copy and read it.

I have half a dozen other books that I’ve read before this one. The trouble is, they were fabulous and I’m still trying to think of something intelligent to say about them.

This book, on the other hand, will be easy to deal with quickly. Think “high concept”: Da Vinci Code meets Victorian potboiler meets Jim Thompson. This gives you an idea what the author was reading. I’m guessing he is also the product of many a writer’s workshop and thinks of himself as an Artiste. Translation: poseur. Basically, this is pretentious, high school level rubbish. And the author would receive a C+.

A few quotations to get us started:

“I am satirizing people in the art world.” [from an interview]

Ooow. Guess that makes you smarter, eh.

From the book, part of a message left on someone’s answering machine:

“…a memory I won’t ever surrender. The ensuing weeks were filled with more of the same, long walks, endless conversation, and romance.”

Read that out loud. When’s the last time you heard someone say “the ensuing weeks”? Ugh. It’s vague, clichéd and frankly, straight out of a Harlequin Romance. (And someone get the man (and his editor) a book on punctuation!)

Here we have another example of the sloppy ransacking of the past in a desperate attempt to elevate a thrown-together bit of rubbish. He didn’t even bother to think it through. Now, I don’t like or read mysteries, but I do know that the most important element of a mystery story is the mystery bit. It’s glaringly obvious who the killer is right at the beginning. If I had been his editor, I might have pointed this out to him.

And why does he trot out the three historical figures? (Other than to give his book a little borrowed glory.) His research is non-existent. (Oh, I’m sorry, he does cite “Time Life Library of Art”, copyright 1967. Guess he visited his parents and found that propping up the sofa.)

He’s name dropping. He seems to think that sprinkling the magical name of Da Vinci about like pixie dust will just blow our doors off to the point that we’ll leap out of our chairs and shout: This guy’s a genius!!! And when we exclaim that, we ourselves shall not know to whom we refer: the artist/inventor or the author. Oy. (Sounds a little like Charlton Heston there… except for the “oy”.)

The little uninspired stories he fabricates loosely around the names he drops are just embarrassing, e.g.: Vermeer apparently had no talent and used the camera to cheat his way to fame. Wow. That is so preposterous it’s stunning. Is that actually in “Time Life Library of Art”?

It’s that ignorant way of thinking that supposes great artists have a “secret”. And if we could only find out what it is, we too could be just like them. Forget talent and years of hard work. No, no… no craft, that’s boring. There must be a magic device that will make me rich and famous.

Disappointing. Oh well, I still love camera obscuras — why I picked up this book at the second hand shop without even skimming it. That’ll teach me!

So here are some good camera obscura links:

Vermeer and the Camera Obscura

An Appreciation of the Camera Obscura

Flash demo of how a small box one works

And there’s even a movie that uses the camera obscura as a central device: “Addicted to Love”.