Status
Checked out
Publication
Vintage (1996), 240 pages
Description
A romantic triangle on a retired British intelligence officer, his girl and the spy who stole her. It is told against the backdrop of the rebellion in Chechnya and the international intrigues surrounding it. A tale of the moral wastes of post-Cold War Europe in both East and West.
User reviews
LibraryThing member misfidget
This is the reason i read everything else by her i could get my hands on, up to and including the editorials on her website.
LibraryThing member iayork
.........................................: Art and Lies is in my humble opinion the best work of fiction (or is it?) I have ever read. It's dense, profoundly intertextual, and at times absolutely poetic. Please don't be fooled by Publius' obviously misguided review (for example, the comparison
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between Sophokles and Sappho is flawed from the start, and one might consider reading a bit about the historical reception of Sappho's work before making such bold statements); if Winterson will enter literary history as a footnote to a footnote, it will be one that disrupts the entire textual frame itself. Show Less
LibraryThing member csoki637
Oh, I haven't read a real book in ages; I definitely enjoyed this. It's not a novel by any traditional standards: it's an assortment of bits of prose and points of view. Art & Lies is an appropriate title — art, philosophy, life, beauty, humor, obscenity. It all works in the end, and Winterson's
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writing is refreshing creative and insightful. Show Less
LibraryThing member shmibs
winterson's (slightly indirectly stated) purpose in writing this book is "re-virgining the whore": that is, new-life-ing worn-out words-and-phrases. and she does pretty well, beautiful prose her strength and all. nice flow of wordage to sink into, fill you with colours and smells and al. (can't
what feels over-engineered, then, is the skeleton under that skin, poking out chunkily all over. she addresses that too, being all "in your daily lives, you make everything as un-natural as possible, surrounding yourself with un-natural things. why get upset over un-natural stories?". still, though, don't think could read a bunch of books like this one after the other, just because easier when stories float and flutter and flow more. she uses it here more as a frame for related poems. works, but can't really "long-feel" from it, just headspeak.
also, first time seeing invocations of abrahamic imagery for sapphic purposes (though person says anne carson does that a bit to?). it's kind of great, this subversion of the Word etc, but belies an upbringing steeped in it and ingrained bias against it, gets kinda tiring.
what really annoyed, though: getting to the end and her spelling things out bluntly. feels like an editor concession or something, like who's going to get to this point without already understanding. and makes you feel less Clever and Learned for getting it first time :P
bit about book-burrowing boys maybe favourite image in anything now, though.
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resist the occasional outta-place-teehee, though. "vers. libre lel")what feels over-engineered, then, is the skeleton under that skin, poking out chunkily all over. she addresses that too, being all "in your daily lives, you make everything as un-natural as possible, surrounding yourself with un-natural things. why get upset over un-natural stories?". still, though, don't think could read a bunch of books like this one after the other, just because easier when stories float and flutter and flow more. she uses it here more as a frame for related poems. works, but can't really "long-feel" from it, just headspeak.
also, first time seeing invocations of abrahamic imagery for sapphic purposes (though person says anne carson does that a bit to?). it's kind of great, this subversion of the Word etc, but belies an upbringing steeped in it and ingrained bias against it, gets kinda tiring.
what really annoyed, though: getting to the end and her spelling things out bluntly. feels like an editor concession or something, like who's going to get to this point without already understanding. and makes you feel less Clever and Learned for getting it first time :P
bit about book-burrowing boys maybe favourite image in anything now, though.
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LibraryThing member Marse
"Art & Lies" sounded so promising to me, but though I enjoyed reading some of the characters' inner thoughts, and where those thoughts would go, I found the book as a whole not very enjoyable. And it may be that it was not meant to be enjoyable reading. Three characters: Handel (not that Handel),
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Picasso (not that Picasso) and Sappho (a ghost ? of that Sappho), three stories that intermix in strange ways, an ending that is not an ending... I think I was not in the right frame of mind for this book, maybe some other time. Show Less
LibraryThing member banjo123
"But not all facts are known and what is known is not necessarily a fact."
Beautiful writing, but complicated and challenging to read. The book presents three intertwining narratives, characters who are named Sappho, Picasso, and Handel, whose relationships to their namesakes is a bit obscure. I
Here is what Winterson has to say about the book on her website:
"Why should literature be easy? Sometimes you can do what you want to do in a simple, direct way that is absolutely right. Sometimes you can’t. Reading is not a passive act. Books are not TV. Art of all kinds is an interactive challenge. The person who makes the work and the person who comes to the work both have a job to do. I am never wilfully obscure, but I do ask for some effort. Certainly Art and Lies is my most closed piece of work. Perhaps it is hermeneutic, though no more so than plenty of books by plenty of guys .It was written at a time when I was looking inwards not outwards. It is thickly layered, concentrated and often dark. But it’s a book not a crime. If you don’t like it, don’t read it."
Beautiful writing, but complicated and challenging to read. The book presents three intertwining narratives, characters who are named Sappho, Picasso, and Handel, whose relationships to their namesakes is a bit obscure. I
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think that the book is about the power of words, or of art, to re-write a life formed by trauma. I liked the book, although often I was unsure of what I was reading.Here is what Winterson has to say about the book on her website:
"Why should literature be easy? Sometimes you can do what you want to do in a simple, direct way that is absolutely right. Sometimes you can’t. Reading is not a passive act. Books are not TV. Art of all kinds is an interactive challenge. The person who makes the work and the person who comes to the work both have a job to do. I am never wilfully obscure, but I do ask for some effort. Certainly Art and Lies is my most closed piece of work. Perhaps it is hermeneutic, though no more so than plenty of books by plenty of guys .It was written at a time when I was looking inwards not outwards. It is thickly layered, concentrated and often dark. But it’s a book not a crime. If you don’t like it, don’t read it."
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LibraryThing member AAPremlall
Loved it, the poetry, the imagery, the deliciousness of the words.
Subjects
Language
Original language
English
Original publication date
1994
Physical description
240 p.; 5.16 inches
ISBN
0679762701 / 9780679762706