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 These are characters, very like real people–neither saints nor sinners, but a little of both. If they are wrong, they can also admit their mistakes. And because they are so real, so much like us their story makes a truly emotional impact on the reader. It is hard to read the end of the novel, despite the almost certain feeling of what is going to happen without becoming caught up in the sentiment.
Reviewed by Jack Goodstein
The Bestowing Sun
by Neil Grimmett
Flame Books, 2004
http://www.flamebooks.com/product.asp?prodId=11
As old as art itself is the attempt of the artist to justify his ways to man, to explain what it is he does and why it is of value. For some it is the creation of something that will endure beyond the moment; for some it is a pleasing vehicle for teaching moral lessons. For some it is the creation of beauty and truth, for others the creation of beauty alone and sufficient unto itself. Whatever the justification, all of these aestheticians have one thing in common. The purpose of art, art of all kinds–music, painting, poetry, fiction, even when that art is its own purpose, is to provide mankind with something essential to our well being.
Moreover in order for the artist to accomplish these great purposes there must be something that makes him different from the rest of us who are not accomplishing these great things. As one critic would have it, the artist sees the same things we see, but he sees them in a way that we do not, and then he has the power to make us see what he sees. Though he may be a man speaking to men, he is a man endowed with powers greater than those to whom he is speaking. At the least he is more perceptive, at the best he is a visionary, a prophet, a seer.
If, in fact, the artist though seemingly like us, is different and special, it is no great leap to infer that he may well need special treatment, that the rules that apply to the more or less ordinary among us ought not apply to them. That what they do is so important to the rest of us that we should be willing to tolerate and forgive behavior in them that we might not be willing to tolerate in lesser mortals. They may flaunt social conventions; they may be despicable human beings: art, great art, forgives all. Indeed that we honor their refusal to be bound by the ordinary rules for ordinary beings may well be the price we have to pay for the work they produce.
It is not necessarily that they are evil people, although they may well be. It is more often that they are so consumed by the enormity of what they are doing, and of their own need to do it, that they lose sight of the demands of conventional living. They are absorbed in their passion. They live for their art. Everything and everyone else is subordinate to it.
William Halliday, the artist in Neil Grimmett’s novel,”The Bestowing Sun,” is such an artist. Even as a child his artistic genius and his consumption by that gift are evident. On the first page of the novel, his brother, Richard grabs his drawing of his mother and runs away: “He made no response to his brother’s act and appeared as far away and dreamy as ever; yet it felt as if a layer of skin had been torn away. The reason–or the main one of many–that he was not bothering to chase was that he wanted to catch the exact shade of his blood as he visualized it flowing from his wound. Already William was starting to understand that his own demise would need to be recorded with precision and honesty if all his other creations were to exist beyond this time and place; and be set free to expand from any constraints he might impose through his own ego.” This is the portrait of the child as a young artist with the emphasis on artist.
Art is a compulsion for such a man.
He may take a few wrong turns in it’s pursuit. He may put his trust in the wrong people. He may hurt those who love him. He may make mistakes and wallow in them, but in the end if the gift and talent are not merely an illusion he will find the truth in art that he seeks.
Set for the most part in the farmlands of Somerset, “The Bestowing Sun” (the pun is I am sure intended) is the episodic story of a farming family’s two sons woven around archetypal themes: Cain and Abel, the Prodigal Son., the Madonna/whore. William and Richard, the two brothers, couldn’t be more different. William the younger is a painter; he has little interest in anything but his painting. Richard is a farmer. He is practical. He loves the land and understands the value of work. He wants a family. The closest he comes to an aesthetic passion is his love for fishing. They are two brothers with little in common but their parents. Inevitably there are misunderstandings, jealousies, and estrangement, and just as inevitably there is the opportunity for reconciliation, in this case through the efficacy of art. Both William and Richard have something to learn about themselves and each other, and it is these discoveries that make the meat of Grimmett’s novel
In many respects Grimmett’s characters are not particularly likeable. Richard calmly plans and executes a spousal rape. William threatens to sell off his share of the family land to get money to go abroad. Richard refuses to help his brother get out of jail. William has no interest in his wife and child. Still, despite there flaws and blemishes, Grimmett manages to create a real sympathy for them. If one can not always quite like them, one can understand them.
This is true of most of the characters in the book. Selena, the sometime love of both brothers, is another example. She is a sexually free spirit who has no qualms about affairs with married men or violating her own marriage vows. She uses her beauty to catch herself a rich husband whom she soon tires of. Yet the reader can’t help but feel sympathy for her as she falls victim to the village’s wrath at the conclusion of a church service no less, as one man after another disappoints and betrays her, as she cares for her mother dying of cancer.
These are characters, very like real people–neither saints nor sinners, but a little of both. If they are petty at times, they can also rise above their pettiness. If they are cruel, they can also be compassionate. If they are wrong, they can also admit their mistakes. And because they are so real, so much like us their story makes a truly emotional impact on the reader. It is hard to read the end of the novel, despite the almost certain feeling of what is going to happen without becoming caught up in the sentiment.
A fitting emblem for what Grimmett has accomplished might well be his own description of William’s mother’s reaction to a picture he has done of the family and which she really seems to see for the first time: “A beam of light shone through her old kitchen window and fragmented into rays that illuminated each person gathered around the table. The brilliance and intensity of its glow seemed to have made transparent all the outer garments and even skin. The people were dissolving into shadows and then being remade from deep inside. Madeline recalled he shock she’d received the first time she briefly saw the work. Still it disturbed her and made her question what her son saw every time he opened his eyes.” Art illuminates what is within, but in doing so, it disturbs as well. If this is what William’s paintings do, it is no less what Grimmett’s novel does as well.
I don’t want to say this is a “promising” novel. There is scene in the book where William is given his first show in an Italian gallery, only to find his work belittled by a bunch of smug artistes as “promising,” not quite there yet, but “promising.” Still in the sense that this is something that is mighty fine, and promises still more to come, one might well say this novel is promising.
About the Reviewer: Jack Goodstein is a professor emeritus at California University of Pennsylvania, where he has taught English for more than thirty years. His work has appeared in scholarly journals such as Critique, Theatre Journal and College English and in literary magazines such as The Maine Review, The Small Pond Magazine of Literature and The Jewish Digest. In 1990 at age 51, he tried his hand at acting, and while he has always loved the theatre from the audience, discovered an unexpected addiction to the stage as a performer. Since then he has appeared in more than sixty plays throughout Pittsburgh and Southwestern Pennsylvania. He has also done film and commercial work. This ultimately led to his attempts at writing for the stage. His one act, Pinochle was given a staged reading at the ATHE conference in Toronto in July of 1999 and was published by the University of Charleston Press. In April 2000, his one act, Poker, was produced by the Pulse Ensemble Theatre in Manhattan as part of their OPAL series. Bride of the Father(2000) and Creative Daydreaming (2001) were produced by the Gallery Players of Park Slope in Brooklyn. Other one acts have had readings or been staged at Far Off Broadway and Northern LightsTheatre in Canada, and New York University and the Cafe Sha Sha in New York. Another of his pieces is on line at <A HREF="http://www.dhj5.homestead.com/Issue5pg19.html" "target="_blank">http://www.dhj5.homestead.com/Issue5pg19.html
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