The vivisector [Hardcover]

Although it is out of print and difficult to find, the Vivisector is a rare opportunity to journey through the life of a fine artist, from birth to death. It is redolent with the imagery that drives the main character's development as a painter, from the moment he is sold into a wealthy family, through the recognition of his talent as a very young boy, and the efforts made by his adoptive parents to fully develop his obvious gifts, until world recognition enables an ongoing career marked by greatness. Peter White's gentle, sculpting prose builds not only the image of the artist, but of what he sees and what he paints, and therein is the author's brilliance. With an economy of language that is at once enviable and surprising, White provides a life-portrait that invades the mind of the reader with images of what it means to give one's life to art, and to be a great artist, and live that artist's life. Parallel themes of the book follow his original and adoptive families, and particularly a sister, who, mad and confused, roams the streets with her pets, as lost in her mind as the artist is able to explore his own. The panoply of emotions is so powerful at times that the reader must take a moment to pull images and feelings together before moving on. I highly recommend this book to anyone thinking of building a life in art.

I find it difficult to assign an exact number of stars to my assessment of this book. My "enjoyment" of the book is at about a three star level, but White's ability to achieve what he set out to do is worthy of five stars... so I am rounding off to four. What did he set out to do? To show the lifelong inner workings, to lay bare the soul of this particular artist, the painter Hurtle Duffield. White achieved his goal, we're left with a brilliant portrait, his depiction of the artist is itself a work of art, the work of a genius.
But the book is difficult, slow-moving and dark. It will not appeal to those who want a quick-paced storyline... and forget the word "action" all ye that dare to enter herein. These pages will rain on you. And, like all walking in the rain, you will have to remain fairly determined to reach your destination.
But the book is not without its merits. Artists are not normal. They are eccentric. Hurtle Duffield is a born artist, and as such, from childhood onwards he is not normal. He is consistently, and increasingly, eccentric. As a child, he is keenly observant... in a sense, vivisecting everything he sees and experiences. His adoption into a wealthy family allows for the opportunity to expand his horizons, to experience the world... yet even this good fortune is no panacea, it is clouded with difficulties, with dysfunction. The fertile ground for the artistic mind to germinate.
Hurtle (as perhaps all great artists) becomes the sort of person who influences those who come in contact with him, but is unable to influence himself. His relationships are tragic and self-destructive for everyone involved. He becomes a recluse, spending the latter portion of his life living with his equally eccentric sister, the kind of guy that neighborhood kids invent legends about!
In his mansion he continues to paint his masterpieces, which are internationally recognized.
The only way that Hurtle can REALLY communicate with the outside world is through his art, and White does a superb job of showing us how detrimental this type of obsession can be for the personal life of the artist himself. It's a world few of us ever see. And it's gloomy.
At one point the narrator says that Hurtle's "repeated downfall was his longing to share truth with somebody specific who didn't want to receive it." This is a significant theme of the novel, Hurtle searching for the Ideal. And Hurtle himself cries out at one point, "I'm an artist. I can't afford exorcism."
Brilliant stuff.
Of course, White's choice of title for his book is significant. So, as I read the book, I kept asking myself... "Who IS the vivisector?" Is it "God" as Hurtle concludes in chapter 8? Or is it Hurtle himself?
How easy it is to blame God for our temperament, or for the choices we have made in life... famous artist or not!
The title is significant. White is asking something here, not giving us the answer. If Hurtle dies alone, and unfulfilled, is this God's fault? Hurtle's?
Who is the Vivisector in this novel? God? If so... who does he vivisect? Everyone? (If so, I can think of many people I know who do not seem very vivisected at all)! Does God arbitrarily pick and choose then?
Does God even exist?
If it's Hurtle, who does Hurtle vivisect? Himself? His original parents? His sister? Every woman in his life? Page 458 says "there were days when he himself was operated on." And the inference is that he (Hurtle) was the vivisector!
White leaves these questions unanswered, and to me, it was an eerie feeling, like one of those paintings with the eyes that follow you no matter where you walk in the room.
The book is worth reading, but keep an eye to the title of my review...

In his longest novel, written in 1970, Nobel Prize-winning author White examines the question of an artist's creativity, where it comes from, whether it can be controlled, and what obligations, if any, accompany it. As he traces the life of Hurtle Duffield from the age of four until his death as an elderly (and successful) avant-garde artist, we see Duffield always as somehow different from his peers. The son of a laundress and a bottle collector, Hurtle is from birth inspired, painting large images on walls as a toddler, but he recognizes at an early age that "people look down at their plates if you said something was 'beautiful.'" To provide him with opportunities which will allow his genius to flourish, his parents sell him to the wealthy family for which his mother works when he is four years old.

As a member of the Courtney family, Hurtle travels and becomes educated, though he continues to see rather than think. For him, the usual emotional traumas of adolescence are accompanied by unique questions of his identity, both because of his two families and also because of his view of the world. Not religious, he sees God as the Great Vivisector, and men treating each other as animals, slaughtering each other in war. When he himself goes off to war and returns to find that the family has gone in separate directions, he devotes himself, once again, to his art, using women who love him as vehicles for his own self-expression and behaving as a vivisector himself. About his painting of one model, White says "[Hurtle] disemboweled her while she was still alive." As time passes, Hurtle continues to search for love, inspiration, self-expression, and some sort of balance in his life between his immense need to paint, his desire for personal connection, and his simultaneous need to be alone.

White's prose style is direct and concise, elegantly simple, and easy to understand. He uses colloquial speech-words like "smoodge," "sook," "slommacky," and "mumped," which must be understood from context-and reveals character and action through dialogue. The novel is old-fashioned, using a straight chronological narrative with no complex flashbacks, and it is quite romantic in its plot elements, despite its serious theme development. The biggest problem for the reader is that the main character is not very likable, nor does he inspire a great deal of empathy--a difficult character to live with for approximately six hundred pages--and I'm not sure how typical he is of the artists he is supposed to represent. Mary Whipple