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Literary criticism in the modern age has been forced to confront the increasing democratization of the art space, as tools like the internet allow greater access to what was previously considered “high art”, reserved for only the most sophisticated intellectuals. As the distinction between highbrow and lowbrow entertainment has blurred, there have been a great deal of growing pains for literary critics who cling to the vestiges of antiquated literary culture, where bestselling commercial novels are considered fodder for the masses rather than true novellic art. Enter The Goldfinch, Donna Tartt’s lengthy 2013 Pulitzer Prize-winning novel, which divided critics amongst these cultural lines. After the novel was awarded the Pulitzer Prize, the literary critic James Wood told Vanity Fair, “I think that the rapture with which this novel has been received is further proof of the infantilization of our literary culture: a world in which adults go around reading Harry Potter.”
This comment, to most readers I hope, reads as deeply condescending, and betrays a total ignorance of the function of literature in most people’s everyday lives. Where is the line between defending true art and shaming works that are arbitrarily left out of that category? Stephen King, whose massively successful fiction career lies at the center of this cultural debate, penned a rave review of the novel for The New York Times Book Review, calling it, “a rarity that comes along perhaps half a dozen times per decade, a smartly written literary novel that connects with the heart as well as the mind.” Thus ignited a crucial debate about this novel, which was an instant bestseller, garnering praise from both critics and the public, which of course spurred backlash from skeptics in the literary community.
This debate is actually quite relevant to the content of the novel as well, which deals in high art and forgeries. At the center of the novel is Dutch Golden Age artist Carel Fabritius’ The Goldfinch, a painting that is stolen during a terrorist attack on the Metropolitan Museum of Art. (The theft is entirely fictional, the painting currently resides at The Hague Museum in Holland.) The thief is fourteen year-old Theo Decker, who in the moments of chaos after the explosion, has an important conversation with an older gentleman, a victim of the disaster, who gives Theo a mysterious ring and encourages him to take the painting. Theo’s mother, Audrey, perishes in the explosion, who was Theo’s sole caretaker given his father’s recent disappearance.
In a haze of grief, Theo moves in with the wealthy family of a school friend, where he feels like an outsider and a burden to those around him. The ring leads Theo to an antique store, where he meets James Hobart (Hobie), the business partner of the older gentleman from the museum. Theo and Hobie form an important bond, as Hobie becomes a stable and grounding presence for Theo during this time of emotional chaos. At the end of the school year, Theo’s alcoholic/gambler father resurfaces, moving Theo out to Las Vegas to live with him and his girlfriend, Xandra, in a sparsely populated housing development outside the Strip. So Theo gathers all his possessions, including the well-concealed painting, and moves out to Vegas with his new caregivers. It is immediately obvious that Theo’s father and Xandra are unfit guardians, and while Theo’s father claims not to drink anymore, he and Xandra are constantly high on cocaine, opiates, or other substances. Theo’s transition to life in the desert proves very difficult, until he meets Boris, a fellow misfit who seems to be in a constant state of trouble. Boris is also mother-less, and has an alcoholic/abusive father, and the precarious situations of Boris and Theo force them to form their own sort of family unit. Boris is this novel’s Artful Dodger—he is a scammer, alcoholic, drug addict, and an all around sleazy charmer—all by the ripe old age of 15. Boris and Theo drink and smoke together basically everyday, and when troubling circumstances lead Theo back to New York, the readers mourns most for Theo’s loss of Boris as a companion.
In New York, Theo arrives at the home antique store, and is welcomed in by Hobie. Eventually, Theo goes into business with Hobie, restoring and selling antiques and artworks to wealthy patrons. Theo loses himself in the art world, which becomes a quiet refuge for him, and an irrefutable component of his identity. Theo ponders the nature of real art and his relation to it, and all of the emotions that can be bound up in one’s reception of a certain piece.
In many ways, this novel is about human consciousness, utilizing dreams and the imagination as important landscapes for plot and character development. It is no coincidence that the novel begins, “While I was still in Amsterdam, I dreamed about my mother for the first time in years.” Theo claims that in his childhood, every night he would try to think of his mother before bed so that she might show up in his dreams, but he could never capture her essence. Instead he dreamed of her “only as absence, not as presence: a breeze blowing through a just-vacated house, her handwriting on a notepad, the smell of her perfume…”. Theo’s subconscious is the only space in which he can connect with his mother after her death, and thus his imagination spirals into a series of “what-ifs” in which he imagines the scenarios in which his life may have progressed differently had the course of some event-of-chance been altered.
Theo spends most of his adolescence escaping to a dream world, constantly drinking and popping pills to alter his mind state, navigating both Vegas and Manhattan through this hazy fog of unreality. Though Theo wanders through much of this novel with this vague sense of unreality—a feeling he describes as that of already being dead—it would be inaccurate to call him unmoored, as Tartt cleverly grounds his character in objects like the painting, and characters like Hobie and Boris, who add texture and varying degrees of stability to Theo’s life. The novel is further grounded by its meditations on art and humanity, about how beauty and pain interact, always returning to this central image of the goldfinch painting. The Goldfinch is a conversation about art, one which asserts the importance of personal significance over cultural significance—a conversation that itself comments on the novel’s existence.