The Great Man: A Novel [Hardcover]

Kate Christensen (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: August 14, 2007

From the acclaimed author of The Epicure's Lament, a novel of literary rivalry in which two competing biographers collide in their quest for the truth about a great artist.

Oscar Feldman, the "Great Man," was a New York city painter of the heroic generation of the forties and fifties. But instead of the abstract canvases of the Pollocks and Rothkos, he stubbornly hewed to painting one subject—the female nude. When he died in 2001, he left behind a wife, Abigail, an autistic son, and a sister, Maxine, herself a notable abstract painter—all duly noted in the New York Times obituary.

What no one knows is that Oscar Feldman led an entirely separate life in Brooklyn with his longtime mistress, Teddy St. Cloud, and their twin daughters. As the incorrigibly bohemian Teddy puts it, "He couldn't live without a woman around. It was like water to a plant for him." Now two rival biographers, book contracts in hand, are circling around Feldman's life story, and each of these three women—Abigail, Maxine, and Teddy—will have a chance to tell the truth as they experienced it.

The Great Man is a scintillating comedy of life among the avant-garde—of the untidy truths, needy egos, and jostlings for position behind the glossy facade of artistic greatness. Not a pretty picture—but a provocative and entertaining one that incarnates the take-no-prisoners satirical spirit of Dawn Powell and Mary McCarthy.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

This penetratingly observed novel is less about the great man of its title than the women Oscar Feldman, fictional 20th-century New York figurative painter (and an infamous seducer of models as well as a neglectful father), leaned on and left behind: Abigail, his wife of more than four decades; Teddy, his mistress of nearly as many years; and Maxine, his sister, an abstract artist who has achieved her own lesser measure of fame. Five years after Feldman's death, as the women begin sketching their versions of him for a pair of admiring young biographers working on very different accounts of his life, long-buried resentments corrode their protectiveness, setting the stage for secrets to be spilled and bonds to be tested. Christensen (The Epicure's Lament) tells the story with striking compassion and grace, and her characters are fully alive and frankly sexual creatures. Distraction intrudes when real-world details are wrong (the A-train, for instance, doesn't run through the Bronx), and the novel's bookends—an obituary and a book review, both ostensibly from the New York Times—are less than convincing as artifacts. In all, however, this is an eloquent story posing questions to which there are no simple answers: what is love? what is family? what is art? (Aug.)
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

From The New Yorker

At the center of this snippy comedy of manners is a New York-based painter and philanderer, Oscar Feldman, whose oeuvre consists of boldly rendered female nudes. That Oscar has been dead for a few years barely matters to the constellation of elderly women in his orbit: his long-suffering wife, Abigail, who rarely leaves her Upper West Side apartment; Teddy, his soignée bohemian mistress, moldering in Greenpoint; his sister Maxine, an abstract painter who is equally preoccupied with female flesh, and considered by some a greater talent. When two feckless biographers descend, looking for the inside scoop, Oscar’s big secret, hanging in plain view, becomes a vehicle for both rapprochement and revelation. Christensen addresses topics like gender and race with overly broad strokes, but her picture of three women coping with the indignities and the pleasures of old age is satisfyingly detailed.
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Product Details

• Hardcover: 320 pages
• Publisher: Doubleday; First Edition edition (August 14, 2007)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0385518455
• ISBN-13: 978-0385518451
• Product Dimensions: 5.9 x 1 x 8.6 inches
• Shipping Weight: 7.2 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 3.8 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (16 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #734,150 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

26 of 29 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Three old ladies I'd like to meet, August 22, 2007

By 

Jami Attenberg - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Great Man: A Novel (Hardcover)

I devoured The Great Man in a day! What a rich, thoughtful, smart, funny book. Teddy, Maxine, and Abigail are three of the most compelling characters I've read in a long time. I wanted to sit down with all of them for a coffee (or a whiskey) and hear even more on what they thought about life, love and art. And Kate Christensen's writing is elegant, accessible and fresh, and, I'll say it again, so funny. The art is not just in the story, but in the way she tells it. She is truly a gifted writer. As great as her first three books were, this book is even better. I can't wait for the next one!

21 of 25 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A colorful character study, January 20, 2008

By 

Jessica Lux (Rosamond, CA) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: The Great Man: A Novel (Hardcover)

The Great Man is, quite simply, a novel about a foursome of great women, all of whom had rich lives well into their seventies, and all of whom were hopelessly entangled with the great womanizing painter Oscar Feldman. Feldman was the arrogant, charismatic Golden Boy of his generation, a man who painted nothing but the female nude and eschewed formal training. Five years after Feldman's death, two competing biographers started researching his life. The novel is set around the lives of the women who survived Feldman, as they bicker amongst themselves and conspire to keep family art secrets.

One could center a lovely book club discussion around the desires and outcomes for the women in Oscar Feldman's life. He married graduate student Abigail, who bore his autistic son and devoted her life to her son's special needs, staunchly refusing to institutionalize the boy. Abigail had family money which afforded Oscar his painting career, and she was content to ignore his many marital transgressions. She had a rewarding, life-long friendship with her housekeeper, and in her old age, Abigail misses the housekeeper far more than her late husband.

Abigail's arch nemesis was the bohemian, free-spirited mistress of her husband. Teddy bore Oscar's twin daughters and gave them his surname, but never asked to more than one of his many female conquests. He left nothing to Teddy upon his death, a fact which outraged those in the know but didn't surprise Teddy in the least.

Oscar's butch lesbian sister Maxine is a painter in her own right with a love/hate relationship with her brother. She rabidly encourages Abigail to hate Oscar's former mistress, even when Abigail and Teddy are ready to find common ground. The foursome is rounded out by Lila, Teddy's lifelong best friend, who (surprisingly) never slept with Oscar, and with whom Abigail forms a tentative relationship with during the course of the novel.

Kate Christensen, in addition to painting rich characters worth of contemplation and discussion, portrays women in their seventies as sexy and feisty. Oscar Feldmen is a plot device for a novel which is truly a character study, probing to ask women what bring satisfaction in life--love? sex? family? The women of The Great Man also examine how the wisdom of age change life priorities, and how one can come to terms with youthful foolishness.

9 of 10 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars fantastic, October 4, 2007

By 

S. Rabdau - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: The Great Man: A Novel (Hardcover)

This book exceeded all expectations; and based on the description, my expectations were high. It is impossible to not want to know each of these characters intimately. They are all so unique, and intoxicating. I found myself feeling like I was a part of their circle, and that I was the one conducting the interviews, prodding for more information.
Not only are the characters and storyline so enthralling, but the language used is eloquent, and thoughtful, but not at all overdone.
I loved this book from start to finish, I was sad to put it down when it ended.