It’s time for #6degrees. Start at the same place as other wonderful readers, add six books, and see where you end up.
This month we begin with a book that I absolutely loved – The Museum of Modern Love by Heather Rose.
The novel was written during Rose’s residency at Hobart’s MONA (Museum of Old and New Art). Charlotte Wood refers to MONA in The Luminous Solution.
If you have been to MONA, I imagine you may have felt the same things I did. I reeled in horror at the cruelty and violence of some of the works I saw there and wept, awestruck, at the beauty of others… I had to ask: could I have experienced the awe if I had not also felt the horror?
I’ve been to MONA a few times but the most memorable exhibition I saw there was a Marina Abramović retrospective (incidentally, Abramović is the focus of The Museum of Modern Love).
I have Abramović’s memoir, Walk Through Walls (yet to be read), but I was thinking about it while reading Catherine Lacey’s Biography of X. It’s a novel about an artist who works in multiple mediums. The artist is also extremely temperamental.
There are dozens of stories about mad artists, but the first that came to mind was Second Place by Rachel Cusk.
Incidentally, I referred to Charlotte Wood’s The Weekend in my review of Second Place. Wood discusses The Weekend in The Luminous Solution – she states that a line from Rudyard Kipling’s autobiographical work Something of Myself was significant in unlocking the plot in The Weekend.
Lots of looping back this chain! Where will others go? Link up below or post your link in the comments section.
Next month (September 7, 2024), we’ll start with the charming After Story by Larissa Behrendt.
