Hurtle Duffield is incapable of loving anything except what he paints. The men and women who court him during his long life are, above all, the victims of his art. His is the vivisector, dissecting their weaknesses with cruel precision: his sister's deformity, a grocer's moonlight indiscretion and the passionate illusions of his mistress, Hero Pavloussi. Only the egocentric adolescent he sees as his spiritual child elicits from him a deeper, more treacherous emotion.
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4.0 out of 5 stars
Portrait of the Artist,
This review is from: Vivisector (Paperback)
A chronicle of the life of Hurtle Duffield,a celebrated but controversial artist, from his birth into poverty,being sold by his parents to his mummas employers-Mrs Courtney sees him as a genius and is intoxicated by its allure as well as the handsome boy; his youth and unconventional love for his hideously deformed step sister Rhoda; his defining relationships with the prostitute Nancy Lightfoot,Hero,the wife of a Greek shipping magnate and the Lolita like prodigy Kathy and the stroke that leads to his final masterpiece. Throughout, Duffield opens up-vivisects- his subjects to try and find pure meaning and soul and wonders what 'God the vivisector' was trying to reveal in his own great work of art;the human being.This is a huge body of work that-like all White's books-demands the time and concentration to read so you can reach its core.You cannot get away with reading 10 pages, leave it for a week, and hope to pick up the thread again, which is always why I wait until I have a clear week or so to engross myself in a Patrick White novel;the rewards are great. Dedicated to the controversial Austrailian artist Sidney Nolan,White pursues his idea that it is the eccentrics, the outsiders,the artistic geniuses where human salvation and truth lie,whilst scorning the frippery of artistic patrons and their lack of insight. Rhoda reveals to him the huge role that suffering has in art and truth; maybe thats why in God's masterpiece we are doomed to suffer. An intense work that underlines why I view White as a genuine nobel prize writer; if his standard was the level needed to win the prize, very few after 1973 would have won it,and just as likely, as few before.
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