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Lester Gordon can only be calmed by Impressionist paintings, or so he tells court-ordered clinical psychologist Dr. Cheryl Weissberg after he tries to destroy Robert Rauschenberg’s modern-art painting with a box cutter. Using the trickery of Jung, Weissberg unravels Gordon’s layers and discovers three alternate personalities. Gordon’s dissociative identity disorder triad comprises a neglected seven-year-old Baby Les, a Jesuit priest named Father Humphries who gives away art, and the skilled forger Bétancourt. Bétancourt claims to be the great-great-grandson of the famous nineteenth-century painter Jean-Baptiste-Camille Corot and creates convincing fakes. Spivak shows authorial wit when Gordon rents artist space in his apartment (located in Brooklyn’s trendy Boerum Hill) to his Bétancourt personality.
Amusing ironies abound as Spivak’s characters have tongue-in-cheek conversations that ultimately shade modern art, mindless drugging and abandonment of mental patients, and the greed, pretentiousness, and posturing of the art world. Strong streams of dialogue in the style of Elmore Leonard drive this intelligent story of a man who hates modern art and is literally driven crazy by it. Plots to cure Gordon, sell fake Seurats and Signacs, authenticate paintings, and expose the art world’s shenanigans (such as “chandelier bidding”) merge in the questions of what art is and how much it is worth. Gordon even tells Weissberg at one point that if a forgery evokes a powerful emotional reaction, it doesn’t matter if the painting is real. This humorous, intelligent indictment of the art world and mental health practitioners, chock-full of clever dialogue, unique turns of phrase, and staggered plotting, will amuse and educate. Whether or not one knows or likes modern art, the personalities of Gordon, a truly deadly artist as it happens, will fascinate. Spivak is a seasoned writer, and it shows.
RECOMMENDED by the US Review