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The Light Possessed A Novel by Alan Cheuse New foreword by Rick Bass New afterword by the author |
"It is as if Mr. Cheuse has dreamed a long dream about a distinguished artist and awakened to write this book. From its vivid first scene, in which Ava Boldin's mad mother attempts to relive the family legend by walking on water, to its intense renderings of Ava engrossed in her art, the novel draws a richly imagined American life."—New York Times Book Review
"Ostensibly the fictional biography of a woman painter based on the life of Georgia O'Keeffe, this novel is a moving meditation on art—on color, shape, light, lines and design. Woven into the compelling story of a woman driven by artistic genius and a fierce sense of independence is a stunning aesthetic vision. Cheuse has captured in language a sense of the world that is normally expressed only in pigment on canvas. After reading this book, you won't look at an O'Keeffe painting the same way again."—Digby Diehl, Playboy
The Light Possessed focuses on Ava Boldin, who begins her solitary and single-minded journey to become a great artist as a student at the Art Institute of Chicago in the years before World War I. Her life and art dramatically change when she meets and marries Albert Stigmar, a New York photographer and gallery owner nearly twice her age. Though he successfully promotes her work in an art world dominated by men, she is drawn to the desert Southwest where "it was as though a fire had broken out above the horizon in a sky made of paper, and it was consuming the very stuff of darkness." Ultimately she turns her back on the New York art establishment and embraces the landscape and light of New Mexico, where she seeks to nurture the intensity of her artistic vision at Blue Mesa.
First published by Gibbs Smith in 1990.
"A brilliant evocation of the tortured, occasionally ecstatic life of the highly gifted artist, seen against the background that brings out the artist's best."—Choice
"Cheuse seems to occupy O'Keeffe's skin; he looks through her eyes to find the light that draws her—the light that she sought to possess."—The Daily Iowan
"Like a narrated life-drawing class—an engaging portrait takes form."—Museum & Arts
"A lovely, deliberate book that addresses profound questions."—Chicago Tribune
"A fine artistic achievement."—Philadelphia Inquirer
ALAN CHEUSE is book commentator for National Public Radio's "All Things Considered" and produces and hosts "The Sound of Writing," the Center for the Book/NPR short story magazine of the air. Cheuse is the author of a memoir, Fall Out of Heaven; two novels, The Bohemians and The Grandmothers' Club (reissued in 1994 by SMU Press); and two story collections, Candace and The Tennessee Waltz (reissued in 1992 by SMU Press). His stories and reviews appear in the New Yorker, Ploughshares, the Chicago Tribune, and other literary venues. He teaches in the writing program at George Mason University in Fairfax, Virginia. He and his wife, dancer Kristin O'Shee, make their home in Washington, D.C.
The Light Possessed
ISBN 0-87074-430-5 paper $12.95
LC 98-12774. 6x9. 336 pp.
Fiction.
Publication Date: May 1998.
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