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Vanitas
In Joseph Olshan's Vanitas (the title refers to a conceit in Dutch art in which the painter would include a memento mori--Latin for "be mindful of dying"--in the midst of vibrant life scenes), the specter of AIDS is an unspoken, and often unacknowledged, motivator for protagonist Sam Solomon. While interviewing world-famed, but now very ill, art collector Elliot Garland in order to ghostwrite his autobiography, Solomon sees a stunning, highly sexual drawing of a near-naked young man on a bed cradling a skull. The picture startles Sam and sets him off on a journey--not only to discover the artist and subject, but into his own life to resolve his conflicting emotional to find what he considers the security of heterosexual family life and yet pursue emotional and sexual relationships with men. As in his popular, award-winning novels Clara's Heart and Nightswimmer, Olshan understands here how sadness, fear, and even death are the most common shapers of important emotional and erotic experiences. Vanitas is filled with hope and love, but avers that these life-affirming emotions are only achieved after facing the deepest horrors, fears, and terrors of living in the world. --Michael Bronski
310 pages, Paperback
First published July 1, 1998
About the author
Joseph Olshan
19 books78 followersJoseph Olshan is an award-winning American novelist. His first novel, Clara's Heart, won the Times/Jonathan Cape Young Writers' Competition and went on to be made into a feature film starring Whoopi Goldberg. He is the author of eleven novels, the most recent of which, Milo's Reckoning, was published in 2025.
In addition to his novels, he has written extensively for newspapers and magazines, including the New York Times, the New York Times Magazine, The Times (London), The Guardian (London),The Independent (London), The Washington Post, The Chicago Tribune, the New York Observer, Harpers Bazaar, People magazine and Entertainment Weekly. During the 1990's he was a regular contributor of book reviews to the Wall Street Journal. For six years was a professor of Creative Writing at New York University where he taught both graduate and undergraduate courses.
Joseph Olshan's other novels include Nightswimmer and Vanitas, as well as The Waterline, A Warmer Season, The Sound of Heaven and In Clara's Hands, a sequel to his acclaimed first novel, Clara's Heart.
Joseph Olshan is published in the U.S. by Saint Martin's Press and Berkley Books; and in the United Kingdom by Bloomsbury publishing and Arcadia Books. His work has been translated into sixteen languages.
Since 2010, he has been the editorial director of Delphinium Books (distributed by Publishers Group West
In addition to his novels, he has written extensively for newspapers and magazines, including the New York Times, the New York Times Magazine, The Times (London), The Guardian (London),The Independent (London), The Washington Post, The Chicago Tribune, the New York Observer, Harpers Bazaar, People magazine and Entertainment Weekly. During the 1990's he was a regular contributor of book reviews to the Wall Street Journal. For six years was a professor of Creative Writing at New York University where he taught both graduate and undergraduate courses.
Joseph Olshan's other novels include Nightswimmer and Vanitas, as well as The Waterline, A Warmer Season, The Sound of Heaven and In Clara's Hands, a sequel to his acclaimed first novel, Clara's Heart.
Joseph Olshan is published in the U.S. by Saint Martin's Press and Berkley Books; and in the United Kingdom by Bloomsbury publishing and Arcadia Books. His work has been translated into sixteen languages.
Since 2010, he has been the editorial director of Delphinium Books (distributed by Publishers Group West
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Displaying 1 - 10 of 10 reviews
September 16, 2024
typical 90s slightly trashy gay lit. But hasn’t aged that well & carries lots of prejudice towards so many different people
April 27, 2022
I'm forty pages in, and sorely tempted to hurl this one against the wall. The story line is okay enough, but the writing is frequently atrocious. Apparently Olshan believes that the use of third-person omniscient is license to stuff his sentences with lifeless adjectives. Page 33: "He'd shut the door, turned on the light, and was half unzipped when he glimpsed a stunning drawing hanging over the toilet." No, Olshan, don't TELL us the drawing is stunning; tell us HOW it is stunning -- which he doesn't do, as he proceeds to describe the drawing instead and not the impression it makes. Even worse is this clunker from page 31, when Sam, the main character, orders a soup and ficelle from a French delicatessen he likes: "Outside again, he began slurping the delicious soup and gnawing the crusty bread, the world suddenly holy as a shrine." We should be surprised if the soup weren't delicious, and if the bread weren't crusty, our Sam should've marched back in and demanded a refund. Too much work for Olshan once again, I imagine, to describe the impression or effect of the food rather than weigh down his sentence with adjectival ballast . . . unless one considers that last simile, which wins no prizes for imagination.
Similarly, the use of third-person omniscient lays a trap for an author more inclined to relate parenthetical, slipshod impressions and incidents rather than construct scenes that show the impressions. It's the difference between telling us "Character X felt emotion Y" and creating a situation in which the reader necessarily infers how Character X felt. Olshan's accomplishment in *Nightswimmer* becomes all the more impressive in retrospect: First-person narration, precisely because it shuns omniscience, is the perfect narrative strategy for a story in which the main character is, several years after his lover's disappearance, still trying to piece together the bits of the lover's life that might explain the disappearance. *Vanitas* is, by comparison, richly disappointing.
Does anyone edit anymore, or do publishing house hacks and log rollers just demand space on the Acknowledgements pages of the novels they release? Certainly someone could've taken a red pencil to words 5-8 of this clunker on page 34: "It was a tense moment between the two men, but it was quickly over" -- because, wouldn't you know, there were only two people in the room, both of them men.
So far the best thing about this one is the picture of the dog accompanying the author-owner on the inside back jacket flap.
--
The writing does *not* improve. I could fill several screens with instances of lifeless, superfluous adjectives; I'll just note one more. Page 142: "Sam scrutinized the withered, elegant man." Sam is talking to someone in the last stages of AIDS wasting, someone who's spent his life surrounding himself with pretty things. There's no point in telling us now that he's withered and elegant. Or even, for that matter, that he's a man.
Do editors do anything besides ghostwrite the adulatory blurbs that other authors sign off on? Olshan credits a five editors and/or people offering editorial advice; I doubt any of them actually read the book. How did the following sentence pass?--
"A while later he [Bobby] and Garland went out to dinner, and then Bobby escorted the art dealer back to the Maison de Ville, the French city-style hotel where, ironically, Bobby had worked until Deshoteles could pay him enough money to quit his job."
We can first dispense with "the art dealer" as a Fowlerian "elegant variation"; we learned two hundred pages ago that Garland is an art dealer, after all, and there's no reason to point that out now. Otherwise we have that bane of all Freshman Comp writing: when to use the noun (proper or otherwise), and when to use the pronoun. Replacing the last "Bobby" with "he" in the sentence immediately preceding the one I just quoted, any editor both (1) awake and (2) not under the influence of designer drugs would have edited the aforementioned mess more or less as follows:
"A while later Bobby took [or accompanied] Garland to dinner, and then escorted him back to the Maison de Ville [etc.] where, ironically, he had worked [etc]."
After all, we'd already been informed of Bobby's previous work experience.
Oh, and would someone tell Olshan that dirges don't have movements? They're one-movement works.
As for the story, it does get a bit lurchy toward the end, nadiring (if that's a verb) in the sudden appearance of what I'll call a "pictura ex machina", although the clarification/revelation of the whole "angel" business is rather well done.
Ambitious, sloppy. Two stars.
Similarly, the use of third-person omniscient lays a trap for an author more inclined to relate parenthetical, slipshod impressions and incidents rather than construct scenes that show the impressions. It's the difference between telling us "Character X felt emotion Y" and creating a situation in which the reader necessarily infers how Character X felt. Olshan's accomplishment in *Nightswimmer* becomes all the more impressive in retrospect: First-person narration, precisely because it shuns omniscience, is the perfect narrative strategy for a story in which the main character is, several years after his lover's disappearance, still trying to piece together the bits of the lover's life that might explain the disappearance. *Vanitas* is, by comparison, richly disappointing.
Does anyone edit anymore, or do publishing house hacks and log rollers just demand space on the Acknowledgements pages of the novels they release? Certainly someone could've taken a red pencil to words 5-8 of this clunker on page 34: "It was a tense moment between the two men, but it was quickly over" -- because, wouldn't you know, there were only two people in the room, both of them men.
So far the best thing about this one is the picture of the dog accompanying the author-owner on the inside back jacket flap.
--
The writing does *not* improve. I could fill several screens with instances of lifeless, superfluous adjectives; I'll just note one more. Page 142: "Sam scrutinized the withered, elegant man." Sam is talking to someone in the last stages of AIDS wasting, someone who's spent his life surrounding himself with pretty things. There's no point in telling us now that he's withered and elegant. Or even, for that matter, that he's a man.
Do editors do anything besides ghostwrite the adulatory blurbs that other authors sign off on? Olshan credits a five editors and/or people offering editorial advice; I doubt any of them actually read the book. How did the following sentence pass?--
"A while later he [Bobby] and Garland went out to dinner, and then Bobby escorted the art dealer back to the Maison de Ville, the French city-style hotel where, ironically, Bobby had worked until Deshoteles could pay him enough money to quit his job."
We can first dispense with "the art dealer" as a Fowlerian "elegant variation"; we learned two hundred pages ago that Garland is an art dealer, after all, and there's no reason to point that out now. Otherwise we have that bane of all Freshman Comp writing: when to use the noun (proper or otherwise), and when to use the pronoun. Replacing the last "Bobby" with "he" in the sentence immediately preceding the one I just quoted, any editor both (1) awake and (2) not under the influence of designer drugs would have edited the aforementioned mess more or less as follows:
"A while later Bobby took [or accompanied] Garland to dinner, and then escorted him back to the Maison de Ville [etc.] where, ironically, he had worked [etc]."
After all, we'd already been informed of Bobby's previous work experience.
Oh, and would someone tell Olshan that dirges don't have movements? They're one-movement works.
As for the story, it does get a bit lurchy toward the end, nadiring (if that's a verb) in the sudden appearance of what I'll call a "pictura ex machina", although the clarification/revelation of the whole "angel" business is rather well done.
Ambitious, sloppy. Two stars.
February 22, 2025
(Book pile escapee no. 4)
Enjoyable enough to read but it meandered so much. The plot and characters felt like they were permanently stuck in the first act for the whole book.
I really enjoyed the central focus on the vanitas painting, and youth in general, during the Aids crisis though but it didn't really reach an impactful conclusion.
Enjoyable enough to read but it meandered so much. The plot and characters felt like they were permanently stuck in the first act for the whole book.
I really enjoyed the central focus on the vanitas painting, and youth in general, during the Aids crisis though but it didn't really reach an impactful conclusion.
January 27, 2015
Olshan's 'Vanitas' evoked a lot of memories for me while reading it. I'm a skeptical reader, I admit. While I make every attempt to suspend my ideas of my own disbelief (as many novels want you to do), I began reading 'Vanitas' with thoughts of "Wow ... Is this really how it was in the earlier days of 'The Plague'? How dated!" But as I read on, I got swept up in Sam, Elliot, and Bobby's lives and was able to enjoy their stories - I wanted more! I only wish 'Vanitas' ended with a little more satisfaction: Whatever became of Sam and Bobby? Perhaps Olshan will revisit their relationship and bring 'Vanitas' into the 2000's where having children and getting married aren't unachievable! I've got his 'The Conversation' lined up for a future read.
September 24, 2009
Anything to do with the art world, characters at a turning point in their lives, New York and London and I'm definitely there! Vanitas has all these things but somehow I found it a rather muddled read. Don't know why specifically (possibly where I'm at at the moment) but I felt the man character was, essentially, confused and this flowed on to the reader. Would love another reader's opinion. Despite all this I will be reading more of Olshan as I find his sensibilities reassuringly similiar to my own.
April 9, 2012
the story was a real-life story. there was no happy ending in fact there was no ending. death becomes a person, and bonding and breaking down the character portray as did the art.
there is a quote in the story goes something like "you would never understand, art doesn't have a mean, an artist gives to it as one goes on" which hit home. something can be more then life then one may know.
and as before Joseph Olshan wrote about death and love. the longing of a family with understand and loneliness. but mostly about letting go
there is a quote in the story goes something like "you would never understand, art doesn't have a mean, an artist gives to it as one goes on" which hit home. something can be more then life then one may know.
and as before Joseph Olshan wrote about death and love. the longing of a family with understand and loneliness. but mostly about letting go
March 21, 2021
Good read. You'll be compelled to turn the pages and know more but I'm not very satisfied by the ending since there's a lot of issues unresolved. Definitely left me thinking on how I'll end the story. 😅💯
July 16, 2012
I've begun reading Olshan from his most recent and then backwards. Enjoyable, engrossing, a bit confusing, with several reocurring themes. I look forward to his next one.
June 25, 2013
Really enjoyed this read. Dalston became so gamous
September 5, 2008
excellent
Displaying 1 - 10 of 10 reviews