Deborah Solomon’s new biography, “American Mirror: The Life and Art of Norman Rockwell,” has been called “entertaining and disturbing.” It sure seems to have disturbed a Rockwell or two, who’ve decried her depiction of the artist’s “homoerotic” penchant for painting men and boys. “All I really said is that he was interested in the male figure,” Solomon says. “I also categorically deny that he was gay”—not that there’s anything wrong with that. And while Garrison Keillor’s review mocked her suggestive interpretations of Rockwell’s works, Solomon says sex is “a tiny part of the book. It’s based on 12 years of research . . . I write as a critic who interprets material rather than regurgitate facts.”
Here are four books this art critic’s enjoyed lately.
The Goldfinch
by Donna Tartt
I was impressed that Tartt had chosen an extremely subtle painting instead of a neon-lit masterpiece like the Mona Lisa or one of those dreaming Vermeer women. Here’s to more ardently written, 800-page novels about underappreciated paintings!
Lucian Freud: Eyes Wide Open
by Phoebe Hoban
I picked up an advance copy of this because it’s short and I figured I could read it in one or two evenings. And that’s all the time you want to spend with Freud, the gifted British figure painter whose bad-boy, slob-hero antics are appalling. He refused to use contraception and supposedly fathered about 40 children. I don’t think his paintings are deep enough to justify that kind of behavior.
The Odyssey
by Homer
When I told my friends that I was reading this, they invariably asked, “Which translation? Fagles or Fitzgergald?” They never asked anything else. End of discussion. I found it curious that so many serious readers had nothing else to say about Homer’s masterpiece.
Sister, Mother, Husband, Dog
by Delia Ephron
Delia Ephron composed these witty essays in the year after the death of her older sister, Nora, and they capture a woman writing her way out of grief. In my favorite essay, “Bakeries,” she muses on the never-ending debate among women who want to “have it all” — children plus career. She argues convincingly that it’s a foolish goal and sometimes it’s enough just to have a good book to read.