Manual of Painting and Calligraphy

March 5, 2012
After publication of the late Nobel Prize winner’s final novel, Cain, along comes the first English-language translation of this early work. The first-person narrative centers on H., a disgruntled artist who paints flattering yet vapid portraits for wealthy clients while living in 1970s Portugal. H. has a circle of friends that he rarely sees, and midway through the book, his girlfriend breaks up with him. Increasingly alienated and dissatisfied with his painting, H. turns to writing. While he claims that “life is extremely simple,” H. tends to overthink things and sees himself in everything. The question becomes, will H. find a way to reconcile his art, writing, and philosophy with his relationship to people? Themes that flourish in Saramago’s later work—including leftist politics and alternative histories of Christianity—are also present in H.’s diatribes. Saramago’s novel succeeds as a meditation on the writing process and a philosophical look at fiction and reality—for Saramago devotees, this is an insightful and meaningful book. Agent: Nicole Witt, Literarische Agentur Mertin.

Starred review from March 1, 2012
Nobel Prize-winning author Saramago explores art and the meaning of life in a posthumous release of his first novel. This is an "adult" novel in the best sense, for Saramago examines serious philosophical questions about aesthetics, sexuality and politics through a portrait painter (and alter ego?) known only as "H." While H. is introspective and speculative, he's also self-critically aware of his limitations as an artist. At the moment he's working on a portrait of "S.," a successful industrialist. With the important exception of sitting for the portrait, S. has delegated the mundane tasks of communication to his secretary, Olga, with whom the artist begins a short-lived but tempestuous affair. Dissatisfied with his original portrait, H. works on a second portrait and, still dissatisfied, tries to capture a "portrait" of S. in words, for the visual artist is also an auteur manque. Away from personal and political turmoil, H. makes a brief but serene visit to Italy, where he embarks on a pilgrimage to see the works of truly great artists like Cimabue and Piero della Francesca, but he's quickly pulled back to life in Portugal, where his friend Antonio has been arrested by the secret police in Salazar's regime. H. tries to find out what has happened to Antonio but is turned away at the prison where Antonio is incarcerated. Meanwhile Antonio's sister, cryptically named "M." and also concerned about her brother's status as an enemy of the state, arranges a meeting with the artist, and they embark on yet another tumultuous affair. Saramago writes beautifully, and his style is ruminative--not for every taste, but definitely for those who appreciate finely wrought, meditative prose.

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December 1, 2011

Published in 1976 but only now being translated into English, Saramago's first novel examines the very act of artistic creation. It shows a portrait painter struggling to capture the likeness of a wealthy industrialist, aware that the sitter may not want to see the truth that he, the artist, sees and also aware of his own limitations as he tries to paint what he has understood. The novel is thus deeply interior yet also (not surprising for Saramago) deeply political, with the artist's struggle for free expression mirroring Portugal's as it finally throws off the heavy-handed regime of the dictator Salazar. Saramago achieved polish--and fame--with later works, but his significant themes and lyrically compacted style are all here.

Copyright 2011 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

April 1, 2012
Originally published in 1977 and now finally available for the first time in the U.S., the first novel by the Portuguese master (and Nobel laureate) tells the story of a middle-aged portrait painter's creative and political awakening. H., as our narrator is known, knows the portraits he is commissioned to paint are an artistic failure from the first brushstroke; in them he sees himself futile, weary, disheartened and lost. His evenings are a series of hollow sexual conquests that ultimately reinforce his loneliness. But H. begins to emerge from his stagnancy when he discovers that writingabout his travels in Italy, at firstunlocks creative energies that painting cannot. With this realization comes the promise of real romance but also, in the desperate last days of the Salazar autocracy, certain responsibilities. All fiction is biography, Saramago reminds us, and it is indeed tempting to understand H.'s awakening as a depiction of Saramago's own. But this is Saramago, after all, so even a portrait of the artist as a young man hints at the profound and the universal.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2012, American Library Association.)