Myla Goldberg

The one character in the book who takes LSD is the one who DOESN'T go insane. I just wanted to start with that though it's not really accurate or relevant. Eliza doesn't go insane. She has an experience that some might call insane since it's extreme and out of the ordinary. I like to think it was a true mystical experience and that having tasted the ultimate, she decides to say "No thank you." Or maybe what she says is "That will surfice." This is a family of seekers--both of God and of show more emotional fulfillment--all the while trying to live normally and failing at it.

Miriam creates a great work of art which will be destroyed for use as evidence. I don't imagine her treatment in a mental hospital will result in anything good for either her or her family. Aaron seems to be getting something out of his kirtan but who knows if it will continue. My experience with Krishna folk is that they're mostly young so either one outgrows it or something else happens to separate you from it.

Saul is a failed mystic who hopes to get another chance vicariously through his daughter. She wants to be close to him and so goes along with the plan but in the end seems to learn that's not the kind of relationship with her dad that she wants. I wonder, though, if he's capable of any other kind. He may be, but we never find out. Maybe Eliza, with her transcendent knowledge, can work it out with him.

But we don't really know what happens to any of the characters. The book ends with a punchline. A good punchline, perhaps, but life is not a joke. show less

Lillian Preston was a photographer who achieved more notoriety than fame in her life. She was a street photographer, taking pictures of people in unguarded moments. This novel is set up as the text from the exhibition book for a retrospective of her work at MoMA. So there's a forward by the singer from a punk band from the seventies that took inspiration and a name from the photograph that caused Lillian's notoriety and the catalog text is largely by her daughter, who was the subject of some show more of her photographs, as well as people who knew her, letters and extracts from her journal. The result is a vivid character study of an extraordinary woman, one whose photographs are described but never shown, yet I feel as though I would recognize one of her photographs instantly.

This was a five star read for me, there was not a single page of this novel that I didn't love. The subject matter, that of a woman who chose to live without compromise as a photographer, who chose to raise her child alone in the fifties and sixties when neither of those paths was acceptable for woman, and that of living for one's art, is catnip to me, but the writing was also brilliant. Goldberg spent ten years writing this book and instead of being overwritten, it feels fresh and spontaneous. The format is so well executed that it enhanced the intimacy of the story Goldberg was telling. show less

Myra Goldberg's novel is told in the form of a catalog that is meant to provide background information to a retrospective of the photographer, Lillian Preston. Though we never see the photographs, each one is named and described by her daughter, Samantha, who sets the scene and supplements her writing with her mother's journal entries and anecdotes from various friends. The idea was to "Use everything—use her diaries, use her letters, go back and talk to the important people in her show more life—to show her work in a way that an art-establishment type never could.” Though appearing disjointed, the story actually follows chronologically, providing an intimate look at a unique mother- daughter relationship and a portrait of an artist struggling with the fulfillment of her vision. Goldberg based her writing on an amalgam of real life photographers who were thought of a street photographers, depicting everyday hardships and fighting censorship laws of the early sixties. Goldberg lists her acknowledgments at the end and in doing so provides the readers with a glimpse of the research that went into this creative endeavor.
I recommend googling some of the referenced artists to see the types of photos being presented. I was surprised how much I enjoyed this novel and can see why this was recommend for the National Book Critics Circle Award. I would be interested in looking into other works, Bee Season being the most recognized.

Some lines:
Lillian Preston was mostly a street photographer. She lived her life blending into backgrounds and snapping whoever passed by. For all that, these people aren’t strangers. Sometimes it’s a look in the eyes, or the way someone is standing, but what’s unfamiliar lifts away.

Because of that, it’s not like any catalogue you’ve read before. It’s personal. It’s unprofessional. And when the art-establishment types saw it, they were smart enough to leave it alone.

Her soft, pale body is like something slipped from a shell, and her face—with its crazy mixture of rebellion, invitation, uncertainty, and pride—is the most naked thing about her.

I don’t think Lillian started loving me during the subway trip back from her averted abortion, but clearly something changed between blueberry and mango. From this portrait on, her fierceness has transformed into something radiant and calm. The battle has been fought: love has won.

Sometimes when I was with her, a small sound came from her mouth, and this was like seeing the fin of the shark and knowing the shape that was hidden below.

Lillian explained that she felt about men the way she felt about pistachio nuts: she did not mind to have them around, but she did not go out of her way to find them, and she did not miss them when they were gone.

“but I used to take it personally that at every turn, you seemed to make the choice I’d least approve of. If my heart attack taught me anything, it’s that we’re all a lot less important than we think.

Under no circumstances would I have imagined a future in which being Samantha Preston would mean free liquor or weed for the asking, a standing invitation to every art party in Los Angeles, and a distinguished-artist boyfriend who liked to eat me for dessert.

I’d been to a few funerals by that point, so I knew death as a destination, but before Lilly, I didn’t know the journey. show less

This book was so unique and it really worked for me. Written as the catalog for a retrospective photo exhibit at the Museum of Modern Art in New York and interspersed with her daughter's story, the artist's journal entries, and interviews with important people in her life, this presents a full life story of one woman and her joys, sorrows, life challenges, immense creativity, and passion. Although there were no photos (as this was fiction of course!), I could envision the stark beauty of her show more work, her use of deceptively simple pictures of people who had stories to tell. Easy to engage in, creative and emotional, this was a book to be remembered much as her earlier work The Bee Season was. show less