My limits as a reader: "Liberté" by Scott Nadelson

When I was an undergrad at Catholic Walsh University in 1998, I was taking one of the two required theology classes when our professor--the disappointingly named Dr. Weber, whose doctorate was actually in ministry, not theology--brought in a local priest to read to us from his book. He'd had the rather pedestrian idea of re-writing Bible stories in the style of thrillers. He read to us from his re-write of the rape of Dinah in Genesis 34. I remember the story started with, "Get your hands off me, you filthy ape." Somehow, it managed to go downhill from even that awful beginning. 

I don't know if trauma from having to listen to that reading is to blame, but I don't believe I've ever enjoyed reading a re-imagining of anyone who had a life of their own. You can slightly re-write someone so that even if I know where it's coming from, it's clear you've written your own character, like Carolynn Ferrell did in "Something Street," but I just do not like reading about the fictionalized lives of real historical characters. (I realize Dinah isn't historical in the way Abraham Lincoln is, but perhaps my traumatized brain doesn't realize this.) I'd greatly prefer to just read a well-researched biography. 

In the 2019 O.Henry Anthology, I did not care at all for "The Earth, Thy Great Exchequer, Ready Lies" by Jo Lloyd, a fictionalized account of mining pioneer Humphrey Mackworth. I've also never read an Andrea Barrett story I liked, her agonizingly dull recounting of the secretly poetic thoughts she imagines real scientists had. I can't bring myself to read Lincoln in the Bard, partly because I admire Lincoln so much and don't want to taint that admiration.

So there was not much chance I was going to like "Liberté" by Scott Nadelson, a fictionalized account of sculptor Louise Nevelson, nee Berliawsky, and her relationship with French novelist/raving anti-Semite Louis Ferdinand-Celine, nee Louis Ferdinand Auguste Destouches. Particularly when you add in my general indifference to any kind of visual art. (Prior to this story, I'd never heard of Nevelson. I have enough interest in art in me to get through maybe two trips to museums a year.)

I thought at first maybe the story was about the banality of evil, a banality displayed by both Celine and Nevelson. That reading doesn't quite hold, though, because while Nevelson's self-justifications about leaving her son register somewhere on the banality of evil scale, Celine himself is nothing like Eichmann. He's openly hostile to communists and Jews, so much so, he even shocked the Nazis. His evil is remarkable, not banal.  

Rather, I think the heart of the story is somewhere in Nevelson's discovery that "someone can detest what he desires or desire what he detests. Which comes first, the wanting or the loathing, she doesn't know." She thinks this explains why the anti-Semite Celine could feel attracted to her, even though she is Jewish, but it also possibly explains why she is interested enough in someone as contemptible as Celine to continue a relationship with him for years. Her simultaneous fascination with and revulsion for Celine seems to be a creative spark to what would become her monochromatic sculptures that so enraptured Nadelson, he started to study all about Nevelson's work for a different project and ended up writing this story instead. The narrator describes her sculptures as suggesting "the messy intricacies of mind and heart."

I don't know much about art, but I know that might represent the messy intricacies of mind and heart. 

That's about as far as I can go with this one. To dig deeper, I'd have to probably, I don't know, actually research Nevelson's sculpture or something, and I just don't have it in me. I almost never take a pass on a story, at least not in BASS, but this year, I'm going to take a pass on this one. 

Other readings: 

Karen Carlson at A Just Recompense, who does a nifty re-interpretation of Nevelson's art in light of her relationship with Celine.