Last week, Penguin Books UK very kindly sent me a copy of Austin Ratner’s The Jump Artist to review. Consequently I spent several (unusually) pleasant tube journeys and a sunny afternoon working my way through it.
---- SPOILERS AHEAD----
The Jump Artist is a fictional reworking of the life story of photographer Philippe Halsman, a photographer who’s work you might be familiar with even if you don’t know his name. It is Halsman’s later body of work that provides the strange name of the novel - it stems from his assertion that by photographing people when they jumped he was able to capture something more essential about them - an element of their soul.
Ratner justifies his project by describing it as ‘...an artistic tribute... more like a painting or a sculpture [than a biography].’ Rather than relating history, he takes Philippe Halsman and turns the photographer into a literary character. This move is potentially risky for a careless author, but in this instance I think such a strategy works because Ratner contextualises his creation with accurate historical fact, preventing the novel from becoming too fanciful.
Halsman becomes the medium through which we observe a portrait of Europe during the rise of fascism, the outbreak of the Second World War and the creeping ugliness of anti-Semitism. The way in which Ratner deals with this incredibly serious, and frequently explored, bit of history is subtle but fascinating. The psychologised Halsman doesn’t focus constantly on his identity as an individual of Jewish descent, instead he is introverted and centred on punishing himself for a lack of self control, and exploring his emotional state. He reacts rather than acts, and the novel reflects this, for instance, in the first part of the book concerning the trial, where the event is narrated by Halsman’s inner monologue, rather than manifesting as a dramatised version of a court appearance.
The attitudes of the people around him, and the rise of the Nazi Party, however, force Halsman to react in a physical way to his surroundings through an exodus first to Paris and then to the US. In the real world this final move provided the photographer with his big opportunity and made him into a great American success story, which Ratner downplays by maintaining Halsman’s quiet train of thought and constant haunting by a sense of misplaced guilt.
It seems ironic that [the character] Halsman reveals so little of his interior monologue as the trajectory of the novel leads to his photographic identity as ‘The Jump Artist’. Ratner’s creation seems to be very reluctant to be as open with people as he expects them to be with his camera. Susan Sontag in her hugely influential work On Photography suggests that photography can be understood as a process of people trying to verify and refine their real-world experiences. I think it would be possible to argue, in the light of her work, that Ratner’s Halsman seeks to establish his identity, his place in the world, through photography. The production of images implies the production of a series of fixed, unchanging points in time, in contrast to Halsman’s thought pattern, which is always in a state of drift. Photographs might appeal to the literary Halsman as a form of certainty or stability.
...
Conclusion:
The blending of the factual with Halsman’s fictionalised interiority creates a slow, dream-like pace for the novel. I found myself drawn into the character that Ratner has created, but I suspect the slow glide of the prose won’t be for everyone.
Ratner justifies his project by describing it as ‘...an artistic tribute... more like a painting or a sculpture [than a biography].’ Rather than relating history, he takes Philippe Halsman and turns the photographer into a literary character. This move is potentially risky for a careless author, but in this instance I think such a strategy works because Ratner contextualises his creation with accurate historical fact, preventing the novel from becoming too fanciful.
Halsman becomes the medium through which we observe a portrait of Europe during the rise of fascism, the outbreak of the Second World War and the creeping ugliness of anti-Semitism. The way in which Ratner deals with this incredibly serious, and frequently explored, bit of history is subtle but fascinating. The psychologised Halsman doesn’t focus constantly on his identity as an individual of Jewish descent, instead he is introverted and centred on punishing himself for a lack of self control, and exploring his emotional state. He reacts rather than acts, and the novel reflects this, for instance, in the first part of the book concerning the trial, where the event is narrated by Halsman’s inner monologue, rather than manifesting as a dramatised version of a court appearance.
The attitudes of the people around him, and the rise of the Nazi Party, however, force Halsman to react in a physical way to his surroundings through an exodus first to Paris and then to the US. In the real world this final move provided the photographer with his big opportunity and made him into a great American success story, which Ratner downplays by maintaining Halsman’s quiet train of thought and constant haunting by a sense of misplaced guilt.
It seems ironic that [the character] Halsman reveals so little of his interior monologue as the trajectory of the novel leads to his photographic identity as ‘The Jump Artist’. Ratner’s creation seems to be very reluctant to be as open with people as he expects them to be with his camera. Susan Sontag in her hugely influential work On Photography suggests that photography can be understood as a process of people trying to verify and refine their real-world experiences. I think it would be possible to argue, in the light of her work, that Ratner’s Halsman seeks to establish his identity, his place in the world, through photography. The production of images implies the production of a series of fixed, unchanging points in time, in contrast to Halsman’s thought pattern, which is always in a state of drift. Photographs might appeal to the literary Halsman as a form of certainty or stability.
...
Conclusion:
The blending of the factual with Halsman’s fictionalised interiority creates a slow, dream-like pace for the novel. I found myself drawn into the character that Ratner has created, but I suspect the slow glide of the prose won’t be for everyone.
The Jump Artist is well worth a read (unless you thrive on fast-faced novels, in which case give it a miss), and is especially suitable for readers who enjoy work like W. G. Sebald’s Austerlitz.
I would like to thank Penguin Books UK for sending it to me, because I don’t know if I would have picked it up of my own accord. Give the opportunity to read it, however, I enjoyed it a lot and would suggest you pre-order yourself a copy!
I would like to thank Penguin Books UK for sending it to me, because I don’t know if I would have picked it up of my own accord. Give the opportunity to read it, however, I enjoyed it a lot and would suggest you pre-order yourself a copy!
All the best,
Alison
