“Theft” is the latest smash-and-grab by Peter Carey, the satirist who won the Booker Prize for “Oscar and Lucinda” and “True History of the Kelly Gang.”
An Aussie author with a gleefully dark sense of humor and a gift for dialogue that is improvisational, but precise, Carey finds a wealth of material on the disputed boundary between art and commerce.
Antihero Michael “Butcher” Boone is a “formerly famous” abstract painter who lost much of his work in an acrimonious divorce settlement and is now careening out of control. He’s either a drunken lout whose best work is behind him or a temperamental artist who is doing the best work of his career.
Beauty, as always, is in the eye of the beholder. But when you’re beholden to the viewer for your livelihood it adds a whole new level of anxiety to the encounter.
Butcher Boone does not handle it well. The brash, foulmouthed artist believes he’s doing his best work, but his rich patron isn’t so sure. He cuts Butcher off completely after the artist trashes his summer house in a drunken haze.
“The problem with art is the people who buy it,” says Butcher, who stands at a crossroads. Is he really onto something, or is he about to become what he most fears, “a bitter old painter whose friends are famous, whose own walls are now stacked with twenty-foot long canvases no one wants to buy.”
He splashes paint with Jackson Pollock abandon while wondering in a rare sober moment if his talent has failed him or if it was ever there to begin with. Is he a con man, an artist, or both?
The plot thickens when a mysterious art expert arrives at Butcher’s doorstep in spike-
heeled shoes. Sparks fly on a fateful night when a masterpiece is stolen from a neighbor’s home.
Suspicion is cast his way, so Butcher has another drink “just to smooth the edges” and hits the road with his idiot savant brother, who comments admirably on the action.
Then lightening strikes. Butcher’s paintings become popular in Japan. What follows is a rollicking trip to arcane art colonies in Asia, Australia and New York where perception is as important as reality. Is somebody manipulating the market? If so, who? Answering those questions gives the body of the book most of its allure. Carey is skilled at keeping the pot boiling.
As Butcher careens from disaster to disaster with a drink in one hand and a voice dripping with sarcasm, Carey deftly pulls the strings to create a knot of suspicion and cynicism that is a joy to unravel.
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Theft
A Love Story
By Peter Carey
Knopf, 288 pages, $24
