Customer Reviews

Fatigue Artist

5 star:		(3)
4 star:		(3)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

This brilliant book is one of my favorite novels of all time. Illness, grief, growth, recovery, not to mention Tai Chi, photographs, performance art, the most intimate appreciation for Manhattan, and meditations on the act of writing itself...no one but Schwartz could craft this combination of wisdom, knowledge, experiments in form, gorgeous language, and thoroughly engaging characters and plot.

Lynne Sharon Schwartz is such an accomplished wordsmith that her books are to be savored bit by bit, like eating the finest of chocolate cakes...you just don't want to finish.

Published in 1996, this beautiful novel tells the story of Laura, a quintessential New Yorker and writer, who is stricken with chronic fatigue syndrome after losing her journalist husband to a random senseless crime. As Laura describes her lassitude, wherein her bed calls to her "like a lover," the reader can actually feel the inertia of the body...can actually BECOME Laura as she uses this illness to relive her fortysomething life up to this point.

Often feverish and lightheaded, Laura swims through her memories as any of us would in this situation, somehow presenting us with a cohesive whole--a portrait of a very likeable woman who is, to use a hateful cliche but one that works in this instance, "at a crossroads." In addition to the almost painfully beautiful prose, Schwartz does something unusual by peppering the book in places with actual photographs of the scenes she is describing, particularly a large backyard swimming pool only 1/4 filled with water.

I cannot believe I missed this book when it first came out, but I found it as timely and wonderful as anything written now. It is not dated and its powerful simplicity leaves a lasting impression, as everything Schwartz writes.

I found this book in a used bookstore. The title immediately captured me. I know chronic fatigue, and the effort of turning constant exhaustion into a form of art. So I bought the book and read it in one long gulp, enjoying it thoroughly. I don't know why it ranks so low on Amazon.com. It shouldn't: it's a great book.

Exhaustion permeates the book in a gentle, uninstrusive, *untiring* way that makes you realize the book, itself, is the gorgeous artifact of the fatigue artist/protagonist/narrator. Schwartz links multiple motifs into a narrative tapestry that is remarkably cohesive and effortless. One theme is performance art. This is key, because what artistry is left to the exhausted artist other than performing (for herself, for others?) her malaise? Another theme is Chinese body discipline and body healing, in the forms, respectively, of Tai Chi and acupuncture and herbal medicine. The Tai Chi master is Chinese and never appears without a translator. The acupuncturist is a young Caucasian woman. Translation occupies constantly the mind of the narrator. Does the Tai Chi instructor's interpreter traslate faithfully? What if he didn't? Would the wise and poetic words that come from the master count less? Whose words, really, are they?

Translation is also an issue for those who, like the Caucasian healer, bring foreign healing techniques to Western bodies (even, at some point, to a predictably docile and very cooperative Western dog!). Will they work even if you don't believe in them? Yes, the healer says.

Laura herself deals with translation in trying to bring to life in a novel-within-the-novel the small East Coast town where the family of her dead husband lived. Translation of any kind, we learn, is not an uncomplicated matter. The mind fumbles in its attempts to find words for the alien, the inexplicable -- Chinese parables, medicine that doesn't compute, a disappearing fishing culture, a mysterious illness. Words fail the narrator, yet she retains faith in them, and in the possibility of communication and healing.

Uncomplainingly, Laura subjects herself to the cures of her acupuncturist, even though at first they make her feel worse. She drags herself to Tai Chi in the park (New York has a large, loving presence in this book) whenever she can. When she's forced to lie in bed (bed, her best lover), she does so with pleasure. Her tiredness is not cause for bitterness but for reflection and pause.

She is a woman whom illness and life's sufferings have brought to acceptance of the complications of life: lovers who come and go, husbands who may be less than soul-mates, difficult step-children. Laura takes it all in stride, with humor, with gentleness, with deliberate good temper.

Schwartz metaphorizes these movements towards acceptance in Laura's relation to a dying squirrel that has decided to spend its last months on Laura's windowsill. Laura fights the creature for a while, hoping it'll spare her the effort of taking its stiff body to the trash can downstairs, but at the end she gives in. Life, love, death, illness, are all part of one smooth motion, like the tides of the disappearing fishing town.

There is not an ounce of banality in The Fatigue Artist. Schwartz is a first-rate writer, and her prose is beautifully sharp, poetic, and spare.

As a whole the novel is weak, but there are passages that make it worth reading. In this case, the sum of the parts is greater than the whole. The story line meanders & the book is mired in detail. But perhaps the author intended to create a feeling of frustration & impatience in the reader, to mirror the frustration & impatience of the protagonist (Laura) as she waits for her viral illness to pass. Laura has certain traits that make it hard to care about her: she seems self-important, convinced that she's the center of the universe, & mean-spirited. (For example, when the Tai Chi teacher expresses sympathy upon learning of the death of Laura's husband, Laura's response is to ridicule the teacher for having pretended not to understand English -- p. 77.) I'm not sure if Schwartz intended Laura to be off-putting. Maybe, the author's point is that illness causes the patient to be self-centered. Schwartz tends to indulge in pretentious overwriting. (E.g., p 131: "I would have worshipped not the sun itself but its light. The sun is monotheistic, but light appears in infinite forms, the gods and goddesses in their protean moods.") That's too bad because she can be very good at depicting scenes (e.g., starting on p. 241: at the pool, on a summer afternoon) Schwarz makes some good observations. Here's one that all by itself made the book worthwhile: "...it is essential to love your life or else change it. I couldn't or didn't wish to change it so I willed myself to love it." (p.55)

Like others who read this book, I found it to be deliberately slow and paced at times, but I enjoyed this form of writing the story after a time. It is a very intimate novel, so much so it almost makes you want to crawl into bed yourself while reading it! The main character I did find very self-involved, although mostly in a healthy manner. The steps she takes to take care of her illness, such as the Tai Chi class, seem to involve the reader more intimately into the character's spiritual journey. The novel is deliberately oblique as to whether or not the main character will make any resolution in career (finishing her book) or romance (Q). All in all, I found it a rich and satisfying read.

As a writer who suffered Chronic Fatigue, I know that L.S.S. hits the nail on the head. Rich humor, beautiful prose; full characters are woven effectively in and out of the tale. Did not disappoint - and that is rare these days.

I hate to bring down the star value of a book, but I just couldn't give this book more than 3 stars.

Ms. Schwartz can certainly write, that isn't the problem. However, I found that she went off on tangents and the plot became too fragmented.

Brief characters in the beginning come up again only toward the end, forcing the reader to think back and remember who the not very memorable character is. Indeed, none of the characters except the main character and Q., her lover, are fleshed out at all. Sadly, the husband is an enigma. Overall, all the minor characters are spokes in a wheel with the main hub being "the fatigue artist," herself.

Very few characters have any dialogue at all, so we don't hear their "voice." Most of the book is interior monologue.

Maybe the main character was just too tired.

Although I found Laura not a particularly interesting character, not much depth, I thought that many of her contemporary life situations, relationships with step-children, old lovers, friends, neighbors, realistic. But I found her automatic trust in Carol, the 'witch,' unvelievable. For someone who really enjoyed Leaving Brooklyn I did not find this captivating. Of course, I did not stop midway; I did want to see what happened