Volume 38, Number 6 · March 28, 1991
Breath of Art
By Helen Vendler
The Dead Girl
by Melanie Thernstrom
Pocket Books, 431 pp., $19.95
The portrait of the artist as a young man is by now a classic literary theme, given its generic title by James Joyce's half-ironic, entirely serious, narrative of his self-invention. What happens when the artist is a young woman? A young woman's search for an authentic life is not a particularly new theme, but in the literature we have she often finds herself through an adult choice of vocation, as Jane Addams did in Hull House. An artist's vocation, however, is given from the start by the peculiar conjunction of flayed sensibility and talent. I don't mean anything emotional by 'flayed'—I mean only being unable to bear a sound off-pitch, or an ugly combination of colors, or unctuous language. A young artist cannot help wincing, and he or she is also likely to be exaggeratedly grateful for the slightest relief granted the flayed sensibility. This gratitude is natural to the young artist who finds at last the singer whose voice does not offend, the teacher whose methods do not irritate, the friend who is also writing poetry, the editor who is an artist manqué.
Review, 4419 words
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