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PARTISAN REVIEW
father-in-law, for his commissions from banks, etc . , to create "mon–
umental sculptures ," and for the interest displayed in his work by the
Germans, although this last brings him under suspicion as a col–
laborator. Down the years he has neglected his wife for his ambition,
and, as she eventually lets him know , she has sought solace else–
where. When Maillol is injured in an automobile accident , Estienne
is in Berlin consulting with the Germans about plans for an heroic
monument, and does not return in time to see the master alive . "It
struck him, at that moment, that something was wrong with his life."
At one hundred-fifty pages, the third piece,
Malenov 's Revenge,
is
longer than many contemporary novels (although not of Cohen's
own), and more of a full meal than most. Filtered through the
recollections of Isaiah Wolff, an art dealer with literary leanings, the
relationship of Yevgeny Mikhailovich Malenov, the famous (in–
vented) Russian abstractionist, and Joseph Alexander Karnovsky,
the Jewish-American scion of an import-export family, is deftly
presented .
Karnovsky, with artistic talent and aspirations of his own, but
with a groupie's sensibility, initially pursues Malenov to Berlin,
where the older artist has gone with other Russian emigres to escape
the Russian Revolution . He becomes Malenov's patron, not only
pays his bills but keeps house for him, and surreptitiously collects his
every doodle, to the old man's dismay. Durer might have executed a
series of woodcuts on the theme of such demented discipleship; one
more, perhaps, on the indignities genius must sometimes bear to
survive in the world .
Later, when both are in New York, Malenov exacts his re–
venge. By then Karnovsky has achieved some modest success as a
sculptor, albeit by riding the coattails of Malenov's revolutionary
shapes and visions. How Malenov takes vengeance, even from be–
yond the grave, is worth discovering for yourself. "The truth is that
both artists were nearly pure, but they lived at the beginning of that
vulgar time when art is no longer understood apart from celebrity
and money," Cohen, near its end, explains away his complex tale .
But if you believe that the tacked-on moral exhausts the significance
of the story, you're likely to believe anything.
In this work, as also in
The Monumental Sculptor,
Cohen borrows
a painterly technique , using impasto, layering his prose, piling scene
upon scene, interpretation on interpretation, viewing his characters'
lives now from a psychological perspective , now as influenced by
events in the art world, now as buffeted by global happenings . ("Far
