The Man in the Red Coat

December 16, 2019
Inspired by seeing John Singer Sargent’s portrait of Samuel Jean Pozzi at the National Gallery in London, Booker Prize–winner Barnes (The Only Story) investigates the life of the 19th-century French “society doctor” in this wry, essayistic, and art-filled account. Crediting Pozzi with “transforming French gynaecology from a mere subdivision of general medicine into a discipline in its own right,” Barnes sketches his subject’s relationships with Henry James, Marcel Proust, and Oscar Wilde, among others, and illuminates the Belle Époque in France, a period that might retroactively appear as “a last flowering of a settled high society,” but at the time felt more like “an age of neurotic, even hysterical national anxiety.” Beginning with Pozzi’s June 1885 trip to London, Barnes episodically charts the doctor’s rise from “Bergerac boy to Parisian high society,” recounting his marriage to a railroad heiress; his numerous affairs, including with actress Sarah Bernhardt; and his advancement of modern medical procedures. Barnes’s wit (“bad smells are good reminders”) and expert plundering of source material (the Princess of Monaco called Pozzi “disgustingly handsome”) add a lightness of touch that counterbalances the heavy load of names, dates, and obscure historical events. Full of admiration and deep feeling for its “progressive, international, and constantly inquisitive” subject, this sparkling account takes on added resonance in a moment marked by a return of nativism. Agent: Nicole Aragi, Aragi, Inc.

December 15, 2019
A fresh, urbane history of the dramatic and melodramatic belle epoque. When Barnes (The Only Story, 2018, etc.), winner of the Man Booker Prize and many other literary awards, first saw John Singer Sargent's striking portrait of Dr. Samuel Pozzi--handsome, "virile, yet slender," dressed in a sumptuous scarlet coat--he was intrigued by a figure he had not yet encountered in his readings about 19th-century France. The wall label revealed that Pozzi was a gynecologist; a magazine article called him "not only the father of French gynecology, but also a confirmed sex addict who routinely attempted to seduce his female patients." The paradox of healer and exploiter posed an alluring mystery that Barnes was eager to investigate. Pozzi, he discovered, succeeded in his amorous affairs as much as in his acclaimed career. "I have never met a man as seductive as Pozzi," the arrogant Count Robert de Montesquiou recalled; Pozzi was a "man of rare good sense and rare good taste," "filled with knowledge and purpose" as well as "grace and charm." The author's portrait, as admiring as Sargent's, depicts a "hospitable, generous" man, "rich by marriage, clubbable, inquisitive, cultured and well travelled," and brilliant. The cosmopolitan Pozzi, his supercilious friend Montesquiou, and "gentle, whimsical" Edmond de Polignac are central characters in Barnes' irreverent, gossipy, sparkling history of the belle epoque, "a time of vast wealth for the wealthy, of social power for the aristocracy, of uncontrolled and intricate snobbery, of headlong colonial ambition, of artistic patronage, and of duels whose scale of violence often reflected personal irascibility more than offended honor." Dueling, writes the author, "was not just the highest form of sport, it also required the highest form of manliness." Barnes peoples his history with a spirited cast of characters, including Sargent and Whistler, Oscar Wilde and Sarah Bernhardt (who adored Pozzi), Henry James and Proust, Pozzi's diarist daughter, Catherine, and unhappy wife, Therese, and scores more. Finely honed biographical intuition and a novelist's sensibility make for a stylish, engrossing narrative.

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February 1, 2020
Barnes (The Only Story, 2018) returns to nonfiction to present a fascinating study focused on Samuel Jean de Pozzi, a French gynecologist, pioneering surgeon, politician, womanizer, and omnipresent celebrity in Belle �poque France. Barnes begins with a trip Pozzi took to London with Prince de Polignac and Count de Montesquiou-Fezensac. Pozzi treated the dandies, aesthetes, and artists of the period for the ailments caused by their sexual (mis)adventures, drugs, or the many duels of the age. Originating from a middle-class background, Pozzi rose to share the same circles as the most lauded artists of the age, befriending figures such as Sarah Bernhardt (a lifelong friend and possible lover), Henry James, and Oscar Wilde. Indeed, Wilde constantly reappears in this work, as Barnes explores how his own relationship with Wilde's writing has changed over the years. In this wryly humored historical sketch of an incredibly complex and influential era, Pozzi is a fascinating conduit for Barnes to provide intriguing anecdotes, numerous photographs and paintings, ruminations on the act of biography, and many provocative connections to the present.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2020, American Library Association.)

December 13, 2019

Award-winning author Barnes (The Sense of an Ending) aims to tell the life story of Samuel Pozzi (1846-1918), a French surgeon who transformed gynecology and wrote an internationally renowned textbook on the emerging field. Because of the social circles in which Pozzi traveled, he became the subject of one of John Singer Sargent's most famous portraits--hence this book's title. This is much more than a biography, however; it is a kaleidoscopic journey through 19th-century Paris. The narrative is often stream of consciousness by an author who clearly sees his subject as a hero. Pozzi was a freethinker "on the right side of history," Barnes argues. Known for associating with a host of celebrities, including Oscar Wilde and Sarah Bernhardt, Pozzi had a complicated private life and a reputation as a seducer who exploited many of the same women he tried to help, ultimately being assassinated by one of his own patients. In telling Pozzi's story, Barnes asks complex questions about morality, and how we should judge the actors of the past. VERDICT Scholars may laud this work's brilliance, but others might find it a difficult read. For serious students of French history or the history of medicine and sexuality.--Marie M. Mullaney, Caldwell Coll., NJ

Copyright 2019 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

September 1, 2019

In summer 1885, three Frenchmen arrived together in London, among them Samuel Pozzi, a surgeon and man of science important enough to get himself painted by John Singer Sargent (Dr. Pozzi at Home, in which Pozzi is swathed in a long red dressing gown). Man Booker Prize-winning Barnes uses Pozzi's life and particularly his London trip to give us a tour of Belle Epoque France and its relationship to Britain.

Copyright 2019 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.