So Fake, So True

Peter Carey is brilliant on how art is produced and misrepresented

PETER CAREY8217;S LAST NOVEL, My Life As A Fake, was a thrilling romp set around the Ern Malley affair, Australia8217;s celebrated literary fraud, and the question of authorship. Theft continues on the themes of authenticity, fraud and value. This time he tells the story of a divorced Australian painter who has just emerged from prison.

After being jailed for trying to steal his 8220;own8221; paintings from his wife8212;they had gone to her as part of the divorce settlement8212;Michael 8216;Butcher8217; Boone is now taking care of his wealthy patron8217;s New South Wales property. With him and in his care is his mentally chal-lenged brother Hugh, the other narrator of the novel. The brothers grew up in the small town of Bacchus Marsh in Australia where their father was a butcher. Michael might have con-tinued in the family profession if not for a German art teacher who saw his talent and urged him to leave.

Michael went on to become a success, in the language of the market he despises, but that was before the break-up of his marriage and his time in jail. To this temporary home of the Boone brothers in New South Wales co-mes a strange visitant8212;a mysterious Americ-an woman wearing Manolo Blahniks. It turns out that she has come to authenticate a painting by legendary Cubist painter Jacques Leibovitz. This work is now the property of Michael8217;s neighbour. Later, Michael will dis-cover that Marlene is Australian, from the small town of Benalla, with her own history behind her8212;she had burned down her school. As a secretary in New York, she marri-ed Olivier Leibovitz, son of Jacques and the inheritor of the droit moral, the legal right to authenticate a work of art by his father. Like all of Carey8217;s novels, Theft is also an exploration of what it means to be an Australian. Michael remembers with aching anger that there was not a single oil painting to be seen for 30 miles around Bacchus Marsh. In New York, wandering around the museums with Marlene, he recalls the claustrophobia of being born in the provincial, culture-starved Australia of the time.

One of the things I love about this novel is its effortless ability to switch between voices, something Carey always does with sublime ease. Many other things are not what they seem. A fake might not be a fake; an authenti-cated painting might be a fake; a work delibe-rately forged as we read might become a great work of art. Not unrelated to these questions is that of misrepresentation. Alison Summers, Carey8217;s ex-wife, has alleged that the character of Michael8217;s ex-wife, referred to in the novel as the 8220;alimony whore8221; and 8220;The Plaintiff8221;, is a misrepresentation of their acrimonious divorce. In an interview, she called this strategy 8220;emotional terrorism8221;.

Yet, The Plaintiff is a minor character in the story. At the heart of the novel is the far more interesting question of how art is produced.