July 2024. The Bird Artist by Howard Norman
1994, Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 248 pages. Written in English, read in English.
The downside of having read hundreds of books, is that unconsciously, against my own volition, I start not by reading the book but by cataloging it. The first few pages, even the title, send it to a specific compartment in my mind, out of which it’s the author’s duty to extract and rearrange it.
So, The Bird Artist sent me first thinking about Audubon. He is mentioned in the book, once, but it is not about him. The first few pages sent the novel to the same compartment where books like The Shipping News are located in my mind — where the appeal of the narrative is that it takes place in a remote, unique community, which amplifies every dramatic detail of the story just by its exotic allure.
That compartment is still not the right place for The Bird Artist. Little by little, The Bird Artist reveals itself as a novel that can’t really be placed with others, as it will at least feel uncomfortable there, unaccustomed.
Some of the details of the novel are passed forward by the protagonist, Fabian Vas, in an offhanded way — it seems that being partly a mystery novel these should also remain a mystery but Fabian, and through him Norman, chooses to issue them as dry facts of history. And so we learn that Fabian has killed Botho August, the lighthouse keeper, as early as the first paragraph of the novel, and we learn that Fabian does not end up marrying Margaret, instead attending to an arranged marriage to a distant cousin. Somehow all of these details, revealed earlier than they classically should, enhance the novel rather than deflate it, and the rest of the details shedding light on the community that Fabian lives in, such as the peculiar names, almost always full names, of the surrounding townfolk; the matter-of-fact details of the town’s ways; and the even more peculiar matter-of-fact description of the occurrences that make this novel interesting, are all woven in masterfully so that eventually even those major plot details that have been revealed early, become intertwined in something that I wouldn’t have prematurely guessed.
Fabian Vas, then, is the bird artist lending the novel its name. He is a young man who is fascinated by birds and their likeness, and he attempts to develop a career in painting them — he finds a mentor from the mainland to teach him by correspondence, he finds several opportunities to publish his work, and he lives his life in the small town of Witless Bay, Newfoundland, in the early twentieth century. His paramour, Margaret, is the daughter of Enoch Handle, the owner and operator of one of the two boats that deliver the mail into and out of the town and its area, and her local reputation (and other hopes for a better future for their son) drives his parents to search for an arranged marriage with a distant cousin from the mainland. We learn early in the novel that Fabian Vas kills the lighthouse keeper, Botho August, and when we learn why, the novel and the peaceful lives of its occupants is driven into turmoil, that sends Fabian himself and many of his surrounding counterparts into the types of conflict and personal strife that a novel is worth reading for.
Howard Norman, the author, was born in Ohio, almost as further away in American culture as can be found from Newfoundland, but spent a significant amount of time in Canada, working with Cree first people, and his prolific writing career has since spread in three different directions — young adult fiction which revolves mostly around Canadian first people, translation of Algonquin, Cree and Inuit folktalkes, and more elaborate fiction like The Bird Artist. His indirect view of the daily lives of characters in the maritime provinces of Canada adds a lot to The Bird Artist.
The August 2024 selection for the David Bowie Book Club will be The 42nd Parallel by John Dos Passos
