At the Trysting Place by Edward Curtis, a copper photogravure plate in the The North American Indian, and my personal favorite
The photographer, Edward Curtis, is a primary character in Marianne Wiggins’ novel, The Shadow Catcher; note the word novel. At a time when the lines between memoir and novel are blurry, Ms. Wiggins throws in a new variation, a book with the feel of a historical novel told by a fictional narrator named Marianne Wiggins, that’s right the name of the author. So what’s fiction and what’s real and why is the reader curious? I recently attended an event with Marianne Wiggins at the home of the premier dealer in Curtis works, Bruce Kapson, and prefaced a question with ‘readers are often curious how much of a novel reflects the author’s life.’ Ms. Wiggins disputed that readers are looking for the author in a book. This surprised me because I talk to people all the time about books and art and find they frequently are looking for the author or the artist in the creation. While I understand this is frustrating for the creator, I found it curious that Ms. Wiggins found it unusual.
When I read the book, it was clear to me that much of it was fiction, but that a passage about the narrator’s feeling of smallness driving through the expanse of the West rang true. It was so beautifully written that I actually stopped and read it out loud to my dog, the only one home at the time. I think that in any fiction novel, even one where the narrator didn’t have the same name as the author, I would have heard that as the voice and heart of the author. Ms. Wiggins confirmed that it was her own personal experience. Read the rest of this entry »
Claire
Kim
