Book Review : At the Intersection of Artistic Values

Of Limited Partnerships by Lisa Zeidner (North Point Press: $18.95; 272 pages.

It used to be in America--or so they said--that an idealistic artist had two choices:

(1) Put away those artistic dreams, take over your father’s business or get a law degree and live a life of material wealth and spiritual poverty. Drive everyone around you crazy with continual regrets and wistful glances out the window of your undented Oldsmobile or Ferrari.

(2) Cast your lot with the artistic life! Drive a Volkswagen until it dies a natural death. Let that common cold turn into nasty bronchitis, because you can’t afford health insurance. Who cares about health anyway? Your real responsibility is to your art. The one thing worse than death is “selling out,” since, by definition, it puts you out of Category Two and back into the odious Category One.

Only since the end of World War II has there gradually opened up a semi-plausible third option, guaranteed to totally destroy the last semblance of the would-be artist’s peace of mind.

What if it were possible to wire American economic circuits so that as an artistic person you’d be able to do what you want, sort of , and sort of get the system to pay you for it? That way, you might wind up within a stone’s throw of your wildest dreams. But can it be done? Is it possible? More specifically, can two (or more) people without what appears to be an impossible dream, make a go of it year after year, and have a great time doing all of that?

Well, sure. Many of the people I know personally do it all the time. But this is the first novel I’ve ever read about the mechanics of that particular life style; its seductions and pitfalls and moments of perfect euphoria. The author’s exemplary couple, Malcolm de Witt and Nora Worth, have been living together for some time, but they just can’t get it together to get married. They live in Malcolm’s old family home, but he can’t keep up the mortgage payments. He hasn’t filed taxes for years. He’s stone broke.

Malcolm’s profession? Not quite an architect, just an interior designer. Nora would like to get married, in theory, but she’s loaned Malcolm too much money over the years, gets no financial benefits from the house, and is working too hard to get a grip on either her life or her art. Her profession? Formerly a “fine artist,” Nora pulls in good money now as a “food stylist,” making hamburgers and turkeys look pretty for television.

“Malcolm and Nora,” the author tells us, “had the worst of both worlds: artistic work with none of the arts integrity and no control over the finished product; self-employment without fun or profit. They were running in place, but whose heart would bleed for them?”

If that weren’t enough, Malcolm’s latest assignment has fallen through. He been working for a shady businessman caught up in weird bank scams that suddenly explode in an exciting and harrowing few hours. Suddenly, both the FBI and the IRS are all over Malcolm like a cheap suit. And, by mysterious coincidence, Nora finds an extra $30,000 deposited to her perennially anemic bank account. Just to thicken up the plot a little further, both Malcolm and Nora fall in love (or think they do), with “significant others” outside their relationship.

Living in a country where, theoretically, everything is perfectable, it’s just possible that the really perfect mate is “out there” somewhere for all of us, and that dodo sitting across the dinner table yammering about money or marriage or babies or interest rates surely can’t be the very best one of the bunch. (Again, isn’t Lisa Zeidner talking about all our lives, whether we’re locked into junk-bond obsessions, or writing the great American novel?)

Is Malcolm really poor? What if he’s rich? What does money, or its lack, really mean in America? Is the artist entitled to strive after his or her finest dreams, and then expect to get paid for it? Where do the material and spiritual life intersect? Can people get married and still have plenty of fun? Can people who work for the FBI or the IRS be nice? Is America still the place where your wildest dreams can come true--if you know how to work the system?

Lisa Zeidner has definite, hilarious, very smart, sometimes profound answers to all these questions. This isn’t just a novel of ideas. It’s a novel of very good ideas.