Image of Josephine – Booth Tarkington

Tarkington produced dozens of works – mostly fiction, but also a good number of plays and non-fiction. He was popular both with readers and critics (he won the Pulitzer Prize twice). Five of his novels were made into films. As a boy I enjoyed Penrod, and as an adult I thought The Magnificent Ambersons was excellent. But, until now, that has been my only exposure to Tarkington. I was surprised to find, after completing Image, that it was his last novel. I would say it was a fitting closure to a long career, mainly because Josephine is a unique and compelling character. We first see her as a girl of fourteen, playing with friends. Well, not really friends; she’s too bossy, rude, imperious, she has too inflated an idea of her worth to inspire anything in others but hostility. At this young age her extremely wealthy grandfather (who dotes on her and encourages her outsized beliefs) puts her in future control of a fabulous museum he’s going to build, full of precious works of art. Skip ten years, the museum is built, and Josephine – now a beauty – is still thoroughly dislikable. She has no respect for her unperfected fellow-creatures; she walks over people or uses them. Another character plays a major role in this story: Bailey Fount, a WWII veteran who was severely wounded and is on leave to recover. Besides his physical wounds, he’s a psychological mess, so unsure of himself, so self-conscious, as to be almost a stumbling mute. As a safe refuge, he’s placed in the position of Assistant Curator of Paintings at the museum. Events occur that cause him to enter into a complex entanglement with Josephine. The strength of the novel is the way both these characters become more than they initially seemed to be. Is this evolution entirely believable? No, but I went along with it because it interested me. Bailey expands to assertive manhood, Josephine shrinks to the point where one actually feels pity for her. She long harbored a gilded image of herself, and when that image begins to crumble what she faces is a frightening aloneness. Yet she stubbornly holds onto her pride – or, at least, its remnants. The ending is ambiguous; the reader never knows what the future holds for these two. But, somehow, that Big Question works. 

Mountain Time – Bernard DeVoto

The first half of this novel takes place in New York, where Cy Kinsman is a resident surgeon at Mercy Hospital (which treats both the poor and the wealthy). Cy is brilliant at his job – he has “the hands,” ones capable of doing the most intricate procedure, and the mind to know what needs to be done. Though he’s headed for greatness in the field (and the attendant wealth), he abruptly ditches it all and returns to the western city he grew up in, where he works as a mechanic and lives in an abandoned barn. (I wasn’t at all clear on why he made this decision.) While he was in New York he had met up with someone he knew as a boy – Josephine. She’s married to a struggling writer, and has one child. Her husband is juvenile, selfish and pretentious; he’s also unfaithful and doesn’t have a job (she’s the breadwinner). She’s unhappy and angry, and at the end of Part One decides to get a divorce and return to the same city as Cy. This becomes a two-person novel, about a relationship. But the New York section had a lot concerning the workings of a hospital and what takes place in an operating room, and this was excellent stuff. I tried to find what ties the author had with the medical profession in order to present it so authentically. In vain. Seems DeVoto was purely a man of letters. If this is researched material, it’s top of the line. All through this novel the writing is very good. But there’s a Big Problem: I mentioned not understanding why Cy quit medicine, and my lack of understanding applies even more strongly to the nature of the relationship he and Josephine share. They have some sort of deep bond. And though there’s physical attraction, they never consummate it. We get tons of words about how they feel, but none of it makes sense. Josephine acts crazy at times (has an urge to kill her little daughter, etc.) She’s unusually dependent on Cy to help he out of her “moods,” but also is defiant and even antagonistic toward him. He’s always reliable and caring, but keeps a distance. What we get is far too many long excursions into unfathomable emotions. Anyway . . . With sixteen pages left in the book the two go on a camping trip and all the problems between them magically disappear. And they finally, at last, have sex. When they return to civilization, Cy tells her they’re getting married, and she complies. This simplistic happy ending – after all the strife and agonizing that went on for the previous hundred pages – seems to be a sort of cop out. But, still, I liked them both and was glad they settled things.

The Letters of Frida Kahlo – compiled by Martha Zamora

If you entitle a book The Letters of Frida Kahlo you’re obligated to deliver. Despite the deluxe looking edition, there’s not much here. Gaps spanning years without one letter? From someone who seemed eager to receive letters (and so must have reciprocated by writing them)? And, being married to a world-famous artist, Diego Rivera, would make her someone whose letters people would keep. The last personal one we get (a note, really) is from 1947, and she died in 1954. No letters in seven years? The compiler pads the closing section with many pages consisting of such things as a letter to the President of Mexico, which is purely political, and a “Portrait of Diego,” which was written for a catalogue that accompanied an exhibition of his work. I began both and then skipped them because they didn’t contain anything personal. Another problem: the compiler offers next to nothing about her life, her situation; I was left wanting to know much more about her, so I’ll try to find a good biography. The letters we do get are buoyant, her writing is lively. Emotionally she’s lavish and passionate. That said, there’s a darkening of her spirits in the later ones. A tumultuous life, married to someone like Rivera, probably took their toll. Plus there are her many dire physical problems that began when she was very young and continued to her early death. The shortest letter in this collection was written to a boyfriend when she was eighteen: “The only good thing is that I’m starting to get used to suffering.” And the way she endured suffering is downright brave. Last gripe: this book provides not one of her paintings.

Frida Kahlo in Mexico – Robin Richmond

It’s clear, now, that the collection of letters I reviewed above offered up a highly sanitized version of its subject; actually, it seems directed at children. This biography is definitely not for children – or even for sensitive souls. Kahlo’s life was brutal, and she fought against it in ways that were often far from noble. Though isn’t to fight – to live a full life – noble? Her physical problems began with childhood polio and later, when she was eighteen, with an accident involving a collision with a bus she was riding in and a streetcar. Both caused lifelong pain and disability – in her forty-seven years she would endure thirty-two surgeries. One way she fought against these problems was with her angry, sometimes gruesome art, which we get many examples of. As for her marriage to Diego Rivera, if he was a serial adulterer (he even had an affair with Frida’s sister), she too had affairs (with both men and women). Her language was notable in its use of vulgarity. She drank and smoked excessively. But she was colorful and charismatic – an impressive and compelling personality. It was a proud image she had to fight to maintain, and it seems she finally gave up the struggle. Her death was most likely a suicide – an overdose of painkillers (no autopsy was performed). She was in a hospital, her leg had recently been amputated; her last drawing was of a black angel, accompanied by the words “I joyfully await the exit – and hope never to return.” This book covers her life in context to the history of Mexico and to the politics of the time, and I skipped most of this. I also skipped the lengthy psychoanalyzing of Kahlo’s art that Richmond indulges in. True, it’s autobiographical art, but I had no interest in an interpretation. If you care to learn more, you’d be better off choosing a different source.