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The Great Man - Kate Christensen
The Great Man
by: (author)
3.50 20
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... show more
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.
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Format: hardcover
ISBN: 9780385518451 (0385518455)
Publisher: Doubleday
Pages no: 301
Edition language: English
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Community Reviews
Hall of Records
Hall of Records rated it
4.5
The Great Man - Kate Christensen I’m quite grateful to the former colleague who left this book in my office despite my protestations that I don’t have the time to read this as well and that I’m not interested and that I already have several dozen books at home waiting to be read (and reviewed) anyw...
florinda3rs
florinda3rs rated it
The "great man" of the title of this book, painter Oscar Feldman, never actually appears except as a topic of other characters' conversations, since he's already dead when the novel opens. However, as we learn about him through the perspectives of the three very different women who were closest to h...
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