3 Things To Know To Better Understand This Review
1)? Daniel Bullen kindly wrote me and asked if I?d like to read his new book ? to see if I?might be interested in writing about it.? I get asked to write reviews regularly, but as best I can remember, I?ve always politely declined because either the book?is not within the topics I regularly discuss or because it?s not of interest to me.? But this book?s subject matter is of great interest to me, so I wrote back, saying I?would acquire a copy.
2)? Before reading, I was well-informed about many of the artists discussed in the book and their body of work.? (You can do artist name searches in the blog?s search cell to see related posts).
3)? I generally do not write reviews for books I don?t end up highly recommending because there are so many great artworks that deserve readers? attention, and I prefer to use my limited time toward drawing attention to them.
The following is probably the most detailed, thorough, and critical review I?ve posted.? This is because I don?t enjoy being so constructively critical.??Maybe?Bullen read some of my other reviews, and wanted my candid feedback ? maybe not.
After reading the review below,?probably fewer authors will ask for my opinion.? I would not?have written so much if I didn?t deeply care about the related issues and topics.? Because my primary intention is not to deter creation, but to promote it, I will not be copying this review to Amazon (or Goodreads) as I do with most of my other reviews.? I?ll leave it only here, for readers who, on average, may have a better understanding of the critic.
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For people not interested in reading a long review of this book, or for people who?d like a summary?outline of?where this?review is headed:
I.? The introduction to this?book is a train wreck.? As?John Keating, the professor played by Robin Williams in ?Dead Poets Society? said to his class, ?Go on.? Rip out the entire page. ?You heard me.? Rip it out.? Rip it out!? Go on. ?Rip it out! . . . Don?t just tear out that page, tear out the entire introduction. ?I want it gone.? History. . . .? It?s not the Bible.? You?re not gonna go to Hell for this.?
II.? The core of the book thereafter is a capable, informative survey of the artists? lives and interactions.
III.? Bullen?s writing structure and interpretations of the research and?content do not provide exceptionally good or uncommon insight into the motivations of the artists toward their artworks or lovers.? And for a book titled, ?Love Lives of the Artists:? Five Stories of Creative Intimacy,? that?s a significant shortcoming.??The Epilogue, which tries to group these 10 artists into a common, collective ?they? fails where the Introduction fails ? by trying to say and conclude too much, and as a result,?it raises?distrust in the author?s ability to correctly interpret the artists personally or artistically.
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Beginning at the End
In the Epilogue, Bullen writes, ?I would hardly presume to tell this broadest of stories,? but that is what he does in this biographical anthology of 5 artist couples.? Someone probably once said:? If you try to tell the story of an entire generation, you may end up telling no one?s real story.? I don?t know if that is true.? But that concept kept coming to mind as I read this book.? For example, if someone wrote a sentence that started with ?Americans believe . . .?, I?m guessing most Americans would read the sentence with great suspicion.
People who pick up this book and read the jacket may hope that through reading this book, they may find helpful information toward answering these kinds of questions:
- Why did these specific artist couples fall in love?
? Why did their relationships change?
? Why do the specific relationships often not appear to end happily and contentedly?
? Why did they have so many affairs?
? Why did the open relationships not appear to endure?
? How did the partners? chemistry inform or promote each others? creative processes?
But I read the book, and except for the last question, I don?t think I came away with?significantly clearer?information to understand possible answers to those questions.? That could be partly attributed to my inabilities as a reader.
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Next, The Beginning
I appreciate that the author asked for my opinion of his finished book.? But my skills?are probably not best suited for this point in this book?s development.? My skills may have been more helpful to edit this book before it was published.? But that is now moot.? So, here?s the best I can do . . .
Writing biographies is hard work and no easy skill.? It is a suspect endeavor, often teaching us as much about the author?s reasoning and interpretative abilities as it does about the biography?s subject.? When reading a biography, I?m not looking for Truth, with a capital T.? I read biographies with ?a grain of salt,? with skepticism.? I often find authors of biographies think they are creating a realistic painting of their subject, not knowing their painting style?is something closer to Impressionism or Fauvism.
The first red flag I received from reading this book occurred when reading the inside book jacket, which suggested the book would take me inside the life of these artists and reveal their private thoughts, motivations, and priorities.? The jacket goes further, suggesting the book will do the same for 5 famous artist couples.? I think it is a bold claim for a biographer to assert they can reveal the?inner thoughts?of their subject.? I think it borders on naive or foolish if a biographer asserts they can reveal the thoughts and chemistry of both parties in a romantic relationship.? I?ve been in significant-other relationships, had access to all the written, spoken, non-verbal, affectionate, and?sexual communications?- and I still would not be so bold as to assert I could clearly convey the intimate?thoughts, motivations, and priorities of both people involved.
There are some things that will always remain in transition, too complex and too mysterious to explain ? great loves often fit into that category.
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An Aside
I was reading another book before this, titled ?The Personality Code? by Travis Bradberry (who later co-wrote ?Emotional Intelligence 2.0?).? In the book, Bradberry asserts scientific studies prove individual?s personalities can be categorized, and their personalities never change over their lifetimes.? It was an interesting premise that probably sounds true for many people.? But as with all scientific hypotheses ? it only takes one exception to disprove it.
I?m one of those exceptions.
My personality dramatically changed & re-prioritized at least a couple of times as a result of my significant-other relationships.? The women who came into my private, inner life completely changed my outlooks and interpretations of many things, from artistic interpretations to ethical?& political interpretations.? Better information changed my personality.? But even more, on an emotional level, as Stevie Nicks wrote and sang in ?Gold Dust Woman,? from the B side of the single release of??You Make Loving Fun,? from Fleetwood Mac?s great ?Rumours? album:
Did she make you cry?
Make you break down?
Shatter your illusions of love?
And is it over now?
Do you know how to pick up the pieces and go home?
Why am I mentioning this in the middle of this review?? Trying to accurately interpret one person in a biography, as they changed through their life,?is nearly an impossible pursuit toward a moving target.? Trying to tell 10 artists? stories, artists who probably changed more than the average person along the way, might fit into a category of ?insane pursuits.?? So, while I criticize, I understand some of the difficulty of the endeavor.
A person cannot have a relationship with a brilliant and independent-thinker without leaving the relationship significantly altered ? unless the person is stupid or stubborn.? Each of these artists had a relationship with a brilliant and independent-thinking artist, increasing the odds?they had personalities or perspectives that changed over time.?
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Back to the Beginning
The Introduction reveals more to the reader about the author than it does about the artists.
From the first paragraph:?
?In the ocean of sex-drenched advertising, entertainment, and fashion, pornography, perversion, and [sic] the most sordid aspects of love have seeped into everyday culture ? so much so that parents today worry not that their children?s generation won?t respect the institution of marriage, but that their children?s friends and classmates might already be so saturated ? so medicated, disaffected, and overwhelmed ? that they won?t even feel anything when they make their early experiments in sex.?
Huh!?? What?? What does this have to do with these 5 artist couples?? Is Bullen suggesting these couples had some causal connection to today?s current social mores?? Why would you start?a biography?s introduction with such strong, unsupported speculation in the first paragraph?? As a reviewer, I knew I was in trouble when I saw so many errors.? If I had edited the sentence, without trying to change the intent of Bullen?s assertion, it would have looked more like this:
?In the?ocean of sex-drenched advertising, entertainment,?and fashion, pornography, and perversion, and the most sordid aspects of love have seeped into everyday culture ? so much so, that?parents today?believe?worry not that?their children?s generation?won?t not only doesn?t respect the institution of marriage, but also?but that their children?s friends and classmates?might already be so saturated ? so medicated, disaffected, and overwhelmed ? that?they won?t even feel anything when they make their early experiments in sex.?
Some of the edits above are stylistic, but most are common writing edits a college freshman would receive.? Even after I edited out the unnecessary ?ands,? ?thats,? and inaccurate qualifiers, the?assertion is still too broad sweeping.? It is likely?an inaccurate assessment of modern parental concerns.? Parents still worry their children will not be able to control themselves when they are exposed to the highly positive stimulation received from sexual touching in their teens.? I?m pretty sure that worry has not been numbed away.
From the first paragraph, I wasn?t impressed with the?Bullen?s abilities to either: ?a) form clear sentence construction, or b) form clear conclusions from available data.? I grabbed me a Starbuck?s espresso and buckled in for a day?s work.
If I were to make a wager, the publisher asked for this introduction to be written after they approved of the core book content.? And, I?d wager the people who copy-edited the core of the book were not the same people who edited the introduction, because the core of the book does not?err as frequently.
If you?re going to have an introduction in your book, it really matters ? because it?s the first impression you give your potential reader.? If you don?t have a great introduction, then leave it out.
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Perversion, Decay, and Pervasive Lamentations In The Loins
I have trouble with an author using the word ?perversion? so early, without much context or definition, as Bullen does in the sentence above ? especially in a book that centers on artists who defied conventions, had open affairs or marriages, and did not try to stay within traditional sexual boundaries.? So, using the term ?perversion? in a sexual context is?a?suspect choice, given that one person?s sexual ?perversion? is another person?s normal or preferred.? In modern, educated?discussions of sexuality, ?perversion? is a loaded term that is not used as loosely or frequently?as it used to be used to describe non-traditional sexual behaviors.
Bullen writes ?The hope that marriage might still have any sanctity has been so widely abandoned that our modern decline is measured against its decay.? And yet ? in spite of these pervasive lamentations, hasn?t something been gained in our modern freedoms??
Really?? Is the author setting this?book up to primarily be a biography, or are the artists? stories going to primarily be employed to support a thesis about changes in social mores?? Further, is it a popular conception that marriage has lost its sanctity?? And if divorce rates are increasing, is that ?decay??? Or is one person?s ?decay? another person?s perception of ?progress??? ?Pervasive lamentations??? I?m not sure modern man pervasively laments the loss of strict marital constructs and their related, numerous social rules and limitations.
Bullen continues:? ?We are modern, we know too much:? we know that love is a fleeting ripeness of the soul.?
Huh?? What?? Who put you in charge??- those are questions that go through my mind when I read such a controversial and sweeping declaration.? Bullen often inaccurately assesses and describes the majority opinions of groups of people ? such as modern people, young people, or old people.? He regularly doesn?t provide any statistical or research citations to support his?perceptions of popularly held opinions.?
It is often a difficult or suspect behavior to frequently try to singularly paraphrase the popular opinion of a group.? Writers are generally more accurate when they speak for themselves, using the pronoun ?I,? or simply making assertions, rather than?using the ?we? pronoun.? It?s understandable in discussions of social mores to ask questions using ?we,? such as:? ?Do we know what we will want in 2030??? It?s usually more speculative to answer them using ?we,? such as:? ?In 2030, we will want . . . ?
Writers tend to be more believable when they avoid asserting something is true ? when they are uncertain it is true.? For credibility?s sake, it?s better to either speak only for yourself or to err on the side of certainty.
An example of a sentence where Bullen loses credibility is: ??Most people, confronting these questions, recognize almost instinctively that erotic freedom is really an invitation to chaos and drama, fights, fits, and ultimately loneliness and misery.?
Again.? Huh?? That?s kind of a downer.? Since when did ?erotic freedom? necessarily lead to such dire outcomes?? Bullen?s assertion can be disarmed on two fronts:? 1)? You can challenge whether the assertion is true, and 2) even if it could be proven to be true, it?s very doubtful the average person on the street would intuit such a complex and specific conclusion.
By the third page of the introduction, Bullen used the phrase ?in our hearts and in our loins, in our selves? and I knew trouble would ensue?from thereafter.
It?s one thing for a writer to try to be provocative or suggestive, expressing possible motivations or means of interpretation.? It?s another for a writer to repeatedly present broad, complex assertions as if they are indisputably true.? The first method can stimulate a reader?s curiosity and ingenuity.? The second method often causes the writer to lose credibility.? When a writer presents fiction as non-fiction, readers (a smarter demographic than most) clue in to that tendency immediately.
Four?pages into this introduction, I felt more like an editor, giving writing instruction, instead of a reviewer who should be focusing more on critical analysis of a book?s ideas, use of words & language, tone, reasoning progressions, etc.? I enjoy that this book speculates about popular perceptions of marriage, relationships, and fidelity, but if I wanted to actually find more accurate information about modern perceptions, I might find it more reliably from a Yahoo! front page poll.
When I write, the use of qualifiers is important to me because 1) my legal education taught me the importance of accurately defining & communicating distinctions, and 2) I deeply care about conveying reliable information.? In my writing, you?ll find many ?probablys,? ?more thans,? & ?possiblys.???As a writer, I primarily write opinion pieces.? I concede that is my format, and I don?t try to portray my assertions to be any more than one person?s best estimate.? I still find opinion & conversation to be very important, otherwise I would not participate in them as often as I do.? But I would not add weight or veracity to my assertions by claiming to know more certainty than I do, or by claiming to speak for others.
If art is found in nuances, or if the Devil?s in the details, then in writing, the difference between Heaven and Hell may be found in the quality and accuracy of qualifying word choices.? For example, most good writers avoid the use of ?never? or ?always? when those extreme qualifiers are not applicable.?
So, When Bullen asserted that in all the previous biographies of his famous subjects ?Nowhere was love described as art?s twin, a parallel expression of the soul? ? it seemed like an overreaching and unnecessary claim to make.? If Bullen wanted to state that opinion, I think that?s both an interesting and pleasant concept to consider.? But the ?nowhere? part of the assertion was too much.? I?ve read some poor biographies about Stieglitz & O?Keeffe and Miller & Nin,? and even those biographies?touched on the?overlap of?love and art.? These artists? artworks often focused on the intersection of art and love (see almost any Kahlo painting).? And if you think I?m overreaching in my claim, see Noel Riley Fitch?s dispassionate biography on Nin ?Anais: The Erotic Life of Anais Nin,? or Foster, Foster, & Hadady?s poor biographical anthology ?Three In Love.?? It would be difficult to travel the roads of ?artists and polyamory? and not hit that intersection.
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Artists As A Group
By page xviii of the Introduction, Bullen started lumping all 10 of the artists into a collective pronoun ?they,? as if all of their drives and thought processes were very similar.??In an attempt to compare and contrast the artists, Bullen used complex adjective or noun lists to account for some variation and contradiction among the different artists.? Here?s an illustrative sentence:
?From depression to nervous breakdowns to dependence on drugs and alcohol to petty or retributive affairs, neither their freedom nor their endurance of each other?s affairs came without a price, and if they were confident that these were necessary dues, they were not always comfortable as they paid:? their letters and journals betray some despair, some terror when their affairs filled them with feelings that seemed to be bottomless, endless, chaotic, or just profoundly lonely.?
Sometimes when you say so many things about a group of people, you?re not saying much at all.? Instead, you?re probably being vague, inaccurate,?or ambiguous.? If you say ?These 5 people had these 3 things in common,? that gives great comparative, believable?detail.? But if you say ?These?10 people had all 23 of these very specific complex feelings and emotional responses?in?common,? you?re probably raising a few eyebrows.
I?m not so much saying: ?Bullen?s specific assertions are wrong? as I?m saying ?Any assertions that use the sentence structure formats Bullen commonly employs will be difficult to support or prove.?
It?s probably been said reading is sometimes like having a conversation with the author.? In this case, I found myself arguing more than conversing.
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The Core of the Book
So, my advice is:? Don?t read the introduction.? Instead, open the book and begin reading Chapter 1 on page 3.? When the book moves to biography, it quickens in pace and improves in tenor.? Bullen?s writing is easy to follow, a joy when it moves through the individual artists? histories.? As is common in biographies, Bullen focuses on highlights, moving generally through a chronological history.? Bullen focuses on the love lives of the artists, often citing their writings to each other.
I wished Bullen would have framed the arc of the biographical plots with larger sign posts, setting up each couples? key suspense questions early in each narrative.? If he had done this, I may have been better able to compare and contrast the couples? decisions and actions.
Once the biographies began, I stopped remembering I was asked to consider reviewing the book;? instead, I got lost in the reading, interested in the artists? personal stories.? Bullen?s writing strengths are in capably gather data and presenting it in linear and pleasant-to-follow and easy-to-understand narratives.? His weaknesses are in comparing, contrasting, reasoning, interpretation, summation, and assessing popular perceptions.
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Great Artists Often May Not Be Great Lovers
Readers hoping to understand why these magnificent artists fell in love with each other may be left wanting.? It?s difficult for any non-fiction biography to capably convey emotional and sensual content.? I came away from reading these lovers? histories with the same conclusion I had after reading other biographies on these same artists.? I don?t have a great admiration for Stieglitz? romance with O?Keeffe, Rivera?s romance with Kahlo, or Nin?s romance with Miller.? I?m a great admirer of all of the artists, but not their romantic relationships.?
O?Keeffe is great because of the masculinity and strength in her feminine and individual artistic expressions.? Stieglitz is great because he forced the world to consider photography on par with all the other great art forms.? Rivera is great because he never stopped being didactic in his purposeful murals.? Kahlo was great because she, as capably as any artist, was able to convey pain and loss in her artworks.? Nin and Miller were great for their bravery in speaking to?the strength, power, and unashamed importance of erotic drives and sexual want.? These are just some of the reasons why these artists are great.
But a great artist does not always a great lover make.? And after reading this book, I felt no great loss when I saw each relationship wax and wane in intensity.
Artists become great because their artworks are great.? The stories of their love lives are not necessarily great.
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The Epilogue
In?the epilogue, Bullen returns to speaking in specific generalities about the artists as a group, a disservice to their specific individualness, and a disservice to the lion?s share of his work in the core of the?book.? He discusses what he perceives to be their ?collective story? and ?collective temperament.?? By this point, I?d lost reliance in the author?s ability to accurately make such broad determinations for so many diverse individuals.
More puzzling to me was this question:? Was Bullen pressured to try to?interpret the artists similarly?? Was he asked by his editor to find summarizing commonalities?? I don?t perceive an advantage?that would be gained from trying to meet that objective, especially when it would be implausible that 10 great artists would all share so many complex drives, motivations,?conclusions, or philosophies.? As a writer, I would never assert I knew ?the same complex reasons? why even two different couples got together.? So, it?s strange to me when Bullen thinks he knows why 5 different couples (with their side lovers and threesomes) had similar reasons for making the sometimes very different decisions they made.
Bullen does this in comments like:
?Open relationships ? which, of course, preceded the artists? discovery of them ? gave the artists a wider freedom of identifications, for now their creativity could be acknowledged.? That was always the heart of the tie, but they could still also experience each of the different selves they became in the presence of other lovers.?
I cannot follow all he?s trying to say in those sentences.? And even if I could, the assertions seem too all-knowing and difficult to prove.
I?m choosing not to give a ?number of stars? rating for this book.? Anyone sincerely interested in criticism of this book can see plenty above.? I would not have worked so hard on this review if I didn?t care about the topics and artists, and if I didn?t hope my criticisms might improve?readers? future writing.
It may be apropos the Epilogue concludes with a paragraph containing seven sentences, of which only 2 are statements, and 5 are unanswered questions.
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For regular readers: ?Tomorrow there will be a new post.? Shorter.
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