Contrapposto

The lifelong story of two friends who believe they can change the world, if only they can start their own artistic movement, stay true to their ideals and never tire of beauty.

Sam's Review

Dave Egger's debut, a memoir entitled A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius, is one of my favourite books. As a result, I have approached every new release with a mixture of excitement and trepidation, hoping it would live up to my expectations and worrying that it couldn’t. And so, when a copy of his new novel Contrapposto was thrust into my hands by the publishers, I didn't know whether to immediately devour it or stare at it longingly for a few weeks. Luckily, I chose the former.

Contrapposto begins in 1970s Indiana, where nine-year-old Robert Dibb, aka Cricket, shelters from his mum's abusive boyfriend by drawing in the basement with his beloved grandfather, Silas. His artistic abilities first reach a wider audience when he's convinced by two older children to unwittingly pen various words for masturbation in “Old English calligraphy” on the new playground. One of the miscreants leading him astray is Olympia, who goes on to do the same for the next 60 years.

Precocious and pretentious, Olympia also possesses the deluded self-belief that drives people to greatness or disaster. On their third meeting, she is introduced to Cricket by a mutual friend as the embodied spirit of Albert Camus: "My birthday is the same as his deathday, eight years later, so it's pretty obvious what happened. Any other explanation would be inane.” Cricket, on the other hand, is quiet and cautious, happier in the background of events. It is art that draws them together, with Olympia determined that they should start a movement "from the shattered hopes of a maligned generation.”

If the plot of Contrapposto is driven by friendship, art is its thematic focus: what it means to create art and how it’s commercially exploited.  Eggers studied art and journalism at The University of Illinois and initially worked as a painter and illustrator. His love for those media is obvious in his descriptions of the process of drawing and painting. The attack by Cricket’s tutor on the university’s self-appointed gatekeepers of art feels personal: "The art world, in the last century, has made room for those who cannot draw. But I would ask that you, that we, resist a new paradoxical tyranny wherein those without technical skill terrorize those who possess it.”

Given his passion for the subject, I found myself wondering which of his characters' viewpoints Eggers is more drawn to. Cricket represents art and creativity as its purest, drawing and painting solely for the "delicious, pure pleasure" of it. Olympia is more pragmatic and pleads the case for commerce as necessary to support artistic endeavours. When she finally succeeds in convincing Cricket to sell his work, he quickly becomes frustrated and disillusioned with the compromises involved and returns to a string of menial, at times eccentric jobs.

For all Olympia’s vitality and humour, she was my one initial reason for having reservations about the book. Early on she verged on the archetypical 'manic pixie dream girl': the unpredictable, untameable female figure that exists solely to teach the insular male protagonist the mysteries of life. Eggers rescues her character from that stereotype by showing the depth and length of her friendship with Cricket. From teenage dreams to twenty-something aspirations, mid-life crises to the self-acceptance of later years, we witness the intensity and lulls, the fondness and frustrations, and the occasional physical intimacies of a lifelong relationship.

I raced through Contrapposto, the energy and wit of the writing propelling me through the novel's 50-year span. We visit Chicago, New York, Thailand, Türkiye and Paris. People die suddenly and momentous happenings speed by in an instant, while the book also lingers over the seemingly incidental conversations that come to mean everything. Olympia acquires boyfriends and partners as quickly and carelessly as Cricket acquires pencils and paintbrushes. Cricket finds happiness in the quiet routines that Olympia does everything to avoid. Two lives are painted, sometimes in broad brushstrokes, other times in fine detail. The layers build up and a portrait of a great friendship emerges. It's a picture I could happily stare at for hours.