Infinite Books

“Parade” is the first book by Rachel Cusk that I read. I learned that the author is a well-known novelist with a unique style and fans who eagerly await her next book. Starting with this novel may not be the best way for me to explore Cusk’s work. On the plus side, after finishing “Parade,” I put a hold on the audiobook of the same novel, hoping to absorb it better by listening to it.

The novel consists of four parts, all dealing with the inner lives of artists named “G.” I decided that “G’ stands for “Generic,” and in a way, it’s about a generic artist, being a painter, a sculptor, a filmmaker.  There is not much of a plot but many reflections on the philosophical question of what it means to be an artist, particularly a woman artist. The first “G,” a painter who, at some point in his career, started to paint things upside down, believed that women could not be artists. His wife interprets it as “he was really saying was that women could not be artists if men were going to be artists.” An interesting idea was expressed by a woman writer who became excited by the upside-down paintings that she wanted to write upside down.

Another “G” is a woman artist who marries a man, for he is the one who disproves her work. “She recognized in his disapproval the mark of authority. While claiming to know nothing about art, which at a stroke seemed both to diminish her achievements and to increase his air of importance, he gave G to understand that there as something morally repellent in her work that she was perhaps unaware of.” The marriage results in “G” becoming a mother to a daughter, but motherhood seems to be another way her husband enforces his power over her, limiting her artistic freedom even more.

The last part of “Parade,” “The Spy,” reflects on the mother who imposes more power over the lives of their four adult children when she is overcome with maladies and illnesses that lead to her immobility. It’s certainly an interesting concept, one that could bring fresh insight. “She seemed to want and welcome debility: perhaps it was a way of drawing attention to the site of contention that was her body.”

Reading this novel was an interesting experience.  It was less of a story and more like a collection of philosophical questions and answers from the artist, who seemed detached from reality. The artists were there but much less as people and more like the ideas of people who happen to be artists. Perhaps the author intended to show the artists’ problems as something we can relate to – and I, at some level, did relate to them. Still, at the same time, the characters were hidden behind a glass window, which, unfortunately,  never opened for me.

PARADE by Rachel Cusk, Macmillan, 2024