After an international success with his prize-winning A History of Reading, writer, novelist, translator and editor Manguel, a Buenos Aires ex-pat now living in Canada, returns with a series of meditations on why great art moves us. Twelve chapters focus individually on painters from Caravaggio to Picasso and Joan Mitchell, the photographer Tina Modotti and architect Peter Eisenman—an intellectually ambitious range supported by an impressive section of notes at the back of the book suggesting familiarity with a vast array of scholarly books. Yet the book's subtitle and frequent use of the first person betray the fact that this is less a work of art history than a catalogue of reactions, many of which are triggered by excruciatingly banal questions: "But can every picture be read? Or at least, can we create a reading?" leads to the assertion that "[the] attempt not to communicate is at least as complex as the attempt to communicate, and undoubtedly as old." The chapter "Pablo Picasso: the Image as Violence" contains this observation: "most men in Western art suffer stoically." The wandering style that worked so well in History
is less masterful here, and the lack of sustained thought throughout makes it hard to imagine most readers (of either gender) stoically getting to the end. (Sept.)
Forecast:Many buyers of
A History of Reading, which was translated into 22 languages, will pick up this book by association, as will readers looking for the next
How Proust Will Change Your Life. The result will be better than average sales, but not a
History-style breakout.
