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The Center of the World, by Thomas Van Essen
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Alternating between nineteenth-century England and present-day New York, this is the story of renowned British painter J. M. W. Turner and his circle of patrons and lovers. It is also the story of Henry Leiden, a middle-aged family man with a troubled marriage and a dead-end job, who finds his life transformed by his discovery of Turner’s The Center of the World, a mesmerizing and unsettling painting of Helen of Troy that was thought to have been lost forever.
This painting has such devastating erotic power that it was kept hidden for almost two centuries, and was even said to have been destroyed...until Henry stumbles upon it in a secret compartment at his summer home in the Adirondacks. Though he knows it is an object of immense value, the thought of parting with it is unbearable: Henry is transfixed by its revelation of a whole other world, one of transcendent light, joy, and possibility.
Back in the nineteenth century, Turner struggles to create The Center of the World, his greatest painting, but a painting unlike anything he (or anyone else) has ever attempted. We meet his patron, Lord Egremont, an aristocrat in whose palatial home Turner talks freely about his art and his beliefs. We also meet Elizabeth Spencer, Egremont’s mistress and Turner’s muse, the model for his Helen. Meanwhile, in the present, Henry is relentlessly trailed by an unscrupulous art dealer determined to get his hands on the painting at any cost. Filled with sex, beauty, and love (of all kinds), this richly textured novel explores the intersection between art and eroticism.
- Sales Rank: #944891 in eBooks
- Published on: 2013-06-04
- Released on: 2013-06-04
- Format: Kindle eBook
Amazon.com Review
Q&A with Thomas Van Essen
Q. When did you first get the idea for The Center of the World?
A. It was during my first or second year of graduate school, a long time ago. I was taking a course in nineteenth-century nonfiction. I was sitting in the back of the room, on the left-hand side, when the professor, George Levine, told the famous story about Ruskin supposedly burning Turner’s erotic sketches. I didn’t know an awful lot about Turner at the time, but I knew I liked him and that he was a great painter. My first thought, I remember, was what a shame, but my second was, what if these sketches were a sign of something else? What if Ruskin burnt them not because they were merely erotic, but because they had some kind of power in them that was more than mere eroticism? What if they were the preliminary sketches for a work like no other? That notion, in various permutations, knocked around in the back of mind for around twenty-five years.
Q. So what made you finally explore that theme in a novel?
A. I have a very good “day job,” but one evening about ten years ago I had one of those “is this all there is?” moments. I was the last one left in the office; I had just gotten off the phone with a very demanding client and knew that I had done a pretty good job of handling a complicated situation. In some universe I should have been very pleased with myself, but I just felt empty and depressed. Is this what I really want out of life? I had stopped writing after I had failed to find a publisher for my first novel, a pretty good genre novel, but I knew that I needed to go back to it.
So I decided I would just write the book I wanted to write; I wouldn’t worry about it being “publishable” or anything like that. I would just do what I needed to do, engage with the ideas I really cared about. I would go back to the idea that had been kicking around in my head and in my journals since graduate school.
I made this deal with myself. I would get up an hour and half early every morning and write before I went to work. No adolescent agonizing, just produce some prose every day. All I had to do, I figured, was write two hundred words a day, or a thousand words a week. Fifty thousand words a year and I’d have a novel in two years. Piece of cake. It was, of course, more complicated than that and the two years turned to three and to four between living and crossing stuff out, but I stuck with it because I fell in love with what I was doing.
Q. How would you describe the idea that is at the heart of The Center of the World?
A. In “Against Interpretation” Susan Sontag says,“Transparence is the highest, most liberating value in art . . . Transparence means experiencing the luminousness of the thing in itself, of things being what they are.” What if the sketches that Ruskin destroyed were studies for a work of art that achieved that “transparence” that Sontag talks about more perfectly than any work of art ever has? That work would be uninterpretable, it would just be what it was. How would people respond to such a thing? How could such a thing have been created? These are the ideas that I am playing around with in the novel.
An “uninterpretable” work, a work that just is, would be something that, as an aesthetic object, is more perfect than anything yet created and more erotic, as an erotic object, than any thing that ever was before. When I think about the Turner painting in the book I think about two vectors, one labeled “art” and one labeled “eroticism” merging someplace beyond anything we know in either category. That intersection, treated as a real possibility, is what the book is about. How could such an impossible object be created in the past? What would it be like to be in the presence of such an object in the present? Those are the questions I am trying to deal with.
Q.That’s a very theoretical and pointy-headed description of what you are doing. The book actually doesn’t seem that theory-driven.
A.Thank you. That’s me, in part, looking back and trying to make sense of the book after the fact.
Q. Did you do a lot of research for this book?
A. Yes, but not a ton. In a joint interview E. L. Doctorow and Joe Papaleo (both of whom were my teachers at Sarah Lawrence) talk about how in fiction writing, too close an adherence to historical fact can be crippling. (Conversations With E. L. Doctorow, University Press of Mississippi, 1999) Everything that happens in the book is more or less plausible given the broad outlines of what we know about Turner’s career, but I didn’t let myself be limited by the facts. One of the great things about writing about Turner is that he was a very private person—we don’t really know an awful lot about the man beyond the paintings—so I felt like I had quite a few degrees of freedom there. I went to Petworth House a few times during the course of the writing—just wandering around like a tourist—and tried to imagine how this real place could be instrumental in the creation of the impossible object that is at the heart of my book. The descriptions of the rooms and the paintings at Petworth are pretty accurate. The National Trust guide to Petworth House was an import resource.
Q. The Turner painting at the center of your novel seems to be a sexually explicit representation of Helen of Troy. How did you get to that?
A. Well, I started with Turner’s erotic sketches and the notion that they were remnants, as it were, of a greater, but now lost, work. That work would have to have an erotic element to it, it would have to be a historical painting (this is Turner after all), and it would have to be about something really important. That got me to Helen pretty quickly. Early in the novel Turner is talking to his patron, Lord Egremont, about the difference between the ancients and the moderns, and who knew more about the truth. Turner says that “there is more truth between a woman’s legs than there ever was between Homer’s ears.” What he means here, I think, is that the “truth” is not so much an intellectual creation, but it is something that resides ultimately in the body and in human desire. When Turner, with Egremont’s encouragement, tries to represent that “truth” he is drawn to Helen, because Helen is the ultimate object of desire. She is, in some sense, the cause of everything: the Trojan War and epic poetry, art; the origin, from Turner’s perspective, of everything that matters.
Q. What would you like your readers to get out of The Center of the World?
A. Pleasure, of course. Turner was a Romantic and his paintings, while wonderful as formal objects, are also full of feeling. My book is not one of those cool postmodern affairs. It shares, in some small way, a Romantic (with a capital R) sensibility with Turner and other artists and poets of his time. I would like readers to leave with a feeling for what art and love can be and with some new ideas about how those two things might be related.
From Booklist
The main character in Van Essen’s ambitious debut novel is the lost titular painting by renowned British artist J. M. W. Turner (1775–1851). The big theme is among the biggest: the power of art. The story is about Turner and his struggle to paint the picture in question, and its reception. It scandalizes some and otherwise changes the lives of others. It is either a masterpiece or erotic trash, sinful or uplifting. The novel moves among several points of view, alternating between the near-present and the mid-nineteenth century. We meet Turner himself; his patron, Lord Egremont, at his massive house, Petworth; and the putative Helen Elizabeth Spenser. An art critic, Charles Grant, tells of life at Petworth and the painting’s difficult birth. The contemporary story is told by art-dealer Henry Leiden of Princeton, New Jersey, whose drab suburban life is changed when he discovers the painting. His motives are decidedly mixed since he wants the painting for himself, and he provides this tale’s suspense. --Michael Autrey
Review
"A terrific debut novel about the mystical and erotic power of art...Van Essen writes gracefully and makes accessible the issue of art as transcendence." —Kirkus (starred review)
"Thomas Van Essen’s debut novel fuses historical fiction and thriller, with a bit of aesthetic theory for good measure...Van Essen is a lucid observer, whether detailing the creative process or lamenting a contemporary culture in which art is just another commodity. Transience is what holds together this imaginative reconstruction of art history—the transience of the mortal artist and even the art itself, which nevertheless helps us appreciate what persists." —The Los Angeles Review
“Was J.M.W. Turner anything like Thomas Van Essen has presented him in this ambitious debut novel? After a few pages you will hardly care, as you will be gladly moving from the dinner table of Turner’s patron in early 19th century England, to the calculating art world of present-day New York City, to the rustic beauty of the Adirondacks and all its treasures, hidden and otherwise. In Thomas Van Essen’s characters and the impressive scope of this story we are given a strong case for the transformative nature of art, and how beauty can be a balm for the human soul.” —Mary Beth Keane, author of Fever and The Walking People
"Van Essen’s debut novel departs from the recent real-life discovery of maritime landscapist J.M.W. Turner’s erotica to trace a fictional portrait by the painter of a scantily clad Helen of Troy awaiting Paris...All who meet Turner’s Helen see simultaneously truth, beauty, and the impetus for sin. With the painting’s journey, newcomer Van Essen demonstrates a flair for dialogue and an appreciation for how art moves the human heart." —Publishers Weekly
“An utterly absorbing journey of the spell cast by a secret painting on those few who have seen it over a hundred and fifty years. Love and desire, treachery and mystery, great beauty and the loss of it and finding love at last when you thought it was gone—all kept me up late reading this passionate novel of human fallibility and immortal art.” —Stephanie Cowell, author of Claude and Camille: a novel of Monet
"The main character in Van Essen’s ambitious debut novel is the lost titular painting by renowned British artist J. M. W. Turner (1775–1851). The big theme is among the biggest: the power of art." —Booklist
"Mature readers will relish the intellectual examination into the powers of art and eroticism." —Foreword Reviews
"Van Essen conveys all this with a surreal ambience that heightens the mysterious quality of his ever-changing, shocking scenes and characters. Notable historic fiction!" —Historical Novel Society
"We’re calling this book ‘A Great Summer Read’ in the highest regard, because it belongs not with the airport paperback beach-reads, but among those rare page turners of higher literary esteem...on a warm summer night you’ll find, as we did, Van Essen is a great new voice to curl up with. Love, sex, beauty, erotica, all with some literary flare: a great summer read." —The Masters Review
"...vivid and engaging..." —Proto Libro
"...a terrific refreshing look at how art impacts people and people impact art with the boundaries of acceptable tastes as to what is pornography changing between generations. Using an imaginary portrait, Thomas Van Essen provides a thought provoking tale of how important and influential art is to society." —Genre Go Round Reviews
"... an ambitious and impressive debut novel..." —Largehearted Boy
"Impossible to put down until the final page is turned...Telling of artistic beauty and sensuality, this lovely, intense novel mines the mysterious, mystical bond that connects lives over a century apart." —Curled Up With a Good Book
"...cannily exposes how passion can both derail and inspire." —Minneapolis Star Tribune
"I loved the The Center of the World. Rarely does anyone describe the workings of art world as well Thomas Van Essen has succeeded in doing. He captures the obsessions and passion of all those involved, most distinctively the intangible binds of artist, patrons, viewers and collectors. Van Essen brings to life the beauty, light and ultimately the effect that Turner's work (or any great art) can have on those whose lives it touches. 'The Sun is God,' proclaimed a dying Turner, and great art aspires to catch a glimpse of 'God' at all costs." —Suzan Woodruff, artist
"Thomas Van Essen’s novel deserves its success." —Wormwood
"[E]legantly delivered." —Library Journal
Most helpful customer reviews
15 of 17 people found the following review helpful.
Unveiling a Masterpiece
By Rich Stoehr
'The Center of the World' is the story of a painting that doesn't exist - but by the time I turned the last page, I wished it did.
The painting in question bears the same title as the novel, and it is a work of both erotic power and remarkable beauty and detail. Thomas Van Essen leads us, deliberately and steadily, through the stories of the different people in different times who experience the painting. From its inspiration and creation by J.M.W. Turner at Lord Egremont's estate in the 19th century to its discovery hidden away in a humble barn in the 21st century, we see how it changes hands over the years, and how each person who sees it is changed in their turn.
Van Essen introduces us to Turner, a well-known figure in the art world, as a very flawed man - a drinker and a man not very skilled in the social graces, a painter more skilled at landscapes than portraits, but nevertheless a master of capturing light on canvas. In The Center of the World he creates his masterwork, a sensual, scandalous portrait of Helen of Troy awaiting her lover Paris, which only a few will ever see or even know of. Those who do experience it are always changed - from Lord Egremont, Turner's patron for a time, to Elizabeth, his inspiration and model for Helen, to Henry, who finds the painting while cleaning out a barn on his father's property, to the art dealer who has been looking for the painting for much of his life. There are others the painting touches along the way, and each has their story to tell.
The mastery in 'The Center of the World' lies in how these stories connect, and how Turner's masterwork is revealed to us slowly, steadily, instilled with a sense of wonder and mystery. Through letters between intimate friends, through business communications, through diary entries we learn of the history of the painting through the eyes of those who experienced it. It's a deliberate and steady journey, at the end of which we feel as if we've seen it for ourselves, and come to understand a little more about both the process and the possibility of art.
If a painting like the one described in 'The Center of the World' truly existed, it could change the world. I would dearly love to see it...in these pages, I very nearly did.
6 of 6 people found the following review helpful.
The Center of the World
By Brendan Moody
The relationship among art, eroticism, and ecstatic experience is the subject of Thomas Van Essen's well-crafted and compulsively readable first novel, which builds its tale of a lost portrait of Helen of Troy around real history. In the early nineteenth century, eccentric patron of the arts Lord Egremont hosts painter J. M. W. Turner, who is contemplating an ambitious new project; in the early twentieth century, a collector acquires an unknown Turner masterpiece and prepares a showplace for it at his new summer home; in the early twenty-first century, an ordinary family man rediscovers the painting, even as a powerful and amoral art dealer continues his own search for it. These three narratives intersect in alternating chapters, some written in the first person, some in the third, which serves to disguise the static quality of a novel that is, despite some intrigue in the present-day story, much more concerned with theme than with narrative momentum. Van Essen is a quietly graceful stylist, and particularly adept at mimicking Victorian prose, but his descriptions of the feelings evoked by Turner's masterwork aren't quite elaborate enough to capture the transcendence involved, lending the various scenes in which characters react to it a repetitive quality. Nonetheless, the thoughtfulness with which Van Essen writes about the importance of beauty and desire, without denying the ugly responses they can inspire, makes this a must-read novel for admirers of fiction concerned with the link between the ecstatic and the aesthetic.
5 of 5 people found the following review helpful.
"Time is the only thing we care about. How long before we die is the only question."
By Mary Whipple
On its surface, Thomas Van Essen's debut novel is about a quest to find a missing (fictional) painting, said to be J. M. W. Turner's masterwork, "The Center of the World," an interpretation of the classical story of Helen of Troy. Everyone who has ever seen it has always been stunned by its power, and some viewers have come close to venerating it in a religious sense, spending hours staring into it and experiencing wave after wave of pleasure. Commissioned by George O'Brien Wyndham, the Earl of Egremont, during the time in which J. M. W. Turner was living at his estate, Petworth, the painting features two beautiful nudes - Mrs. Spencer, Lord Egremont's mistress, as the model for Helen, and a young guest as the model for Priam. Because of its subject and the powerful sexuality it exudes from within, the painting was never intended to be shown publicly, and it vanishes from view with the death of its patron.
The novel is more than a quest story, however. It is also a study of ecstasy, what creates it, and what enhances it, in art and literature (and indirectly, religion). The novel's numerous points of view, in time periods extending over more than one hundred fifty years, illustrate the history of this mythical painting from its creation to the present, convincing the reader that it is both real and as powerfully seductive as was Helen of Troy herself. In addition to the point of view and time frame of Lord Egremont and J. M. W. Turner, the author also includes numerous other points of view and time frames, including a contemporary man who loves vacationing at Saranac Lake in the Adirondacks but who needs more money to maintain the small cottage he has inherited from his father. His neighbor, Mr. Mossbacher, the current owner of the "big house" adjacent to the cottage unexpectedly offers to buy the man's property from him.
In succeeding chapters, the author shifts back a couple of generations, as financially distressed Mr. Stokes, the private owner of a mysterious painting, is approached with an offer to buy the painting by wealthy Mr. Rhinebeck, owner of a large estate. Yet another point of view is that of Arthur Bryce, a one-man corporation who deals with undercover art sales to avoid taxes. He has just hired a young woman to help him trace the painting through England and the United States. By choreographing these various points of view and time frames (which feel initially as if they are in random order), the author gradually builds suspense and interest in the painting's history while also foreshadowing the painting's destiny.
The most crucial point, other than who has the painting, is the effect of the painting on those who see it. The author carefully illustrates the painting's ability to overwhelm and emotionally capture the viewer, and he does not hold back in suggesting that much of the painting's power is sexual. Drawing direct parallels between intense, sexual moments and the power of a painting to overwhelm the viewer, the author becomes graphic in his imagery. Some readers may be offended - and perhaps disappointed that the author chose to take this route, instead of drawing his parallels with greater subtlety. Romantic in its focus on personal feelings and ongoing mysteries, the novel, overall, is exciting and insightful, despite some unanswered questions regarding the painting's continued provenance.
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