The Way of the Dog

October 22, 2012
This compact, ruminative novel-of-the-artist by Savage (Firmin) concerns a broken-down American elderly “minor” painter, frustrated author of two pamphlets, and frivolous art patron and collector. The gimp with a cane, Harold Nivenson, owns a three-story “historic” mansion in a “quiet neighborhood” that he purchased with his inheritance. He mourns the loss of his small dog, Roy, and now sleeps much of the day. From his front window vantage point, he laments the gentrification he observes and often contemplates suicide, meditating on the ends of notable, self-destructive artists. While an art patron 25 years ago, Harold befriended and supported Peter Meininger, a German ex-pat painter who abandoned his family. The two were competitive before Peter moved to Los Angeles—with Harold’s wife—where he thrived as a commercial artist. Harold was left with Peter’s enormous painting of a female nude which, though valuable, Harold hated. Harold’s caretakers—his “obese” live-in housekeeper, Moll, and his tax attorney son Alfie—urge him to sell his art collection, appraised at an “astronomical sum.” Given the burden of his busted dreams, physical ailments, and bitter disillusionment, Harold has to decide whether his life is worth continuing to endure in Savage’s elegiac, articulate tale.

November 1, 2012
An aging, embittered art collector looks back on a life defined by his brief friendship with a successful painter. Sardonic humor leavens what would otherwise seem like a solipsistic reckoning of Harold Nivenson's injuries, beginning with mean siblings and culminating with the death of his dog, Roy, some vague amount of time earlier. Harold lives in a decaying house in an urban area that has morphed from "a district of aging working-class white people drinking cheap beer on collapsing porches...[into] a neighborhood of middle-class breeders." He thinks of himself as alone and friendless, though a woman named Moll (whose relationship to him is initially unclear) has moved in to care for him, and the son he calls Alfie (not his real name) pays frequent visits. Harold is unwilling to acknowledge any attachment save Roy's; the routines of owning a dog gave his shattered life meaning, and he imagines Roy sharing the canine wisdom that "[e]very day is all there is." By contrast, Harold believes Alfie has come only to get his art collection appraised, and his bitter memories of Peter Meininger--creator of the sole valuable painting, according to the appraiser--characterize the artist as a user who took refuge in Harold's house, worked there and slept with Harold's wife, then decamped, leaving Nude in Deck Chair as an insulting reminder of the wife's infidelity. Harold is at first an alienating narrator, as he snipes at everyone from his neighbors to his relatives, but we gradually see that he has never been as detached from the world as he pretends and that he is in fact hungry for human contact. Though he decries even the stark basic scenario of "man is born, suffers, and dies" as "too much of a story," Harold comes to accept love--maybe even to think about giving it in return. Stream-of-consciousness fiction with a satisfying emotional weight: another intriguing experiment in narrative voice from Savage (Glass, 2011, etc.).

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Starred review from December 1, 2012
Savage made his debut at age 65 and, over three remarkable novels, became a prime example of late-life artistic achievement. Perhaps paradoxically, the protagonist of his fourth novel, Harold Nivenson, is an elderly, dying artist who judges himself as having failed at art and life. Yet this shouldn't be surprising: when Savage puts himself inside a character's head, he, as Nivenson says about himself, does not stop thinking at the point where he happens to feel comfortable. Less humorous than the earlier novels, this unforgettable portrait of alienation and regret is told in short passages we infer have been written on index cards by the narrator. Living in squalor in a large, decaying house, he watches his neighbors from the window, submits to the care of a woman named Moll, and seethes as his son has his collection appraised. The centerpiece of the collection is a massive nude by a deceased painter and former friend whose shadow is nearly obliterating. Nivenson also mourns his dog, whose canine Zen foreshadows a well-earned moment of peace at book's end. With paragraphs as rich as koans, this is as powerful a meditation on living lifeand facing its endas you are likely to read anytime soon.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2012, American Library Association.)