Still Life with Oysters and Lemon: On Objects and Intimacy by Mark Doty
Part still art analysis, part philosophical musing, part intensely personal memoir in which Mark Doty uses Dutch still lifes as an entry point to figure out what really fucking matters in life.
Finished: 10 May 2020
Rating: ★★★★★
Mark Doty has the rare quality of turning the ordinary into a revelation. He muses on many viewpoints I’m fond of: that the self is necessarily bound up with the world; that love is attention; the materiality of embodiment; an examination of light; how memory resides in houses and compresses time into space (and yes, he quotes Gaston Bachelard); the way in which description is so much more than just addressing the thing in front of you. Doty examines Dutch still lifes alongside episodes in his own life, going back and forth, using one to illuminate the other. It’s less an argumentative essay and more a meditative reflection, so it wanders at points. I wished for a more fleshed-out narrative as well as greater depth of criticism, especially during his brief insights on Cavafy’s poetry and how it linked to the paintings. And yet, even in its wide reach, nothing ever feels forced or out of place. Everything still feels purposeful because it’s all anchored in Doty’s fundamental wonder at being alive. Doty marvels at a still life painting, which is itself the marvel of the artist at the subject of the painting. This book is special for the fact that it encourages us to look closer at our daily lives and revel in the “realm of the ordinary sublime” — for at the heart of love and life and love of life is the care of paying attention, of really seeing.