Scan barcode
A review by inoirita
Beasts by Joyce Carol Oates
5.0
"We are beasts and this is our consolation."
I feel our love for art can often be so intense that we become enamoured with the artist. We are titillated by art to such an extent that the creator becomes a source of awe and wonder. The art and the artist cannot be distinguished anymore.
It is the year 1975 and young Gillian Brauer is bewitched by the charismatic André Harrow and Dorcas, his mystifying wife who would rather be known as anything but Mrs. Harrow. Mr. Harrow or André, as he preferred to be called by the young women in his class at Catamount College, was the English Professor who wanted to stir up the most vulnerable moments in his students and precipitate it into poetry. Dorcas, whose character kept reminding me of someone who would be played by Jemima Kirk (I loved her roles in Girls and Conversations with Friends), with her flummoxing charm and beauty, was a sculptor who devised the most vile and challenging-looking art pieces. She once said how she was unbothered by hate, because at least hate was honest and therein lies her free spirit as an artist.
In André's class, the young women with their enigmatic and youthful personalities fought a friendly fight to be his favourite. They pouted and groaned at his criticizing comments and beamed at his praise. Each of them wanted him to look at them only. Gillian was imprisoned in this dark academic world and her invigorating feelings for André. Like every other girl, she wanted him and felt constantly threatened by the other young women around her. Her pining desire to belong to André and to be accepted by Dorcas was overwhelming, it took her to roads she wouldn't have gone had she been sane. She wanted to break the barriers of him labelling her as Philomela, Ovid's personification of the virgin figure.
In less than 150 pages, Oates manages to assimilate DH Lawrence, pulp pornography, art and arson into a magnificent suspenseful novella. It transcends the rules of a single genre, it is a dexterous concoction of the campus novel and the gothic romance, producing a tale of rakish desire.
I feel our love for art can often be so intense that we become enamoured with the artist. We are titillated by art to such an extent that the creator becomes a source of awe and wonder. The art and the artist cannot be distinguished anymore.
It is the year 1975 and young Gillian Brauer is bewitched by the charismatic André Harrow and Dorcas, his mystifying wife who would rather be known as anything but Mrs. Harrow. Mr. Harrow or André, as he preferred to be called by the young women in his class at Catamount College, was the English Professor who wanted to stir up the most vulnerable moments in his students and precipitate it into poetry. Dorcas, whose character kept reminding me of someone who would be played by Jemima Kirk (I loved her roles in Girls and Conversations with Friends), with her flummoxing charm and beauty, was a sculptor who devised the most vile and challenging-looking art pieces. She once said how she was unbothered by hate, because at least hate was honest and therein lies her free spirit as an artist.
In André's class, the young women with their enigmatic and youthful personalities fought a friendly fight to be his favourite. They pouted and groaned at his criticizing comments and beamed at his praise. Each of them wanted him to look at them only. Gillian was imprisoned in this dark academic world and her invigorating feelings for André. Like every other girl, she wanted him and felt constantly threatened by the other young women around her. Her pining desire to belong to André and to be accepted by Dorcas was overwhelming, it took her to roads she wouldn't have gone had she been sane. She wanted to break the barriers of him labelling her as Philomela, Ovid's personification of the virgin figure.
In less than 150 pages, Oates manages to assimilate DH Lawrence, pulp pornography, art and arson into a magnificent suspenseful novella. It transcends the rules of a single genre, it is a dexterous concoction of the campus novel and the gothic romance, producing a tale of rakish desire.