By Gabriel Josipovici
Carcanet, £12.95
Gabriel Josipovici's qualities of thought and craft put him near the top among writers of his generation. His range and productivity in novel and essay are vast, and he is fortunate to have a publisher who understands the importance of the slight and the experimental within a finished oeuvre. Beethoven was about the late quartets as much as the great symphonies.
Counterpoint, fugue - patterning devices which young artists struggle to master - come to the aid of ageing genius. Artist Joseph Cornell, whose career is woven through Josipovici's new fiction, grew increasingly adept at fusing disparate elements into harmony - the transcendental dreams escaping the sordid entrapment of "real" life - and one of the intricate boxes he created later in life gives Josipovici his title.
This book is compact - a "blest nouvelle" to use Henry James's term - but built upon big themes. Cornell is the subject of a study by protagonist Helena, but she struggles over how to approach him: as biographer or as art-critic? Stymied by this dilemma, she wanders from top to bottom of her north-London house pretending she is not searching for advice. At the top is sagacious old Ruth, who has observed Helena's struggles for years; in the basement is journalist Tom, who charmingly persists against repeated rejection in offering her love.
