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A Certain Slant of Light
After the death of his child, a man – disconnected, lost, unable to sleep – explores the absence at the heart of life.
Gathering accounts of trauma and loss from the lives of people and places, past and present: of Isadora Duncan, Ana Mendietta, WG Sebald and Pier Paolo Pasolini; of a car crash, a fall from a skyscraper, the photographs of a murderer, a journey to The Gate of the Kiss; he travels through a landscape of half-remembered events and lost works of art, attempting to fathom lives pieced together from borrowed and fragmentary stories of history, memory and existence; trying to recover his own life.
Part fiction, part essay, part meditation on absence and grief, A Certain Slant of Light is a profound and moving attempt to trace the connections, however unlikely and strange, between art, history and life.
A unique and beautiful book, profusely illustrated, A Certain Slant of Light was shortlisted for the Fitzcarraldo Prize.
Gathering accounts of trauma and loss from the lives of people and places, past and present: of Isadora Duncan, Ana Mendietta, WG Sebald and Pier Paolo Pasolini; of a car crash, a fall from a skyscraper, the photographs of a murderer, a journey to The Gate of the Kiss; he travels through a landscape of half-remembered events and lost works of art, attempting to fathom lives pieced together from borrowed and fragmentary stories of history, memory and existence; trying to recover his own life.
Part fiction, part essay, part meditation on absence and grief, A Certain Slant of Light is a profound and moving attempt to trace the connections, however unlikely and strange, between art, history and life.
A unique and beautiful book, profusely illustrated, A Certain Slant of Light was shortlisted for the Fitzcarraldo Prize.
230 pages, Paperback
Published September 16, 2021
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About the author
Duncan White
12 books10 followersAssociate Director of Studies in History & Literature at Harvard University
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October 2, 2021
A Certain Slant of Light was originally shortlisted for the inaugural Fitzcarraldo Editions Novel Prize (won by Jeremy Cooper's Ash before Oak), although at the time the working title was Never Connect, the book described as "featuring fiction, essay and travelogue about an unnamed art historian who has lost his second child at birth, and loses himself in the precarious lives of 20th-century artists who addressed similar forms of absence or disappearance."
The new title comes from the Emily Dickinson poem, which forms the novel's epigraph, although one I found rather less distinctive, Dickinson's turn-of-phase having already been adopted by many other authors.
The novel has now been published by the independent small press Holland House Books, who are currently enjoying well-deserved and overdue attention for the Booker longlisting they achieved for An Island. Founded in 2012 they focus on literary fiction and non-fiction. I first encountered them via Kate Armstrong's brilliant The Storyteller which was longlisted for the inaugural Republic of Consciousness Prize, and A Certain Slant of Light feels a strong contender for the 2022 edition of the Prize.
The first of three parts of A Certain Slant of Light, titled "After the Crash", opens: Some time before sleep became impossible, I dreamt I was walking on the Promenade des Anglais..
The narrator's second child has recently been still-born, and as he wakes from a dream his thoughts turn, involuntarily, to Isadora Duncan who died in Nice, her neck broken when her red scarf became trapped in the wheels of a sportscar.
He is unclear why this comes to mind, but then sees, as he does every morning on waking, the print taken, on the day of her still-birth, from his second child's foot. The connection, or perhaps lack of obvious connection, between the two is what gives the novel its narrative impetus (and its original title):
On that morning in the early dawn light which always caught me by surprise the shape of the footprint seemed to float in front of me as if it had been left in the sand and would soon wash away; or as if it had been laid in the early spring frost and would very soon be melted by the sun, passing away from me as completely as the person who left it there. Waking from that dream I wasn't clear if the footprint was connected somehow with the dance of Isadora Duncan, unseen except in the fragments of evidence that had been left behind. What is clear is that the print floating in the light like dream material and which I now think of (to the extent that I can think of anything) as a form of travel writing, marked the first step on a journey along pathways that would never connect, that would lead to dead ends and empty rooms, but which I had to follow and set down somehow in these notes.
The style of the novel is very Sebaldian, complete with grainy black-and-white photos (albeit typically directly relevant ones, often from historical archives, rather than Sebald's repurposed shots). As the narrator comments:
One other guidebook from that time, later leading me on another of my incoherent joumeyings, was Winfried Georg Sebald's interminable ramble through East Anglia. What is this, Anne said to me once, holding the dog-eared copy of Rings of Saturn out in front of her, turning it around in her hands like it was an object from outer space. It's completely random, she complained. What is he doing? Why is he doing it? But the same thoughts had never troubled me. Instead, the pathways of words and sentences traced out ahead and spiralling back on themselves, appeared clear in some way and I followed them mindlessly, I now know, in the hope that they might lead me to what I would never find. Nor had I taken any particular interest in the so-called biographies of these writers, in the nefarious fictions of other people's lives, until I discovered that both Roland Barthes and W.G. Sebald died in car accidents far apart from one another in events that were otherwise unconnected, cut-off as it were in their prime.
(Although oddly the narrator tells us that, on a journey to the Suffolk coast featured in Rings of Saturn, "in late 2013, before things fell apart, I learned that WG Sebald had been killed in a car accident in 2005" - Sebald actually died in December 2001)
The "journey along pathways that would never connect" includes a collection of observations about artists, starting with Isadora Duncan, whose death involved an automobile. Others include Roland Barthes (run over), Jason Pollock and also Hans Namuth whose photos of the artist in action boosted Pollock's fame (car crashes), Paolo Pasolini (murdered by a car) and Vilém Flusser (another crash victim) as well as WG Sebald (who died of a heart-attack at the wheel, followed by a crash).
There is also an overlapping focus on art that leaves no trace. Duncan refused to be filmed so there is no archive footage of her dancing, and indeed, ominously, had finally agreed to be filmed, only to meet her sudden death the evening before. Another artist featured is performance artist John Latham, who took part in the 1966 Destruction in Art Symposium, but who also made artwork out of his own near-death in a serious car accident:
The narrator's own personal story is also interwoven in the essayistic sessions, the mental stress caused by his daughter's death, a potential trigger for his obsessions with death stories, leading his wife to eventually lock him out of the family home.
The second part of the novel, "Falling Down" follows a similar approach, although here the emphasis is on deaths, or near-deaths, by falling, for example the death (suicide? murder? accident?) of performance artist Ana Mendieta.
Although the narration here has a more Bernhardian double distancing. The narrator's insomnia is being treated by a therapist Catherine, and in one session she tells him about another patient, Edward Smith, an elderly art historian. His lover was killed in a fall from a bridge, triggering in him a similar obsession with stories of artists who fell to their death. Thus the accounts we read are of Smith's research (...said Smith, Catherine told me...), at times seemingly rather random (anyone called Smith grabs his attention), and some of which contains demonstrable falsehoods, for example a claimed visit to New Mexico to see the painter Agnes Martin, who actually died in 2004. This can make the reader rather disorientated at times, although the effect is, I think, deliberate.
The third section, "Shoot Shoot Shoot, or a Case of Mistaken Identity" begins:
The September before last, I travelled to Cluj-Napoca, a city I did not know, hoping that a change of place would help me escape the sleeplessness and depression of grief. For many years I had wanted to re-trace the footsteps of Paul Sharits, who had travelled to Romania in 1978 to film Brancusi's scuplture garden in Târgu Jiu.
Here much of the narrative tells of the narrator's rather disorientating visit to Romania and the sculpture garden, although here if there is a binding theme of death/injury, it is shootings, Paul Sharits himself the victim of a shooting in a bar, which he survived, and which may or may not have been a case of mistaken identity.
Overall, a fascinating book and very much recommended. 4.5 stars
Excitingly White has a new work in progress, Lightning Stories, which was previewed at Hotel magazine
The new title comes from the Emily Dickinson poem, which forms the novel's epigraph, although one I found rather less distinctive, Dickinson's turn-of-phase having already been adopted by many other authors.
The novel has now been published by the independent small press Holland House Books, who are currently enjoying well-deserved and overdue attention for the Booker longlisting they achieved for An Island. Founded in 2012 they focus on literary fiction and non-fiction. I first encountered them via Kate Armstrong's brilliant The Storyteller which was longlisted for the inaugural Republic of Consciousness Prize, and A Certain Slant of Light feels a strong contender for the 2022 edition of the Prize.
The first of three parts of A Certain Slant of Light, titled "After the Crash", opens: Some time before sleep became impossible, I dreamt I was walking on the Promenade des Anglais..
The narrator's second child has recently been still-born, and as he wakes from a dream his thoughts turn, involuntarily, to Isadora Duncan who died in Nice, her neck broken when her red scarf became trapped in the wheels of a sportscar.
He is unclear why this comes to mind, but then sees, as he does every morning on waking, the print taken, on the day of her still-birth, from his second child's foot. The connection, or perhaps lack of obvious connection, between the two is what gives the novel its narrative impetus (and its original title):
On that morning in the early dawn light which always caught me by surprise the shape of the footprint seemed to float in front of me as if it had been left in the sand and would soon wash away; or as if it had been laid in the early spring frost and would very soon be melted by the sun, passing away from me as completely as the person who left it there. Waking from that dream I wasn't clear if the footprint was connected somehow with the dance of Isadora Duncan, unseen except in the fragments of evidence that had been left behind. What is clear is that the print floating in the light like dream material and which I now think of (to the extent that I can think of anything) as a form of travel writing, marked the first step on a journey along pathways that would never connect, that would lead to dead ends and empty rooms, but which I had to follow and set down somehow in these notes.
The style of the novel is very Sebaldian, complete with grainy black-and-white photos (albeit typically directly relevant ones, often from historical archives, rather than Sebald's repurposed shots). As the narrator comments:
One other guidebook from that time, later leading me on another of my incoherent joumeyings, was Winfried Georg Sebald's interminable ramble through East Anglia. What is this, Anne said to me once, holding the dog-eared copy of Rings of Saturn out in front of her, turning it around in her hands like it was an object from outer space. It's completely random, she complained. What is he doing? Why is he doing it? But the same thoughts had never troubled me. Instead, the pathways of words and sentences traced out ahead and spiralling back on themselves, appeared clear in some way and I followed them mindlessly, I now know, in the hope that they might lead me to what I would never find. Nor had I taken any particular interest in the so-called biographies of these writers, in the nefarious fictions of other people's lives, until I discovered that both Roland Barthes and W.G. Sebald died in car accidents far apart from one another in events that were otherwise unconnected, cut-off as it were in their prime.
(Although oddly the narrator tells us that, on a journey to the Suffolk coast featured in Rings of Saturn, "in late 2013, before things fell apart, I learned that WG Sebald had been killed in a car accident in 2005" - Sebald actually died in December 2001)
The "journey along pathways that would never connect" includes a collection of observations about artists, starting with Isadora Duncan, whose death involved an automobile. Others include Roland Barthes (run over), Jason Pollock and also Hans Namuth whose photos of the artist in action boosted Pollock's fame (car crashes), Paolo Pasolini (murdered by a car) and Vilém Flusser (another crash victim) as well as WG Sebald (who died of a heart-attack at the wheel, followed by a crash).
There is also an overlapping focus on art that leaves no trace. Duncan refused to be filmed so there is no archive footage of her dancing, and indeed, ominously, had finally agreed to be filmed, only to meet her sudden death the evening before. Another artist featured is performance artist John Latham, who took part in the 1966 Destruction in Art Symposium, but who also made artwork out of his own near-death in a serious car accident:
The narrator's own personal story is also interwoven in the essayistic sessions, the mental stress caused by his daughter's death, a potential trigger for his obsessions with death stories, leading his wife to eventually lock him out of the family home.
The second part of the novel, "Falling Down" follows a similar approach, although here the emphasis is on deaths, or near-deaths, by falling, for example the death (suicide? murder? accident?) of performance artist Ana Mendieta.
Although the narration here has a more Bernhardian double distancing. The narrator's insomnia is being treated by a therapist Catherine, and in one session she tells him about another patient, Edward Smith, an elderly art historian. His lover was killed in a fall from a bridge, triggering in him a similar obsession with stories of artists who fell to their death. Thus the accounts we read are of Smith's research (...said Smith, Catherine told me...), at times seemingly rather random (anyone called Smith grabs his attention), and some of which contains demonstrable falsehoods, for example a claimed visit to New Mexico to see the painter Agnes Martin, who actually died in 2004. This can make the reader rather disorientated at times, although the effect is, I think, deliberate.
The third section, "Shoot Shoot Shoot, or a Case of Mistaken Identity" begins:
The September before last, I travelled to Cluj-Napoca, a city I did not know, hoping that a change of place would help me escape the sleeplessness and depression of grief. For many years I had wanted to re-trace the footsteps of Paul Sharits, who had travelled to Romania in 1978 to film Brancusi's scuplture garden in Târgu Jiu.
Here much of the narrative tells of the narrator's rather disorientating visit to Romania and the sculpture garden, although here if there is a binding theme of death/injury, it is shootings, Paul Sharits himself the victim of a shooting in a bar, which he survived, and which may or may not have been a case of mistaken identity.
Overall, a fascinating book and very much recommended. 4.5 stars
Excitingly White has a new work in progress, Lightning Stories, which was previewed at Hotel magazine
Displaying 1 of 1 review