Arrogance

by Joanna Scott

Book Overview

In this disquieting novel, nominated for the 1991 PEN/Faulkner Award for the best work of fiction, Joanna Scott plumbs the interior life of Egon Schiele, the Austrian expressionist painter who stepped over the lines of propriety in art and in life.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0671695479
• ISBN13: 9780671695477
• Release Date: January 1990
• Publisher: Simon & Schuster
• Length: 283 Pages
• Weight: 1.25 lbs.

Customer Reviews

Poetic and profound

"Arrogance" is a worthwhile novel, beautifully written, full of astute observations on art in general and Schiele in particular. The unusual kaleidoscopic narrative structure of the book led me to take my time with it. Because one is constantly shifting in time and point of view, it can feel that, as a "story," the book never gets off the ground. On the other hand, this stylistic choice encouraged me to savor each page as I might in a book of poems. (Also, the language is extremely well-crafted, as in poetry.) Here is a quote that, for me, encapsulated not only Scott's subject but her own way of putting the novel together: "Symmetry and perspective, chiaroscuro, balance--all these, Egon Schiele believes, offer false comfort, and man is truly aware only when he learns to accept, even to delight in the incongruous, terrifying nature of the visual world."

Vivid Parallax Narrative of Egon Schiele's Life and Art

Egon Schiele lived a brief and turbulent artistic life, dying of influenza in 1918 at the age of twenty-eight. Schiele was a draftsman and printmaker, but was best known as a painter. He entered the Vienna Academy of Fine Arts at the tender age of sixteen and soon became a student of August Klimt, the most well known Austrian painter of that time. As one of the preeminent artists associated with Austrian expressionism, Schiele's paintings are transgressive depictions of contorted, erotically charged nude figures, often in provocative sexual poses and often including young girls. Not surprisingly, Schiele's art was controversial. Moreover, his use of adolescent girls as models for his drawings and paintings led to numerous charges of immorality. Often, this simply meant he had to move from one small Austrian town to another, hounded by the wrath of common people who viewed him as morally repugnant. However, in one case, Schiele was prosecuted and spent time in prison for his averred transgressions."Arrogance" is Joanna Scott's fictional account of Schiele's life, a parallax narrative that tells its tale from a series of changing and different perspectives. Nominated for the 1991 PEN/Faulkner Award (which, regrettably, it did not win), it subsequently earned Scott a MacArthur Fellowship for her presumed literary genius. While not a novel for readers who prefer straightforward, linear narratives, "Arrogance" is nonetheless a penetrating fictional exploration of Schiele's artistic genius as related not only from the facts of his life, but also from the imaginary inner world of the artist and those around him, including his long-time female companion, Vallie Neuzil, and a fictional female narrator who tells of her fascination and involvement with Schiele and Vallie during their residence in the small Austrian village of Neulengbach, where Schiele was arrested for corruption of minors."Arrogance" is a vivid and convincing portrait of the life and mind of the artist, a complex narrative that challenge the reader to understand and interpret that life from multiple perspectives, both biographical and imaginative. It is, in short, a brilliant example of how fiction and imagination can inform biography, how literature can be written to illuminate and inform the real.

Vivid Parallax Narrative of Egon Schiele's Life and Art

Egon Schiele lived a brief and turbulent artistic life, dying of influenza in 1918 at the age of twenty-eight. Schiele was a draftsman and printmaker, but was best known as a painter. He entered the Vienna Academy of Fine Arts at the tender age of sixteen and soon became a student of August Klimt, the most well known Austrian painter of that time. As one of the preeminent artists associated with Austrian expressionism, Schiele's paintings are transgressive depictions of contorted, erotically charged nude figures, often in provocative sexual poses and often including young girls. Not surprisingly, Schiele's art was controversial. Moreover, his use of adolescent girls as models for his drawings and paintings led to numerous charges of immorality. Often, this simply meant he had to move from one small Austrian town to another, hounded by the wrath of common people who viewed him as morally repugnant. However, in one case, Schiele was prosecuted and spent time in prison for his averred transgressions."Arrogance" is Joanna Scott's fictional account of Schiele's life, a parallax narrative that tells its tale from a series of changing and different perspectives. Nominated for the 1991 PEN/Faulkner Award (which, regrettably, it did not win), it subsequently earned Scott a MacArthur Fellowship for her presumed literary genius. While not a novel for readers who prefer straightforward, linear narratives, "Arrogance" is nonetheless a penetrating fictional exploration of Schiele's artistic genius as related not only from the facts of his life, but also from the imaginary inner world of the artist and those around him, including his long-time female companion, Vallie Neuzil, and a fictional female narrator who tells of her fascination and involvement with Schiele and Vallie during their residence in the small Austrian village of Neulengbach, where Schiele was arrested for corruption of minors."Arrogance" is a vivid and convincing portrait of the life and mind of the artist, a complex narrative that challenge the reader to understand and interpret that life from multiple perspectives, both biographical and imaginative. It is, in short, a brilliant example of how fiction and imagination can inform biography, how literature can be written to illuminate and inform the real.

A well done story but is it Egon Schiele?

I bought this book more because my artistic interest in Egon Schiele than as an interesting fictional work. The book is well done as fiction but seems to get a significant part of the art wrong. Biographies of Schiele usually give his wife Edith a very different character. In the book, she is very proper. In most collections of his work, many of the most explicit and erotic drawings are listed as of Edith and her sister. Also,the relationship to his sister seems very much more restrained than than his work seems to indicate. Discussion of paintings and drawings without examples made me happy to have the Schroder biograpby of Schiele handy for comparison.

An extremely well-wrought piece of art about art.

With one of the better, and more original, voices in contemporary fiction Joanna Scott has created a startlingly beautiful view into the artistic process. Through the lenses of several people (including his own)we get a full picture of the painter Egon Schiele and of those around him. You can taste the food, feel the paint on the canvas, and smell early twentieth-century Vienna! There are few writers today who can write with the grace and power that flows through Joanna Scott's prose. She is a writer who commands attention, and deserves to be widely read. If you enjoy art, traveling, food, or amazing writing you should read this novel. In fact, you should ingest everything that she has written, and then pass it on to others! ARROGANCE is a great place to start- it is phenomenal, it is beautiful, in short: it is a must