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jacob_edwards985 's review for:
The Goldfinch
by Donna Tartt
This was something very special and very unexpected - I was anticipating an easy, fun fiction read with a couple drops of philosophical content, but this upended my suppositions in an incredible way. I thoroughly enjoyed this book.
The first, most initially striking thing to me is the sharpness of the prose. Tartt has this ability to strike right at this poetic heart of phrasing - there are an innumerable amount of passages that require a moment to take in; not dissimilar to other masters of prose like McCarthy or Melville, with the caveat that the rest of the work is written in a casual enough style to make these switches to distilled beauty all the more stark. The first sequence of the book is incredibly written. I felt right present with Theo in that museum, the nauseating, head-quaking stupor he trudges through for this opening third.
Tartt also writes loss incredibly well - for a character who dies within the first 100 or so pages, we the reader spend almost as much time pining over the death of Theo's mother as he does himself. She is able to evoke this overwhelming warmth in how Theo thinks about his mother. I think it is best understood that Tartt is a master of the moments; she is able to squeeze drops of pure sunlight in the smallest moments, a romanticization of the minutiae in such a way that you could bask in each minute for eternity and still not feel you've had enough.
My focus on her writing is not to disparage the power of her plot. In fact, for its length, it charges forward at nearly a perfect pace - I have a hard time recalling a book of this length that feels borderline addicting to read; 11/22/63 is the only one comparable for me and even then I feel as though Tartt may have surpassed it with this book.
The book follows Theo through a life driven by loss - everything falls apart for him at the outset of the novel and we follow him as he comes to piece together an idea of what his life means, what lies at the core of his being, a journey that spans nearly a decade and acquaints us with a myriad of people Theo and the reader come to care for. The standout characters are obviously Boris, Hobie, and Pippa, though I think the entire Barbour family belongs in this echelon as well.
Boris was a character I initially struggled with, I couldn't tell if I liked what Tartt was doing with him, but by the end he was far and away my favorite side character. I believe he is this novel's Virgil - he guides Theo through these layers of hell and allows him to come out the other side with some semblance of self. He is dripping with absurdism, a topic I will not shut up about, but I don't think this book begins with a Camus quote for no reason. His speech at the very end of the novel is so poignant and well written - it shows a man grappling with the cruelty of the universe and choosing to believe in some kind of human good. He decides to believe that his mistakes are not defining, that good is not some perfect ideal but oftentimes a circumstantial accident; he finds this moment of calm in the storm and stakes his claim to life at its heart. He illuminates to Theo the great false binary - nothing is something that is not also its opposite, one cannot exist without its other - good and evil are not opposites so much as a gradient on a painting. Evaluating oneself without a cognizance of the grey is an evaluation doomed to inadequacy.
The Goldfinch is the immutable core symbol of the work - a bird forever attached to his perch; a living, breathing part of the universe all too obviously restrained within it. I believe Theo is so drawn to this painting as it is a microcosm of the truth he knows lies beyond. It is a mirror to his own life; what is he but this poor, golden bird synched forever down to the ground he was never meant to live on? The element of this painting that resonates most with me, and I presume with Theo, is what Theo describes as a kind of resoluteness. The bird radiates an indomitability. It is not free, it is amidst this world of barking dogs and screaming children and stifling air and stands tall and stalwart as if it sits above this world, as Theo comes to be in part by the end of the book.
The finale of the book opens with a Nietzsche quote that I feel is perfectly attuned to the section that follows: "We have art in order to not die of the truth." As I've read more and had more time alone with my thoughts in recent years, this quote has stuck in my mind since first reading it. Theo spends the last few pages soliloquizing this poignant, broken reality that Nietzsche hides behind his "truth," a reality of falsity, a cold world that has no mind for the lives of the people within it. "Life is catastrophe" as Theo puts it - life is, in many ways, this meaningless stumble in the dark we all share together before we all fall off the proverbial cliff edge. But Theo comes to this quintessentially absurd conclusion - "but does it make any sense at all to know.. we lose everything that matters in the end - and yet to know as well, despite all this, as cruelly as the game is stacked, that it's possible to play it with a kind of joy?"
This quote is the capstone to the novel. It is the premise and tumult and conclusion tied up in one sentence. Theo's journey is one so filled with despair, and at the same time, accented with gleaming rhinestones of joy. The moments that I will remember most from this book are his drunken playground romp with Boris - singing "Dear Prudence" to the stars, the warmth of Hobies home, the way Popper sleeps on only Boris' head, the fleeting moments of pure bliss he experiences around Pippa, the luxuriant Christmas dinner he has with his father and Boris; each a moment of deep, profound humanity that we all experience each day and rarely take the time to appreciate amidst the catastrophe of life. Theo is given the opportunity to reflect fully on these moments; his life so full of tragedy that these moments can stand out bright against the dark. Life is catastrophe, and that means nothing except life is to be lived in direct opposition to its indifference. "And in the midst of our dying, as we rise from the organic and sink back ignominiously into the organic, it is a glory and a privilege to love what Death doesn't touch."
It's always insurmountably difficult to properly summarize how I feel about a good book. All of that said and I still feel as though I haven't properly detailed the importance of Hobie and Pippa and what Andy means to the novel and Theo's parents and the Barbours and a surplus of other things swirling around in my brain. I've talked at length about the philosophy of the book, but it will live in my mind inextricably alongside the hyperrealistic depictions of family that the Barbour family and Hobie provide Theo; the unrequited, doomed pinings towards Pippa and those delicate, fleeting moments they share, the humanity of the broken people he meets; Xandra and his father truly assholes in their own right, and yet as human as the rest of us - among so many others.
The first, most initially striking thing to me is the sharpness of the prose. Tartt has this ability to strike right at this poetic heart of phrasing - there are an innumerable amount of passages that require a moment to take in; not dissimilar to other masters of prose like McCarthy or Melville, with the caveat that the rest of the work is written in a casual enough style to make these switches to distilled beauty all the more stark. The first sequence of the book is incredibly written. I felt right present with Theo in that museum, the nauseating, head-quaking stupor he trudges through for this opening third.
Tartt also writes loss incredibly well - for a character who dies within the first 100 or so pages, we the reader spend almost as much time pining over the death of Theo's mother as he does himself. She is able to evoke this overwhelming warmth in how Theo thinks about his mother. I think it is best understood that Tartt is a master of the moments; she is able to squeeze drops of pure sunlight in the smallest moments, a romanticization of the minutiae in such a way that you could bask in each minute for eternity and still not feel you've had enough.
My focus on her writing is not to disparage the power of her plot. In fact, for its length, it charges forward at nearly a perfect pace - I have a hard time recalling a book of this length that feels borderline addicting to read; 11/22/63 is the only one comparable for me and even then I feel as though Tartt may have surpassed it with this book.
The book follows Theo through a life driven by loss - everything falls apart for him at the outset of the novel and we follow him as he comes to piece together an idea of what his life means, what lies at the core of his being, a journey that spans nearly a decade and acquaints us with a myriad of people Theo and the reader come to care for. The standout characters are obviously Boris, Hobie, and Pippa, though I think the entire Barbour family belongs in this echelon as well.
Boris was a character I initially struggled with, I couldn't tell if I liked what Tartt was doing with him, but by the end he was far and away my favorite side character. I believe he is this novel's Virgil - he guides Theo through these layers of hell and allows him to come out the other side with some semblance of self. He is dripping with absurdism, a topic I will not shut up about, but I don't think this book begins with a Camus quote for no reason. His speech at the very end of the novel is so poignant and well written - it shows a man grappling with the cruelty of the universe and choosing to believe in some kind of human good. He decides to believe that his mistakes are not defining, that good is not some perfect ideal but oftentimes a circumstantial accident; he finds this moment of calm in the storm and stakes his claim to life at its heart. He illuminates to Theo the great false binary - nothing is something that is not also its opposite, one cannot exist without its other - good and evil are not opposites so much as a gradient on a painting. Evaluating oneself without a cognizance of the grey is an evaluation doomed to inadequacy.
The Goldfinch is the immutable core symbol of the work - a bird forever attached to his perch; a living, breathing part of the universe all too obviously restrained within it. I believe Theo is so drawn to this painting as it is a microcosm of the truth he knows lies beyond. It is a mirror to his own life; what is he but this poor, golden bird synched forever down to the ground he was never meant to live on? The element of this painting that resonates most with me, and I presume with Theo, is what Theo describes as a kind of resoluteness. The bird radiates an indomitability. It is not free, it is amidst this world of barking dogs and screaming children and stifling air and stands tall and stalwart as if it sits above this world, as Theo comes to be in part by the end of the book.
The finale of the book opens with a Nietzsche quote that I feel is perfectly attuned to the section that follows: "We have art in order to not die of the truth." As I've read more and had more time alone with my thoughts in recent years, this quote has stuck in my mind since first reading it. Theo spends the last few pages soliloquizing this poignant, broken reality that Nietzsche hides behind his "truth," a reality of falsity, a cold world that has no mind for the lives of the people within it. "Life is catastrophe" as Theo puts it - life is, in many ways, this meaningless stumble in the dark we all share together before we all fall off the proverbial cliff edge. But Theo comes to this quintessentially absurd conclusion - "but does it make any sense at all to know.. we lose everything that matters in the end - and yet to know as well, despite all this, as cruelly as the game is stacked, that it's possible to play it with a kind of joy?"
This quote is the capstone to the novel. It is the premise and tumult and conclusion tied up in one sentence. Theo's journey is one so filled with despair, and at the same time, accented with gleaming rhinestones of joy. The moments that I will remember most from this book are his drunken playground romp with Boris - singing "Dear Prudence" to the stars, the warmth of Hobies home, the way Popper sleeps on only Boris' head, the fleeting moments of pure bliss he experiences around Pippa, the luxuriant Christmas dinner he has with his father and Boris; each a moment of deep, profound humanity that we all experience each day and rarely take the time to appreciate amidst the catastrophe of life. Theo is given the opportunity to reflect fully on these moments; his life so full of tragedy that these moments can stand out bright against the dark. Life is catastrophe, and that means nothing except life is to be lived in direct opposition to its indifference. "And in the midst of our dying, as we rise from the organic and sink back ignominiously into the organic, it is a glory and a privilege to love what Death doesn't touch."
It's always insurmountably difficult to properly summarize how I feel about a good book. All of that said and I still feel as though I haven't properly detailed the importance of Hobie and Pippa and what Andy means to the novel and Theo's parents and the Barbours and a surplus of other things swirling around in my brain. I've talked at length about the philosophy of the book, but it will live in my mind inextricably alongside the hyperrealistic depictions of family that the Barbour family and Hobie provide Theo; the unrequited, doomed pinings towards Pippa and those delicate, fleeting moments they share, the humanity of the broken people he meets; Xandra and his father truly assholes in their own right, and yet as human as the rest of us - among so many others.