TITLE: Theft: A Love Story
AUTHOR: Peter Carey
PUBLISHER: Random House ( April 2006)
ISBN: 1 74051 256 1 PRICE: $45.00 (hardback) 269 pages
Reviewed by Ann Skea (ann@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
).
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"Whatever you want to invent in the art world has been done", Peter Carey
is
re****ted to have said in a recent Sydney Morning Herald interview. So, is
that
why the main character in his new novel, Theft, is an Australian version
of
Gulley Jimson in Joyce Cary's The Horses Mouth?
"Theft", says the publisher's blurb, explores "ideas of art, fraud,
responsibility and redemption"; and Michael Boone, who is the chief
narrator of
the story, is, like Gulley Jimson an "artist, con man and aging lover" (to
pick
at random from some Internet synopses of The Horse's Mouth). Like Gulley,
he
has just been released from gaol when he begins to tell his story. Like
Gulley,
he is scornful of normal, polite conventions and he lets nothing stand in
the
way of his art. Michael Boone's art is unconventional and 'Modern' and the
masterpiece on which he works has the Biblical title 'I, The Speaker,
Ruled As
King Over Israel': Gulley Jimson, too, was painting a huge, modern work on
a
Biblical theme. And, like Gulley, Michael Boone (or Butcher Bones as he is
called throughout most of Theft) is in dispute with his ex-wife over
possession
of his own work which, as Butcher Bones puts it, has been declared by
divorce
lawyers to be "Marital Assets".
More than anything else, it is Butcher Bones's attitude towards the law,
art
dealers, art collectors, fa****ons in art, the gullibility and ignorance of
the
general public, and his own unquestioning belief in his own artistic
genius,
which exactly reflects that of Gulley Jimson. Jimson's saving grace,
however,
is his Blakean vision, and his ability to see through the surface ugliness
of
the world and the people around him to the essential beauty beneath.
Butcher
Bones has no such spiritual depth. As his brother tells us, he does not
believe
in god or in miracles and he relies solely on his own judgment, especially
in
his estimation of his own worth.
In spite of all this, Theft is also very different to A Horse's Mouth.
Most
obviously, its narrator is as true-blue Aussie as any uncouth,
foul-mouthed,
alcohol-fuelled, football fan can be. If you choose to spend time with him
as
he tells his story, then there is no point in getting prune-face and
prissy
about his attitude to women or about his scorn for all those he robs,
sponges
on and deceives. In his eyes, they are all fools. His greatest admiration
- his
enduring love, as he proclaims poetically at the end of the book - is
given to
the equally ruthless and immoral young woman in whose art fraud he becomes
embroiled, and whose own selfishness ultimately exceeds his own.
Theft is different to Joyce Cary's book, too, in that it not only raises
questions of authenticity in art through the words and actions of its main
character, but it also embodies them in its creation and publication.
Peter
Carey may, or may not, have stolen Joyce Cary's artist idea (this book is,
after all, entitled 'Theft'), and perhaps a court case like that involving
The
Da Vinci Code is a possibility; and he may or may not have imitated some
of
Cary's brush-strokes, so-to-speak; but this book is also distinctively
Peter
Carey's own work. Much of this is due to his creation of Hugh, Michael's
"damaged two-hundred-and-twenty-pound brother". "Hugh the poet and Hugh
the
Murderer, Hugh the Idiot Savant", as Michael describes him, is the second
narrator in this book and he is a fine creation.
Hugh became Michael's responsibility after attempting to murder their
father.
He describes himself as 'Slow Bones' and much of the time he is lucid and
amiable, but he is prone to uncontrollable fits of rage and he tends to
speak
in CAPITAL LETTERS. Hugh makes a wonderful foil for Michael, but both are
mad
in their own way (as was the whole family, it seems) and often their
'voices'
are not easily distinguishable. At times I could only determine who was
speaking by the sudden eruption of capitals in the text. Nevertheless,
Hugh is
uniquely valuable as an observer and as a recorder of family history
which, in
his parroted phrases and borrowed opinions, can be very funny. He may have
spent his time from fourth grade on sitting on a chair in the school
playground, but he knows that "MAKING ART" is very much like being a
butcher
(which was the family business in the small Victorian town of Bacchus
Marsh):
"the labour never ends, no peace, no Sabbath, just eternal churning and
cursing
and worrying and fretting and there is nothing else to think of but the
idiots
who buy it or the insects destroying TWO-DIMENSIONAL SPACE". Hugh's job,
whilst
Michael is painting his masterpiece in a borrowed, bug-infested studio on
a New
South Wales country property, is to remove the bodies of dead flies "the
fluff
and bumph and snot of life" from the Dulux-painted surface, and to fetch
and
carry and be, as he plaintively complains, "his MANSERVANT".
The third im****tant character in Theft is the young woman, Marlene, wife
of a
famous artist's son and (due to her 'eye' and her husband's total
disinterest
in art) effective wielder of the droit morale by which paintings are
authenticated. She erupts into the Bones brothers' lives, becomes
Michael's
lover, manipulates art sales and art thefts and art frauds, and in the end
shows herself to be as untrustworthy and mad as they are.
As for being a love story, as the sub-title claims, there are many ways to
interpret that. There is Michael's love of Marlene, which may be love in
his
terms but which seems very much more like lust, admiration and puzzlement.
There is Michael's love for Hugh, which is equally often an onerous duty.
And
there is his love for his art; although he is not above forging a piece of
work
by another artist, copying his brush-strokes exactly, adopting and
adapting his
style, and then revelling in the art-world's acceptance of what he clearly
regards as his own masterpiece. At least Gulley Jimson forged an early
Jimson
and could be rightly proud that it was all his own work.
The twists and turns of the plot in Carey's book keep you on your toes.
The
book's Australian flavour, too, is strong, although some of the action
also
takes place in America and Japan. But this book does Australia no favours,
feeding instead a popular caricature of Australia as a cultural desert
inhabited by ex-convicts, frauds and uncouth, boozy larrikins.
Interviewers, so
far, have concentrated on trying to establish a biographical link between
Peter
Carey and his main character (both were born in Bacchus Marsh, both are
divorced, both have young sons, both are creators) but Carey has been
fiercely
dismissive of such suggestions. Maybe, however, Michael Boone is Carey's
alter-ego in a rather different way. Maybe both are masters of artistic
theft.
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Copyright © Ann Skea 2006
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