Kate Christensen is married to a photographer/painter — and she has always wanted to be a painter herself. "Although I have no talent whatsoever," she said.
"The world of visual art seems so much more sensual than the world of writing," Christensen said by phone from her home in Brooklyn. "It seems more fun, so I've always envied painters."
A native of Arizona and California, Christensen has written three popular novels: "In the Drink," "Jeremy Thrane" and "The Epicure's Lament."
Knowing all of this, it could have been predictable, then, that "The Great Man" is a comic novel set in the world of painting:
Oscar Feldman, a New York City painter of the 1940s and '50s, specialized in the female nude. When he dies in 2001, he leaves a wife, Abigail; an autistic son; and a sister, Maxine, herself a notable abstract painter — probably a better painter than Oscar. What most people never knew was that Feldman also had a lengthy relationship with a mistress, Teddy St. Cloud — and they had twin daughters together.
This book is about the aging but sexy women left behind by Feldman — and his kids from both relationships. But it is also about the artistic temperament.
The plot begins as two potential biographers start nosing around the family to obtain interviews so they can write about Feldman's life, and they discover that he had two families. Ralph Washington and Henry Burke don't know each other, but their personalities and their approaches to their individual biographies become a study in opposites.
These two delve deeply into Oscar Feldman's past. They search out his friends, and especially the women in his life, and conduct probing interviews, through which the women analyze Oscar and discover that they like each other.
The hook, or "secret," of the novel comes in the middle. Without giving too much away, it is the admission made by Maxine that she had a bet with Oscar that he could not do an abstract painting to match hers. He accepted the challenge and said she had to produce a female nude in his style. The test would be that each of their agents would display the finished products as the work of the other.
The result of that painting challenge between brother and sister becomes crucial to understanding the art and attitudes of both Oscar and Maxine. It is definitely the high point of the novel.
Christensen said the women in her novel were inspired by her own mother, now 71. "(She) has always been young and vital and sexy. She is happy and fulfilled — and right now is on the way to Alaska on a road trip with the guy she fell in love with at 65. I dedicated the book to her."
When she writes, Christensen lets her characters "set up the tension" very early. "I like mischief, people hiding something. Teddy, an older woman, is being interviewed by Henry, and she seduces him to both his and her surprise. Then I got curious about Maxine and Abigail, and the comic and literary possibilities came to me slowly."
The author is also interested in power dynamics. "I'm interested in the shifting sands of marriage. People in their 70s looking back at their lives."
The key to understanding Oscar, she explained, is his obsession with women. Painting women in the nude is something that gave him a way to relate to many beautiful women that even surpassed sex. "This was an age when a bad-boy artist could get away with many things — and there are women who are willing to indulge such a bad boy. Women like this are unfulfilled or incomplete in their own lives and, thus, vulnerable."
The wife-and-mistress balance in her character's life "really worked," Christensen said. "It was because neither woman wanted Oscar all the time." When Teddy and Abigail met each other after his death, they found they indeed liked each other.
Apparently, many women who knew Oscar loved him, such as Lila, a friend of Teddy's, who married mediocre, unambitious men and pushed them to succeed. This is the type of woman who believes if the man finds out how smart she is, he will lose interest in her. So when Lila was attracted to Oscar, she felt "diminished" by him.
Christensen sees herself as "an improvisational writer, looking for truth — but not some overarching truth. I try to make the scenes ring true, and I lean toward the comic and away from the tragic."
In this book, she tries "to stick up for older women in literature, women who are usually portrayed as an annoying old neighbor or a needy grandmother. I look for real people who have bad moods, ego, wit and veracity. I want to get away from stereotype. These people are not old in their minds."
Christensen also admitted with a chuckle that she believes women know more about men than men know about women. "Traditionally, women are subordinate to men, and if so they see men more clearly. Men often see women through a filter — yes!"
E-mail: dennis@desnews.com