The Middle Zone – Thoughts on “The Goldfinch”

“I’ve come to believe that there’s no truth beyond illusion. Because, between ‘reality’ on the one hand, and the point where the mind strikes reality, there’s a middle zone, a rainbow edge where beauty comes into being, where the two very different surfaces mingle and blur to provide what life does not: and this is the space where all art exists, and all magic.”

The author of that surprising insight is Donna Tartt, from her book “The Goldfinch”. A book suggested by a friend at work who, knowing of my deep love of art, highly recommended that I dedicate some time for it. I initially thought that it was a no-brainer, a book about art and aesthetics will always push its way to the top of my reading list, but once I had the book in hand, I will admit to feeling a level of trepidation, for it was immediately clear that it would involve something of a commitment…. coming in at just shy of 800 pages. Even knowing that it was a No.1 bestseller didn’t move the dial as it should have, but once I discovered that it had also won a Pulitzer Prize, my interest peaked. 

Yet once the book was finished, I confess that a sizable chunk of it left me uninspired. In fact, there were a few sections where I had to “hold my breath” through the acidic air that lingered through the text. The book itself was clearly well written, there is no debate there, but at several points along the way I admit to feeling a bit sick at heart, because several key characters, particularly its protagonist, seemed unnecessarily jaded and even a bit “shady”, which left an unpleasant scent in the air.

Truth be told, it was precisely the protagonist’s proximity to nihilism that I had such a difficult time with. Pessimism has always affected me in a negative way because it exposes, at least to my eye, a lack of nerve at the challenges that life inevitably presents to each of us, as well as a lazy predisposition to the think from the shadows, where there is scarce light to be found. To “blink” in other words, as Nietzsche poignantly exposed as the “last man”, meaning those who cannot be bothered with doing the heavy lifting required to navigate their way to a meaningful life. For them, the script should be an easy, ‘paint-by-the-numbers’ kit for life, with no hardships to triumph over, nor personal demon’s to slay. At the end of the novel, after our protagonist had withstood the climatic point in the narrative, he appeared to have found a sort of emotional safe zone to rest, which ultimately meant restoring his faith in the transcendent power of Art. It was in that redemption, as precarious as it was, that tipped the scales toward a type of salvation for my efforts.

Of course, all the praise goes to Tartt, for she exposed in a few piercing insights, the beating heart of art, which for me is a type of rapture. Meaning that while the rest of us may view a treasured piece of art and feel a swelling in our chest from it, the exploration often ends there, almost like the roped off stanchions at a gallery where casual observers are kept at a safe distance. But for intuitive writers like Saul Bellow, Dostoyevsky, F. Scott Fitzgerald, and I’ll include Tartt in this regard, as evidenced by her insights, they have an ability to sidestep the ropes, so to speak, to get an intimate look and report back to us of their experience standing next to the smoldering core of the thing. Gifted writers have something close to an angelic touch with words, as do master painters with brush and paint. When the composition is tight and all the allegorical dots are beautifully connected, a particular type of magic can rise from the canvas or page.

The painting that inspired all of this, “The Goldfinch”, is surprisingly small, at only 13”x 9”, and produced by Carel Fabritius, a Dutch painter who was a pupil of Rembrandt. When I first saw his self-portrait, I was immediately aware of Rembrandt’s influence. There was the same hazy rawness, like caught in the middle of a dream, yet infused with an divine use of light. Unfortunately for art lovers, not to mention Fabritius himself, he died young at only 32 in a gunpowder explosion that killed hundreds and wiped out much the town of Delft (Amsterdam). Only a few of his paintings survived and the few that did were scattered across Europe to various collectors. In what may have inspired Tartt’s main plot, Fabritius’ “Goldfinch” went missing shortly after his death and remained lost for over two centuries before being discovered again in 1864.

After doing a bit of online research, I found a rare interview with Tartt that exposed an interesting ideal regarding her outlook as a writer/artist.

“I don’t think it’s a good idea for a writer to psychoanalyze herself or try to explain why she writes what she writes—it’s a reductive way of looking at oneself and one’s work.…… As a writer I’m giving the reader signs to help create the story with me. The reader is bringing his or her own memories, intelligence, preconceptions, prejudices, likes, dislikes. So, the characters in your copy of the book are going to look and sound different than in mine.”

The specific point she made there is called “the beholders share”, as described by Alois Riegl, whether she realized that or not….though with her obvious appreciation of art, she very likely did. The “beholders share” alludes to the viewer bringing their own reaction to the experience of viewing, which naturally includes our own emotional and intellectual predispositions, which will create a different painting for each person viewing it. Denis Diderot, the 18th century French philosopher, was the likely inspiration for Riegl’s idea, as I cover in an earlier essay. As mentioned earlier, the difficulty I experienced with my commitment to the book was specifically the pessimism I felt from a few key characters, so indeed, a type of violation occurred against my own emotional comfort zone, which played a role in shaping the story that I experienced, precisely as Tartt pointed out.

Before introducing her incredible comments at the close of the book, I need to be transparent enough to admit that my initial thought after reading them was not how deeply insightful they were, but rather to cringe at my own limitations to express myself, certainly with this kind of poignancy. I have admitted to others for many years now that if presented with the choice between a winning lottery ticket giving me a lifetime of ease, or the ability to write with this kind of expressive clarity…. the choice would be a simple one, for words will always hold the reigns in my life. And although I’m forced to swallow hard at my limitations, I nonetheless applaud Tartt for getting it right, for Art is one of the few vehicles we have at our disposal where we can be utterly enchanted and lifted out of ourselves. The magic that I’m speaking of does not occur by looking ‘at’ a piece of art, but rather “into” the thing…. deeply and intuitively. And Tarott’s words hit the center of that bullseye. The words below are spoken by our protagonist at the book’s conclusion, but comes from Tarott, the writer, of course, and exposes an incredible level of nuance.

“There’s only a tiny heartbeat and solitude, bright and sunny wall, and a sense of no escape. Time that doesn’t move, time that couldn’t be called time. And trapped in the heart of light, the little prisoner, unflinching.….. it’s hard not to see the human in the finch. Dignified, vulnerable. One prisoner looking at another?”

And…

“What’s mysterious, ambiguous, and inexplicable? What doesn’t fit into a story, what doesn’t have a story. Glint of brightness on a barley-there chain. Patch of sunlight on a yellow wall. The loneliness that separates every living creature from every other living creature. Sorrow inseparable from joy…..Yet even a child can see its dignity: thimble of bravery, all fluff and brittle bone. Not timid, not even hopeless, but steady and holding its place. Refusing to pull back from the world.”

Tarott is there offering an exquisite insight for our contemplation to roam. In fact, my heart still skips a beat at the thought. But the reality is that it takes some heavy lifting on our part, because the true magic can only be captured by piercing “the life behind things”, as articulated by another writer, Alan Ball, from “American Beauty.” This is not an excursion into fantasy, but rather the employment of our imagination to read the clues presented and to intuit where they lead, such as seeing the Goldfinch perched with such dignity, not shrinking from its prison cell, refusing to relinquish its pride. One could almost imagine Nietzsche’s “Amore Fati” applying to its pose. Not only is the Finch accepting its fate, but is owning it.

There is another author that I believe understood this ‘Middle Zone’ as well. The late Saul Bellow, a Pulitzer and Nobel prize winning writer, stumbled onto the same terrain in his book “Henderson the Rain King”, which echoed the same sentiment. In it, Bellow’s emotionally clumsy, yet acutely sensitive protagonist, Henderson, is ruminating on how he should have responded to King Dahfu, his mentor, regarding what he considered to be the key to transcending the apparent futility and chaos of life.

“…and I might have told him a lot, right then and there. What? Well, for instance, that chaos doesn’t run the whole show. That this is not a sick and hasty ride, helpless, through a dream into oblivion. No, sir! It can be arrested by a thing or two. By art, for instance. The speed is checked, the time is re-divided. Measure! That great thought. Mystery! The voices of angels!”

“…. the speed is checked, time re-divided”, I love that line because it perfectly describes how art has the power to alter time, ever so briefly, allowing us to rethink, to reinterpret and readdress what our senses are delivering. In other words, is the painting simply of a bird chained to a ledge, or does that Goldfinch represent a mirror exposing our own chains, of our career, our relationships, or perhaps a faith that no longer comforts. And that is the aesthetic power of the “beholders share”. To imagine ourselves within the painting, actively interpreting its composition to wherever the clues lead us.

I mentioned earlier the protagonist’s pessimism and my agitation to it, which is quite true, but at the end, almost grudgingly, he nonetheless found his way out of the labyrinth of his own pessimism.

“And, increasingly, I find myself fixing on the refusal to pull back. Because I don’t care what anyone says or how often or winningly they say it…. life is a catastrophe.”

Then finishes with a type of redemption (emphasis mine).

“And I feel I have something very serious and urgent to say to you, my non-existent reader, and I feel I should say it as urgently as if I were standing in the room with you. That life—whatever else it is—is short. That fate is cruel but maybe not random. That Nature always wins but that doesn’t mean we have to bow and grovel to it. That maybe even if we’re not always so glad to be here, it’s our task to immerse ourselves anyway: wade straight through it, right through the cesspool, while keeping eye and heart open. And in the midst of our dying, as we rise from the organic and sink back ignominiously into the organic, it is a glory and a privilege to love what Death doesn’t touch.”