The Big Why
A Novel
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- $11.99
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- $11.99
Publisher Description
Michael Winter's The Big Why takes the tradition of the historical novel and twists it into the cool, sinuous, entertaining shape we've all been waiting for. His characters are real and from the past, but the lives they live feel contemporary and emotionally modern.
Winter's version of the American artist Rockwell Kent is an over aged, erotically fleckless Huck Finn ready to leave the superficial art world of New York and light out for the territory. Only he heads the wrong way: north and east to Brigus, Newfoundland, before and at the beginning of World War One. A socialist and a philanderer, certain in the greatness of his work, he is drawn north by a fascination for the rocky Atlantic coast and by the example of Brigus's other well–known resident, fabled Arctic explorer Robert Bartlett. But once in Newfoundland, Kent discovers that notoriety is even easier to achieve in a small town than in New York. As events come to a head both internationally and domestically and the war begins, Kent becomes a polarizing figure in this intimate, impoverished community, where everyone knows everyone and any outsider is suspect, possibly even a German spy.
Writing in Kent's voice, Michael Winter delivers a passionate, witty, and cerebral exploration of what makes exceptional individuals who they are—and why.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
This odd bird of a lucidly written biographical novel about 20th-century American painter Rockwell Kent is not about art. Other than the titles of a few paintings, and the studio where he retreats to escape his family and the world, there is little discussion of Kent's work. Instead, this is the story of Kent and his family's sojourn in Brigus, Newfoundland, where they flee the inquiring eyes of New York for some rural peace. But rather than affording privacy, the small town greets him first with fascination, then scorn, and then, with the arrival of WWI and the socialist painter's lack of patriotic zeal unfounded fear. Winter expertly outlines his protagonist's psychological nuances, but offers minimal indication of what Kent's art means to him or the role it plays in his life. The author (Creaking in Their Skins) is on steadier ground with dialogue, which is uniformly trenchant and humorous. Kent's discussions with his friend and mentor, Gerald, take on the glow of a modern Socratic dialogue or an intellectual improv routine, and Kent's wife, Kathleen, comes vividly to life. Winter gives us a flesh-and-blood Rockwell Kent the man, but does not do the same for Kent the artist.
