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Saint Sebastian's Abyss
“What I wanted more than anything was to be standing beside Schmidt, in concert with Schmidt, at the foot of Saint Sebastian’s Abyss along with Schmidt, hands cupped to the sides of our faces, debating art, transcendence, and the glory of the apocalypse.”
Former best friends who built their careers writing about a single work of art meet after a decades-long falling-out. One of them, called to the other’s deathbed for unknown reasons by a “relatively short” nine-page email, spends his flight to Berlin reflecting on Dutch Renaissance painter Count Hugo Beckenbauer and his masterpiece, Saint Sebastian’s Abyss, the work that established both men as important art critics and also destroyed their relationship. A darkly comic meditation on art, obsession, and the enigmatic power of friendship, Saint Sebastian’s Abyss stalks the museum halls of Europe, feverishly seeking salvation, annihilation, and the meaning of belief.
Former best friends who built their careers writing about a single work of art meet after a decades-long falling-out. One of them, called to the other’s deathbed for unknown reasons by a “relatively short” nine-page email, spends his flight to Berlin reflecting on Dutch Renaissance painter Count Hugo Beckenbauer and his masterpiece, Saint Sebastian’s Abyss, the work that established both men as important art critics and also destroyed their relationship. A darkly comic meditation on art, obsession, and the enigmatic power of friendship, Saint Sebastian’s Abyss stalks the museum halls of Europe, feverishly seeking salvation, annihilation, and the meaning of belief.
144 pages, Paperback
First published May 10, 2022
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7316 people want to read
About the author
Mark Haber
10 books140 followersMark Haber was born in Washington DC and grew up in Florida. His first collection of stories, DEATHBED CONVERSIONS (2008), was translated into Spanish in a bilingual edition as MELVILLE'S BEARD (2017) by Editorial Argonáutica. His debut novel, REINHARDT'S GARDEN, was published by Coffee House Press in October 2019 and later nominated for the PEN/Hemingway Award for debut novel. His second novel, SAINT SEBASTIAN'S ABYSS, will also be published by Coffee House Press. Mark is the operations manager and a bookseller at Brazos Bookstore in Houston, Texas.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 488 reviews
December 22, 2022
This smart and hilarious short novel tells the story of two frenemies who, as art critics, try to replace life by art while denying the communicative and social nature of creative human expression. The unnamed narrator befriends his companion-turned-opponent Schmidt at Oxford, where the two re-discover the title-giving painting "Saint Sebastian’s Abyss" in a textbook – from then on, both dedicate their lives to studying this early Renaissance artwork and promoting it as the most important painting ever conceived. The narrative is interspersed with the life story of the artist who produced the image, German Count Hugo Beckenbauer, who was not only a fake count, but also a sex-addicted maniac who went on to die from syphilis.
To a German, this character is particularly funny, as everyone around here knows that Beckenbauer is of course not a fake count, but a fake Kaiser: "Der Kaiser" is the widely popular nickname of soccer icon Franz Beckenbauer. Also, Count Hugo spends a considerable amount of time stumbling through Düsseldorf, a city that is inextricably linked to Joseph Beuys who believed in the power of human creativity and thus claimed that everyone could be an artist.
Schmidt, on the other hand, spends his waking hours gatekeeping art and defending that only experts are allowed to judge it – when the narrator speaks out against this distinction fetish, it causes a rift between the two that builds up to a feud which extends to the "disciples" of both critics, fueling a quasi-religious crusade about true art and "Saint Sebastian’s Abyss" in particular. To Schmidt, an Austrian who likes to indulge in Thomas Bernhard-style rants, all art created after Cézanne's death in 1906 is trash, and he and the narrator loose themselves in their delusions of grandeur so much so that they wreck all their human relationships over their obsession with Count Hugo and his so-called masterpiece.
While the narrator claims that their publications on the painting are widely read and praised, still convinced of the rationality of their obsession, the reader realizes that these art critics, as Franz Kafka famously put it, stared long enough into the abyss – and now the abyss stares back into them (not only Schmidt dies of a lung condition, Bernhard (sarcoidosis), Kafka (tuberculosis) and Beuys (heart failure due to the inflammation of lung tissue) did as well). Those two are intellectual fanatics, constantly pondering the meaning of the "holy donkey" depicted by Beckenbauer as well as the apocalypse and its significance for "Saint Sebastian’s Abyss". The prison-like character of their ruminations are mirrored by Haber’s fantastic use of circular phrases and how he conveys the real nature of the men’s dedication while it also remains clear that the narrator does not realize his mental disposition.
This novel is a hilarious satire on the perversion of art as a pure means of distinction, as a way not to interact with, but turn away from the world, as everything Beuys wanted to (and did) shatter. I frequently thought of Clemens J. Setz and his text Kayfabe und Literatur. Rede zur Literatur, in which he, another Austrian, rants against writers who "develop their style as if it was their character", authors who have no interest in acknowledging the social nature of storytelling. Mark Haber is with Setz and Beuys, and the way he makes his case is unbelievably smart and entertaining.
To a German, this character is particularly funny, as everyone around here knows that Beckenbauer is of course not a fake count, but a fake Kaiser: "Der Kaiser" is the widely popular nickname of soccer icon Franz Beckenbauer. Also, Count Hugo spends a considerable amount of time stumbling through Düsseldorf, a city that is inextricably linked to Joseph Beuys who believed in the power of human creativity and thus claimed that everyone could be an artist.
Schmidt, on the other hand, spends his waking hours gatekeeping art and defending that only experts are allowed to judge it – when the narrator speaks out against this distinction fetish, it causes a rift between the two that builds up to a feud which extends to the "disciples" of both critics, fueling a quasi-religious crusade about true art and "Saint Sebastian’s Abyss" in particular. To Schmidt, an Austrian who likes to indulge in Thomas Bernhard-style rants, all art created after Cézanne's death in 1906 is trash, and he and the narrator loose themselves in their delusions of grandeur so much so that they wreck all their human relationships over their obsession with Count Hugo and his so-called masterpiece.
While the narrator claims that their publications on the painting are widely read and praised, still convinced of the rationality of their obsession, the reader realizes that these art critics, as Franz Kafka famously put it, stared long enough into the abyss – and now the abyss stares back into them (not only Schmidt dies of a lung condition, Bernhard (sarcoidosis), Kafka (tuberculosis) and Beuys (heart failure due to the inflammation of lung tissue) did as well). Those two are intellectual fanatics, constantly pondering the meaning of the "holy donkey" depicted by Beckenbauer as well as the apocalypse and its significance for "Saint Sebastian’s Abyss". The prison-like character of their ruminations are mirrored by Haber’s fantastic use of circular phrases and how he conveys the real nature of the men’s dedication while it also remains clear that the narrator does not realize his mental disposition.
This novel is a hilarious satire on the perversion of art as a pure means of distinction, as a way not to interact with, but turn away from the world, as everything Beuys wanted to (and did) shatter. I frequently thought of Clemens J. Setz and his text Kayfabe und Literatur. Rede zur Literatur, in which he, another Austrian, rants against writers who "develop their style as if it was their character", authors who have no interest in acknowledging the social nature of storytelling. Mark Haber is with Setz and Beuys, and the way he makes his case is unbelievably smart and entertaining.
December 18, 2022
This little gem is the follow up to Mark Haber's outstanding debut, Reinhardt's Garden. Saint Sebastian's Abyss is humor at its most droll, focusing on a love-hate rivalry between two art critics. There is a lot here about the nature of art, criticism, and friendship, although the sly humor outshines those themes.
August 15, 2024
A story of rivalry in art criticism, with sometimes hilarious segments, but overall lacking a real satisfying pay off
Because the sign of a good critic is the number of enemies he has and the quality of those enemies
Saint Sebastian's Abyss tells of an art critic, Schmidt dying in Berlin, being visited by a former fellow student of him. The narrator is now a rival, and he looks back on art career build around conjecture and musings about a famous painting in Barcelona.
The narrator his life is far from perfect, two disastrous marriages come back, but his mentor is the character who comes back most in the book. And the painter who created the masterpiece around which Mark Haber weaves his book.
The superlatives flow liberally when describing the work: Gazing in the eyes of god is one comparison drawn.
A subtle play with the reader ensues, wherein questions on Berlin already being a large center and being a city where pre-renaissance artist worked, being one.
The painter sounds rather Caravaggio like with his sex addiction and syphilis, or maybe Goya with the paintings based on egg yolk.
Interesting in this context is that the disease was only known after 1492 and the discovery of the Americas, making me as a reader more critical to the overall verity of the story we are offered.
There are also two untitled pictures, also known as monkey paintings, one depicting corn (also after 1492 and definitely not much around in north Germany around this time).
There is a horrible thing being alluded to a long time in the book, the reason for the student breaking off relations with the master.
Super specific rivalry between art historians is taken to the max, and there is so much repetition for a short book, maybe symbolizing obsession that both men have with the work.
What is the narrator his unique point of view, compared to Schmidt, was definitely a question that arose with me.
Also how one would write 1.200 pages on why a painting is the greatest painting in history made me chuckle. As did the sardonic tone of Schmidt, who for instance calls Cubism Finger painting for blind amateurs
Art is subjective and art is for everyone might be an adagium, but
We were right of course, but shouldn’t there be room for those who are wrong? is the pedantic art critic response to this seemingly uncontroversial and innocuous statement.
In the end a fictive painting is as closed off from analysis as a fictitious professor on his deathbed and the whole art of storytelling and conjecture definitely is important to the intellectual game Haber plays with the reader. A erudite and fun book, which could have been fleshed out further to my taste, but definitely a satisfying read.
Because the sign of a good critic is the number of enemies he has and the quality of those enemies
Saint Sebastian's Abyss tells of an art critic, Schmidt dying in Berlin, being visited by a former fellow student of him. The narrator is now a rival, and he looks back on art career build around conjecture and musings about a famous painting in Barcelona.
The narrator his life is far from perfect, two disastrous marriages come back, but his mentor is the character who comes back most in the book. And the painter who created the masterpiece around which Mark Haber weaves his book.
The superlatives flow liberally when describing the work: Gazing in the eyes of god is one comparison drawn.
A subtle play with the reader ensues, wherein questions on Berlin already being a large center and being a city where pre-renaissance artist worked, being one.
The painter sounds rather Caravaggio like with his sex addiction and syphilis, or maybe Goya with the paintings based on egg yolk.
Interesting in this context is that the disease was only known after 1492 and the discovery of the Americas, making me as a reader more critical to the overall verity of the story we are offered.
There are also two untitled pictures, also known as monkey paintings, one depicting corn (also after 1492 and definitely not much around in north Germany around this time).
There is a horrible thing being alluded to a long time in the book, the reason for the student breaking off relations with the master.
Super specific rivalry between art historians is taken to the max, and there is so much repetition for a short book, maybe symbolizing obsession that both men have with the work.
What is the narrator his unique point of view, compared to Schmidt, was definitely a question that arose with me.
Also how one would write 1.200 pages on why a painting is the greatest painting in history made me chuckle. As did the sardonic tone of Schmidt, who for instance calls Cubism Finger painting for blind amateurs
Art is subjective and art is for everyone might be an adagium, but
We were right of course, but shouldn’t there be room for those who are wrong? is the pedantic art critic response to this seemingly uncontroversial and innocuous statement.
In the end a fictive painting is as closed off from analysis as a fictitious professor on his deathbed and the whole art of storytelling and conjecture definitely is important to the intellectual game Haber plays with the reader. A erudite and fun book, which could have been fleshed out further to my taste, but definitely a satisfying read.
December 14, 2022
The two lesser paintings that survived the Great Stockholm Fire were untitled. At first Schmidt and I referred to these works as the two lesser works that we try not to talk about simply because we did not, in any way, relish talking about them. Later we began calling the two untitled paintings the monkey paintings after Schmidt declared that a monkey could have painted them and he and I shared a laugh as we often did in the early years before Schmidt contributed to the ruin of both of my marriages and before I'd said and later written that horrible thing. I often wish only Saint Sebastian's Abyss had survived the fire, Schmidt would say and I'd agree. The two lesser works that we try not to talk about, which later became, at least to Schmidt and me, the monkey paintings, were indeed bad paintings, objectively bad, works that attempted to annihilate the glory and prestige of Saint Sebastian's Abyss merely by existing. Moreover, the two lesser works that we tried not to talk about, or the monkey paintings, made the attention bestowed upon Beckenbauer's masterwork difficult to justify. If the man was as brilliant as Schmidt and I made our careers claiming, we'd tell ourselves (playing the devil's advocate), how could I have painted these?
Saint Sebastian's Abyss is Mark Haber's 2nd novel after the brilliant Reinhardt's Garden.
This one was already near the top of my 'to read when published' list due to his previous novel, but also formed part of the 'summer of Thomas Bernhard' which was hailed in an LA Times article alongside The Longcut, The Novelist (and with a nod also to the stunning Panthers and the Museum of Fire.)
For Saint Sebastian's Abyss, Bernhard's funniest work (a high bar), Old Masters, in Ewald Osers' translation, is an obvious reference: two men, old friends, in a museum for a condensed period of time (the author's words), a book where Atzbacher relays the thoughts of his friend, the critic Reger from the Kunshistorisches Museum in Vienna, as well as Lars Iyer's bickering philosophers from the Spurious trilogy.
Saint Sebastian's Abyss is narrated by an unnamed art critic who has been summoned from the US to Berlin to the death-bed* of his former friend and now rival critic Schmidt by a 'relatively short email' (actually 9 pages long), the two not having spoken for 13 years. (* with a nod to Bernhard, Schmidt is dying from a long-suffered lung condition)
Schmidt and the narrator studied together at the Ruskin School in Oxford. Schmidt's favourite painting had been (and his second favourite painting still is) Minerva Victorious over Ignorance by Bartholomäus Spranger, and the narrator's The Conversion of Saint Paul by Caravaggio, an opinion Schmidt regards as a symptom of the narrator being an incurious American toddler nursed on the teats of an illiterate culture. For Schmidt is no fan of American culture or indeed anything modern:
Schmidt hated anything new or modern, art especially. I was from the United States, a relatively new country, said Schmidt. Schmidt was from Austria, which he called an ancient country. Whenever Schmidt and I argued, invariably about art and more specifically about Saint Sebastian's Abyss, he would resort to calling the United States a second-rate nation, and explain that, having been born and raised in the United States, unequivocally a second-rate nation, a lethargic infant of a society, a babbling baby of a drive-through culture, my opinions could only be infantile too, indulgent and crass and, like the United States, requiring centuries, perhaps epochs, to mature.
And their mutual view (although one Schmidt regards as an immutable fact, while the narrator regards it as purely their opinion) is that, after Cezanne’s death in 1906, painting was dead and what was left was writing about painting:
It’s an empirical fact, [Schmidt] once declared, that any artist who was alive on December 31, 1905, stopped being an artist at midnight, that is they awoke on January 1, 1906 - a Monday I believe - and were no longer artists, hence everything they painted thereafter was not art and most likely trash.
However, their views of their respective favourite paintings were to change, and converge, when they discovered (they disagree as to who saw it first), in a textbook, a reproduction of the 16th century painting Der Abgrund des Heiligen Sebastian by the hitherto relatively obscure Count Hugo Beckenbauer. The two then each embarked on a decades-long, successful, academic career, focused solely on this work, hailing it as the world's greatest painting, and writing multiple books and treatises about it, at first as friends (each blurbing the other's books) but later as rivals (each one's book a repudiation of the previous book from the other).
The break between them was triggered by Schmidt, who also contributed through his hostility to the break-up of both the narrator's marriages, due to that horrible thing, an initially relatively throw-away remark made by the narrator at a seminar in the US, but which Schmidt regards as an decisive break with their credo.
Beckenbauer's work itself is apocalyptic and quasi-religious - although both the narrator and Schmidt dismiss any religious significance - with the holy donkey looking down over a cliff at a conflagration, which they believe to be the burning of Jerusalem, while lightning rends a sky filled with saints.
The painting is just 12 by 14 inches and hangs in the (fictitious) Rudolf Gallery in the (real-life) Museu Nacional d’Art de Catalunya, surrounded by two larger works by the artist on either side, the only other surviving works by Beckenbauer which the two dismiss (see the opening quote) as the monkey paintings. Indeed they are often to be found viewing Saint Sebastian's Abyss with their hands cupped either side of their head to create a tunnel vision to the master work, not distracted by the two lesser works that we try not to talk about.
As the narrator flies to Berlin then journeys to see his former friend, his thoughts take us through the two men's discovery of the painting, an exegesis of the work, the rather disreputable history of Count Hugo Beckenbauer (the Count a purely assumed title), the academic writings of the two men and the story of their friendship and falling out, alongside Schmidt's rather abrasive opinions on modern painting, America (see above), the art of being a critic (Schmidt claims emotion should not come into play) and indeed his uncomplementary take on the narrator's competence.
And when the narrator finally gets to speak to him, after 13 years, Schmidt claims to up-end everything they've ever believed about the work on which their live has been based.
And all this is just 144 darkly funny and erudite pages.
Highly recommended.
Influences - Bernhardian and otherwise
Haber has acknowledged the strong influence of Bernhard on his work:
Bernhard’s repetitiveness, the obsessive manias of his narrators, the invoking of art and philosophy, intellectual pursuits, are everywhere in my books and that’s Bernhard’s influence, no question. The mania and pessimism, the myopic selfishness. The energy and intensity.
But has also said:
He’s one of those influences that’s obvious, but also one I try to shake. There’s been a huge amount of Bernhard acolytes recently, many of them really good, but I never want to be derivative. I have a playfulness and more outward action in my writing, whereas Bernhard is very insular, very interior. Anyway, Bernhard is a ghost floating in and out of my writing, and I love him as much as I try to escape him.
More broadly Haber is a brilliant and generous critic, and embedded in world literature (or more accurately European and North and South American literature), and in interviews for this book has cited many different inspirations including: Roberto Bolaño, Nathalie Léger, Chloe Aridjis, Lars Iyer, David Markson, Toni Morrison, Gabriel Garcia Marquez, William Gass, Vladimir Nabokov, Saul Bellow, Arianna Harwicz, César Aira, Jon Fosse, David Antrim, Fernanda Melchor, Laszlo Krasznahorkai, Céline, Enrique Vila-Matas, Benjamin Labatut, Clarice Lispector, Merce Rodoreda, Donald Barthelme, Virginia Woolf, Horacio Castellanos Moya and Guadalupe Nettel.
Interviews
https://www.mark-haber.com/interviews
https://bombmagazine.org/articles/mar..."
https://www.altaonline.com/books/fict...
https://southwestreview.com/myopic-fa...
https://brooklynrail.org/2022/03/book...
June 12, 2022
I loved this book with all my craven heart. Funny and insightful and weird and dark.
Read
October 22, 2024It's a little one-note, but it's a melodious note, and it reminded me of Ravelstein by Saul Bellow, and that's not a bad thing.
January 1, 2023
Brilliant!!! And fucking hilarious! ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
What a bloody marvellous way to start 2023! This is literally ‘laugh out loud’ material. (And a bit clever too.)
What a bloody marvellous way to start 2023! This is literally ‘laugh out loud’ material. (And a bit clever too.)
December 26, 2022
This is Haber’s second novel and it reads as a direct homage to Thomas Bernhard, one of his favorite writers. I can see how Bernhard enthusiasts, among whom I count myself, can react in two ways. Either enthusiastically approving it as a nod to their beloved author or seeing it as somewhat derivative. I’m afraid my reaction leans more toward the latter.
In style and technique, all elements typical for Bernhard are present: obsessively repetitive thoughts, constant loathing with the words from Bernhard’s favorite glossary, repetitions of the same phrase (“that horrible thing”, two “monkey paintings”) though mercifully less frequently than in Bernhard (I still feel as if the ubiquitous “I thought” in The Loser is still drumming in my head :-)), while sprinkled with humor. These work on me like a magnet when I am reading Bernhard, but when used as a template by another author, it makes me long to read the original man.
Regardless, Haber is a talented writer who knows how to blend misery with humor as evident in this story of friendship and rivalry between two art critics obsessed with the same eponymous (fictional) painting, albeit admiring it for different reasons. With intelligence he shows how the megalomanias and pettiness can drive people apart as well as questions the ultimate understanding of the works of art, while also giving an affectionate foretaste for Bernhard if not familiar with his writings. It certainly motivates me to look forward to reading his Reinhardt's Garden.
In style and technique, all elements typical for Bernhard are present: obsessively repetitive thoughts, constant loathing with the words from Bernhard’s favorite glossary, repetitions of the same phrase (“that horrible thing”, two “monkey paintings”) though mercifully less frequently than in Bernhard (I still feel as if the ubiquitous “I thought” in The Loser is still drumming in my head :-)), while sprinkled with humor. These work on me like a magnet when I am reading Bernhard, but when used as a template by another author, it makes me long to read the original man.
Regardless, Haber is a talented writer who knows how to blend misery with humor as evident in this story of friendship and rivalry between two art critics obsessed with the same eponymous (fictional) painting, albeit admiring it for different reasons. With intelligence he shows how the megalomanias and pettiness can drive people apart as well as questions the ultimate understanding of the works of art, while also giving an affectionate foretaste for Bernhard if not familiar with his writings. It certainly motivates me to look forward to reading his Reinhardt's Garden.
December 14, 2022
3.5, rounded down.
The premise of the book sounded intriguing, and four GR friends all gave it high marks, so I was looking forward to Haber's short second novel. Unfortunately, it is constructed in my least appreciated format - to wit: each of the 76 chapters (varying in length from 1 to 4 pages) is comprised of a single paragraph, and often these paragraphs are composed of a single very long, circuitous and repetitious sentence.
This is evidently something of an homage to one of Haber's fave authors, Thomas Bernhard, whom I have studiously avoided reading (I know, I know!), due to my knowledge that repetitious, intellectually dense longwindedness is his métier.
That being the case, I ofttimes found myself nearing the end of a sentence and having to backtrack and reread what has gone before, as I'd gotten hopelessly tangled and lost - not knowing where I was in the story, or the thought being expressed. This led to much tedium and enervation on MY part. And it didn't help much that the book ends on something of a cliffhanger, rendering the preceding 144 pages as a kind of 'shaggy dog' story.
The book is somewhat amusing (albeit never inducing LOL chuckles), but never very involving - I didn't really care much for or about either of the two main characters, NOR the subject of their obsession, the fictional Count Hugo Beckenbauer. I guess I just am one of those uneducated American philistines who knows little about art or art history, at whom Schmidt so disdainfully thumbs his nose.
So bottom line, while I could appreciate and grudgingly admire what Haber attempts to do here - it really isn't my cuppa.
The premise of the book sounded intriguing, and four GR friends all gave it high marks, so I was looking forward to Haber's short second novel. Unfortunately, it is constructed in my least appreciated format - to wit: each of the 76 chapters (varying in length from 1 to 4 pages) is comprised of a single paragraph, and often these paragraphs are composed of a single very long, circuitous and repetitious sentence.
This is evidently something of an homage to one of Haber's fave authors, Thomas Bernhard, whom I have studiously avoided reading (I know, I know!), due to my knowledge that repetitious, intellectually dense longwindedness is his métier.
That being the case, I ofttimes found myself nearing the end of a sentence and having to backtrack and reread what has gone before, as I'd gotten hopelessly tangled and lost - not knowing where I was in the story, or the thought being expressed. This led to much tedium and enervation on MY part. And it didn't help much that the book ends on something of a cliffhanger, rendering the preceding 144 pages as a kind of 'shaggy dog' story.
The book is somewhat amusing (albeit never inducing LOL chuckles), but never very involving - I didn't really care much for or about either of the two main characters, NOR the subject of their obsession, the fictional Count Hugo Beckenbauer. I guess I just am one of those uneducated American philistines who knows little about art or art history, at whom Schmidt so disdainfully thumbs his nose.
So bottom line, while I could appreciate and grudgingly admire what Haber attempts to do here - it really isn't my cuppa.
October 29, 2024
I’m not entirely sure what to make of this story of two obsessive, arrogant, bombastic, humourless art historians who monopolise their prize discovery – one painting gushed over for decades – St Sebastian’s Abyss by the (fictional) 16thC early Renaissance painter Hugo Beckenbauer. Beckenbauer himself fancifully went around calling himself Count, and attempted to fornicate with almost any living human he could manage right into late syphilitic disability. Naturally, we need to separate the artist from the work, or else we end up in an ideological hell of overly refined and purified artistic banality. Morality and goodness are not prerequisites of great art, nor are they characteristics suitable for art historians. Power and control seem to be their domain. Having said that, I met a lovely pair of young art historian curators here in Athens, but I digress.
The unnamed narrator talks about his career and the lucky break of finding an undocumented masterpiece in the back of a catalogue while studying together with his colleague Schmidt at Oxford. They decide to share the spoils and research this ‘Count’ Beckenbauer. They literally feed off this one work for the rest of their lives, publishing book after book, slightly at odds, slightly varying from each other, but in full control of the Beckenbauer name. No one comes close to our arrogant protagonists. And they really are as unpleasant in their own way as their artist subject. Schmidt, really is a self-important nutter, declaring that all art after the death of Cezanne in 1906 is not worth a mention, and even careers – I had to laugh – that span that date are arbitrarily conferred a status of worthy before as early works and rubbish after. Power always uses arbitrary language and categories to maintain itself.
The two colleagues, narrator and subject, had a falling out ten years previously. They had already achieved the zenith of their careers but diverged personally and professionally. So perhaps there was nowhere else to go but downhill sliding along on human excremental vitriol. Schmidt can’t help attacking anything he doesn’t like in his very down the nose approach as a know it all European. The narrator is American, naturally. Marriages break up, too. Oh well, anything for art, eh.
So can we trust art critics? Obviously not based on personality, or really their obsessive monopolisation of career subject. A satire, no doubt, using the rhythmic repetitive writing technique of a Thomas Bernhard. It works at times, but is overly too much like Bernhard to feel free of his control. And strangely, or ironically, that in itself parallels the very subject of the novel, who am I to say I have read Bernhard and Haber and arbitrarily draw a line in the styling of one and the following of another.
At times they make me think of a pair of artful clowns, slipping over their own freshly laid banana peels.
The unnamed narrator talks about his career and the lucky break of finding an undocumented masterpiece in the back of a catalogue while studying together with his colleague Schmidt at Oxford. They decide to share the spoils and research this ‘Count’ Beckenbauer. They literally feed off this one work for the rest of their lives, publishing book after book, slightly at odds, slightly varying from each other, but in full control of the Beckenbauer name. No one comes close to our arrogant protagonists. And they really are as unpleasant in their own way as their artist subject. Schmidt, really is a self-important nutter, declaring that all art after the death of Cezanne in 1906 is not worth a mention, and even careers – I had to laugh – that span that date are arbitrarily conferred a status of worthy before as early works and rubbish after. Power always uses arbitrary language and categories to maintain itself.
The two colleagues, narrator and subject, had a falling out ten years previously. They had already achieved the zenith of their careers but diverged personally and professionally. So perhaps there was nowhere else to go but downhill sliding along on human excremental vitriol. Schmidt can’t help attacking anything he doesn’t like in his very down the nose approach as a know it all European. The narrator is American, naturally. Marriages break up, too. Oh well, anything for art, eh.
So can we trust art critics? Obviously not based on personality, or really their obsessive monopolisation of career subject. A satire, no doubt, using the rhythmic repetitive writing technique of a Thomas Bernhard. It works at times, but is overly too much like Bernhard to feel free of his control. And strangely, or ironically, that in itself parallels the very subject of the novel, who am I to say I have read Bernhard and Haber and arbitrarily draw a line in the styling of one and the following of another.
At times they make me think of a pair of artful clowns, slipping over their own freshly laid banana peels.
July 18, 2022
My eyes burn with love for this book much like those of the holy donkey in the most amazing painting in the history of human artistic achievement, Saint Sebastian’s Abyss
April 23, 2022
The best word to describe this novel is propulsive. The unnamed narrator of this short but dense novella tells the story of his fellow classmate, eventual colleague, and “friend,” Schmidt. The story begins in art school where the two meet and follows their mutual adoration bordering on obsession for a work of art, Saint Sebastiańs Abyss, painted by Count Hugo Beckenbauer. The story alternates between the relationship between the two art critics and Beckenbauer´s life. It is told in a stream of consciousness that is compelling and almost mesmerizing. You do not want to miss reading one word. Although the story goes back and forth in time, it never feels disjointed, it simply flows forward. Now that I have finished reading this story, I am reflecting on what this unnamed narrator´s message to me is…..
Side note- Mark Haber, the incredible writer is also the Operations Manager at my local indie bookstore, Brazos Bookstore. I have chatted with Mark over the years about books and writers but it’s terribly exciting for me to read his published work as well! He is a very fine writer.
Side note- Mark Haber, the incredible writer is also the Operations Manager at my local indie bookstore, Brazos Bookstore. I have chatted with Mark over the years about books and writers but it’s terribly exciting for me to read his published work as well! He is a very fine writer.
January 31, 2023
An unnamed American narrator receives a nine-page email from his estranged Austrian friend and fellow art critic, Schmidt, who is dying. These two bonded over a painting while they were students at Oxford. At that time, they had discovered the titular Saint Sebastian’s Abyss, and became fascinated with it. Each has made a career by writing about this painting. We follow the narrator as takes a flight from the US to Berlin, giving him ample time to reflect on his turbulent relationship with Schmidt. They had a falling out years ago over differing opinions about the artwork.
This is a story of obsession, and how it can derail personal relationships. In this case, it has come between the two friends and has also been a contributing factor to the demise of two marriages. Along the way, we learn the rather sordid backstory of the (fictional) Renaissance artist who created the painting.
The author examines the realm of art and art critics, and the seeming capriciousness of what is extolled as “great art.” It is filled with wry humor and satire. I was absorbed in this book for the first three quarters. It is, unfortunately, marred by an unsatisfying ending and too much repetition. I believe the repetition is indicative of the psychological state of the narrator, and is most likely intentional on the author’s part, but it gets tiresome. I liked it enough to read another book by this author.
This is a story of obsession, and how it can derail personal relationships. In this case, it has come between the two friends and has also been a contributing factor to the demise of two marriages. Along the way, we learn the rather sordid backstory of the (fictional) Renaissance artist who created the painting.
The author examines the realm of art and art critics, and the seeming capriciousness of what is extolled as “great art.” It is filled with wry humor and satire. I was absorbed in this book for the first three quarters. It is, unfortunately, marred by an unsatisfying ending and too much repetition. I believe the repetition is indicative of the psychological state of the narrator, and is most likely intentional on the author’s part, but it gets tiresome. I liked it enough to read another book by this author.
July 17, 2025
men will make even reading about art an insufferable experience
September 18, 2025
https://kansasbooks.blogspot.com/2025...
"¿Y qué es un crítico de arte con miedo? ¿Qué es un crítico de arte que esquiva la angustia y la duda, censurándose y esterilizándose a sí mismo en vez de decir lo que piensa?"
He disfrutado muchísimo de esta novela corta que desenmascara todos los tics en torno a la crítica académica del mundo del arte, porque Mark Haber aunque convierte este texto en una sátira, y además muy divertida, no es que se centre en el mundo del arte, sino que mayormente se centra en destacar cuando estos críticos que han convertido a cierto arte en un estandarte de sí mismos, plantean un discurso que acaba derivando en un ejercicio de ombliguismo. Personalmente y a lo largo de los años ha dejado de interesarme leer críticas sobre libros o cine precisamente porque casi siempre tengo la impresión de que no se despierta la curiosidad por esa obra a través del mundo de las sensaciones o las impresiones, sino que siempre acabo teniendo la impresión de que los críticos oficiales se centran más en ellos mismos que en la obra que vienen a discutir: una critica académica que pretende ser tan objetiva que al final acaba olvidándose de la obra en cuestión, y el ejercicio se acaba convirtiendo en un destripe con puntos y comas de un libro, por ejemplo, o una película, sin dejar espacio al lector para que pueda sentir un mínimo de curiosidad.
“La mediocridad es una enfermedad que siempre gana, decía, siempre ganando y seguirá ganando o, como mínimo, tomará la delantera, la mediocridad, decía, que es terrible ante la excelencia y la sublimidad y la auténtica belleza, que son, naturalmente, sus impuestos, pero que es absolutamente inigualable a la hora de aventajar y por tanto reprimir lo excepcional...."
Lo que me gusta de El abismo de San Sebastián es precisamente el hecho de que Haber saca a relucir este egocentrismo de la crítica y lo desenmascara en un texto que fluye mientras el lector no puede dejar de sonreír. En una novela en la que dos críticos, muy a eruditos ellos, se dedican durante toda su vida académica a analizar un cuadro de 30 x 30, escribiendo cada uno de ellos una docena de libros en torno a él, escribiendo ensayos y visitando una y otra vez el cuadro en el Museo en el que está expuesto en Barcelona, llama la la atención precisamente que Mark Haber no describa el cuadro en todo su detalle, no hay forma de saber cómo es exactamente el cuadro porque en todas las diatribas de ambos críticos, realmente y en el fondo no se trata tanto del cuadro, como de que usan el cuadro para hablar de ellos mismos, de inflar sus egos mostrando al otro que su teoría es más acertada que la del otro y así en un bucle sin fin, y esto es lo que acaba convirtiendo esta novela en una lectura deliciosa. Conoceremos detalles del cuadro, pero no veremos el cuadro en la mente (o si lo veremos porque lo imaginamos) porque en ningún momento se lo describe y de esta forma el autor deja al lector ese espacio para que imagine el cuadro. Para mí esta es la función que debería cumplir la crítica, dejar el espacio al profano para que pueda construir su propia obra en su imaginación, o darle las herramientas para avivar la curiosidad.
"Y más adelante después de que Schmidt hubiera leído la transcripción de mi mesa redonda en la que yo decía que el arte es subjetivo y el arte es para todos, es decir, que la opinión de un profano es igual que la de un experto, se divorció de mi vida, aunque lentamente y poco a poco, al principio con insultos contra mi, y luego con calumnias y desaires, porque había dicho aquello tan horrendo."
"El abismo de San Sebastián" trata sobre un cuadro que lleva ese nombre, obra de un pintor totalmente desconocido para el mundo del arte, hasta que el narrador y Schmidt, en su época de estudiantes en Oxford, dan con un libro en el que aparece reflejado el cuadro. A partir de aquí convierten su vida en el estudio de este cuadro, publicando libros, dando conferencias, escribiendo ensayos siempre en torno a teorías especulativas sobre el cuadro, de un pintor, Hugo Beckenbauer, nacido en 1512 del que apenas se sabe nada y que se pasó su vida bebiendo, utilizando sus pinturas como moneda cambio para conseguir sexo, según cuenta el diario de su casera encontrado milagrosamente en algún momento. Mark Haber inventa a este pintor y este cuadro que le sirve para analizar lo que son los críticos, cuando en este caso, creen haber dado con una mina de oro a la hora de resucitar un artista que no sabremos hasta qué punto era mediocre. El secreto está en descubrirlo y escribir y hablar y darle notoriedad hasta que finalmente hayan creado la suficiente expectación, pero es una expectación más apoyada en la competitividad y los roces que acaban surgiendo entre Schmidt y el narrador, a la hora de llevarse el gato al agua sobre cual de los dos fue el primero que lo descubrió, o cual de los dos estará más cerca de descubrir quién era de verdad Beckenbauer, que realmente parece un fantasma inventado por ellos.
“Schmidt vilipendiaba mis libros y mis teorías sobre El abismo de San Sebastian. Insistía de nuevo en que había sido él el primero en volver la página del libro de texto en la Escuela Ruskin y en encontrar el cuadro del conde Hugo Beckenbauer antes que yo, pero aun así escribía, encontraba profundamente perturbador que yo siempre me hubiera arrogado el mérito…”
Mark Haber exagera los tics no tanto del mundo de arte sino de la critica que se obsesiona con una obra determinada, en este caso concreto, para inflar sus propios egos que de eso anda muy sobrada la crítica académica en general. Haber juega también con los tópicos en torno a los artistas diferentes, misteriosos, que han pasado como de puntillas por el mundo del arte, hasta que un erudito avispado los saca del olvido, convirtiéndose este arte o artista, en mera excusa para el lucimiento de por vida de ellos mismos. Tanto el narrador como Schmidt han conseguido prestigio solo y exclusivamente hablando del cuadro incluso en tochos de mil páginas, y si nos detenemos en el hecho de que Haber incide continuamente en que apenas se sabe nada de Beckenbauer, y prácticamente solo se conserva este cuadro (hay dos más algo más pequeños a los que calificarán prácticamente de basura), es cuando nos damos cuenta de que ambos críticos prácticamente se han inventado una excusa de vida gracias a un tal Hugo Beckenbauer, nacido en 1512 y al que un día por casualidad descubrieron hojeando un libro.
“Mi sexto libro, La paradoja de Hugo, era una exploración de cómo serían probablemente las demás pinturas del conde Beckenbauer (…) y el mundo del arte celebró La paradoja de Hugo como una obra de crítica de arte especulativa original e inigualable. Schmidt respondío con un libro de ensayos críticos (Turbulenta incoherencia) en el que destrozaba cada teoría y postulado que yo había hecho en La paradoja de Hugo.”
El punto de vista de la novela es el del narrador sin nombre y realmente llegado un momento somos conscientes de que es un narrador nada fiable porque nos está contando su versión, única además, de la amistad que en un principio le unía a Schmidt y que acabó como el rosario de la aurora. Otro punto que toca la novela es el de la amistad y los intereses creados en torno a ella, y hasta qué punto una relación de amistad alimentada en estos interesee puede acabar por la competitividad, los celos y la envidia cuando está en juego ese egocentrismo de querer ser el primero de la fila, e incluso Haber llega a explorar el territorio en torno a la toxicidad de muchas relaciones de amistad, en la que los intereses y la huida de la soledad se camuflará bajo la falsa idea de una amistad mal entendida. Después de años de rencillas, y en su lecho de muerte, Schmidt le envía un largo email convocándole en Berlin dónde se está muriendo para de alguna forma, revelarle uno de los grandes secretos que ha conseguido descubrir sobre el “fantasma” Beckenbauer. La novela transcurre durante este viaje y el narrador rememora sus años de amistad y finalmente el final de sus relaciones, convirtiéndose a partir de ahí y durante décadas, la vida académica de ambos en un continuo arrastre por el barro del uno al otro. Haber saca a relucir esa soberbia de estar en el poder de la verdad de los académicos, alejando este arte de la vida terrenal como si el profano no fuera digno ni siquiera en opinar sobre arte. Y por otra parte, ese defecto continuo por parte de esta crítica elitista en ser los primeros y únicos en tener el derecho de disfrutar y opinar, pero una vez que un artista o una determinada obra se convierte en más conocida, también será despreciada por ellos. Una novela deliciosa. Me lo he pasado en grande leyendo a Mark Haber
“Sí, escribía, yo les había dado a esos monstruos en mi atroz mesa redonda el mismo estatus, escribía, que a nosotros, los críticos, los únicos que vivíamos y respirabamos y prácticamente sangrábamos por el arte.”
♫♫♫ Positively 4th street - Bob Dylan ♫♫♫
November 6, 2024
She wouldn't understand, I'd told myself, obsessed as she was with modernism, abstract art, and feminist theory. Her views held no history, I'd thought, they contained no sense of painting's scope, whereas Schmidt's heart and my own heart carried the breadth of centuries. Had she, I'd reasoned, ever considered the end of the world? Had my second wife, I'd mused, ever studied the violence in Saint Sebastian's Abyss, felt the weight of humanity's sins upon her shoulders? Had my second wife ever stared into the eyes of the holy donkey standing on the precipice….
April 2, 2023
I don't like to admit that I think about stars. When taken too seriously the GR star system represents a consumer paradigm that's a weird fit for the complex and personal ways we (should) interact with books. A book is not a product like a pair of noise-canceling headphones or an electric blanket! . . . Though those would go pretty well with a book. . . . Anyway, point is, I'm ashamed to admit when I started Saint Sebastian's Abyss I thought: I don't care how good this book is, it's only going to get four or fewer stars from me, because it's clearly a blatant rip-off homage to Thomas Bernhard, in both style and content. It's like, literally derivative.
However, once I found my rhythm with Saint Sebastian's Abyss, which happened very quickly, I forgot all about who was paying homage to whom and got dragged away by a really well-told story about two amusing and interesting characters who have been infected by an uncompromising Bernhardian loyalty to greatness in art. They whang on about the same obscure painting and the end of the world, and, though they mean every word of it, you also sense the yearning and loneliness beneath their bombastic façade. By the end I'm left in a much bigger, more complex place than where I started, and I value my literary friendships here and IRL more than ever. (Aww.)
Reflecting now on Bernhard's presence in the novel, I think I can see Haber's intention. The character Schmitt—the more bombastic of the two (and also an Austrian, which supports my theory)—IS Thomas Bernhard. Our favorite authors are in some ways our friends. We spend so much time knowing them, seeing their good and bad sides, understanding what really drives them, where their sensibility comes from. As this kind of friend goes, Thomas Bernhard is a difficult pal! He is so demanding. He never lets up. You never know quite how seriously to laugh with him.
So this book isn't just a writer trying to be like Bernhard; it's a writer who loves Bernhard trying to make sense of Bernhard, to write in a world where Bernhard has already written. You get five stars for that.
However, once I found my rhythm with Saint Sebastian's Abyss, which happened very quickly, I forgot all about who was paying homage to whom and got dragged away by a really well-told story about two amusing and interesting characters who have been infected by an uncompromising Bernhardian loyalty to greatness in art. They whang on about the same obscure painting and the end of the world, and, though they mean every word of it, you also sense the yearning and loneliness beneath their bombastic façade. By the end I'm left in a much bigger, more complex place than where I started, and I value my literary friendships here and IRL more than ever. (Aww.)
Reflecting now on Bernhard's presence in the novel, I think I can see Haber's intention. The character Schmitt—the more bombastic of the two (and also an Austrian, which supports my theory)—IS Thomas Bernhard. Our favorite authors are in some ways our friends. We spend so much time knowing them, seeing their good and bad sides, understanding what really drives them, where their sensibility comes from. As this kind of friend goes, Thomas Bernhard is a difficult pal! He is so demanding. He never lets up. You never know quite how seriously to laugh with him.
So this book isn't just a writer trying to be like Bernhard; it's a writer who loves Bernhard trying to make sense of Bernhard, to write in a world where Bernhard has already written. You get five stars for that.
March 6, 2023
My first instinct when reflecting on this book to write a review is to resort to self deprecation, as I so often do, by saying something along the lines of "I think this was just too smart for me" or "I just didn't understand what it was trying to do." But I don't think that's fair to myself. I do understand what it was trying to do, and I do understand the humor. It just wasn't very dynamic. Coming from a background entrenched in academia, I understand the wit here. But after you get past the first few chuckles of the surface level critique of critique, there's not much to reflect on. It was the same joke throughout. Thank goodness the book is so short, but it still took me maybe four days to read it because of how one-note it was. It was entertaining, but I wouldn't go so far as to say it was "good".
December 28, 2024
Circuitous, absurd, and fanatical. I will seek out more by Haber.
June 11, 2022
First of all this is a novel about art and art collectors and all the history associated with certain sundry items of art, most of all the prized item of art Saint Sebastian's Abyss that brought fame to two art critics as well as creating a monumental rift between them. Harking along the confines of the long museum halls of Europe this novel delves into the history of these two friends fascination over this sublime piece of art and their differences over it. So when one of the friends is called to the others deathbed after a decade of fallout he seeks for something else in this piece of art and the history behind it- to him it remained an enigma, an inscrutable piece of the human imagination. A feverish meditation on art, friendship and artistic obsession...
Let's say the subject of art and its history is something too elevated for my quotidian sentimentality...call me an ignoramus or a retard but I can evince only one opinion for this book- it tires me with its incessant ramblings and rantings about art and artists. Right? Everything is dealt with in meticulous detail though and a more inquisitive reader would not be disappointed. Glad that this is a brief book for otherwise I would have bailed out long ago...
Let's say the subject of art and its history is something too elevated for my quotidian sentimentality...call me an ignoramus or a retard but I can evince only one opinion for this book- it tires me with its incessant ramblings and rantings about art and artists. Right? Everything is dealt with in meticulous detail though and a more inquisitive reader would not be disappointed. Glad that this is a brief book for otherwise I would have bailed out long ago...
October 4, 2024
Хорошая книжка, чтобы подарить какому-нибудь знакомому без чувства юмора, страстно увлеченному искусством и/или категоричному в суждениях.
December 19, 2022
“When I insisted she tell me what she had found so funny my second wife, as if it were the most obvious thing in the world, shouted, ‘Him! Him! He’s an absurd man, she’d said, and the more serious he is the more absurd he becomes.’”
So says second wife about our man Schmidt, a Bernhardian character straight outta Austria with a John Bolton mustache. I’ve read only a couple of Bernhard’s works but unlike second wife I have not yet, at least, found all the misanthropic ranting very funny. More than in its Bernhard tribute act I found some amusement here in the novel’s Lars Iyer tribute act, a couple of ridiculous art critics subbing for a couple of ridiculous philosophers. A page about the holy donkey was, indeed, fairly amusing.
While reading this novel I felt cause to think of David Foster Wallace’s comments on how irony has become an end in itself, how “few artists dare to try to talk about ways of working toward redeeming what’s wrong, because they’ll look sentimental and naive to all the weary ironists. Irony’s gone from liberating to enslaving.”
Haber does try to escape the prison of irony, however, to his credit. His narrator, contra the miserable Schmidt, believes that art should be felt through the heart and the emotions, a sentimental approach that leads to “the horrible thing” that his narrator says, and writes, which turns the miserable Schmidt against him, which is that art is subjective and for everyone to experience as they will. The miserable Schmidt becomes his narrator’s enemy, breaking contact until calling him to his deathbed, where the miserable Schmidt does the Bernhardian ranting thing before proclaiming with his dying breath that he’s discovered evidence that their life’s work is all wrong.
The death of Schmidt is thus not the death of irony to be sure, but a way out is there.
So says second wife about our man Schmidt, a Bernhardian character straight outta Austria with a John Bolton mustache. I’ve read only a couple of Bernhard’s works but unlike second wife I have not yet, at least, found all the misanthropic ranting very funny. More than in its Bernhard tribute act I found some amusement here in the novel’s Lars Iyer tribute act, a couple of ridiculous art critics subbing for a couple of ridiculous philosophers. A page about the holy donkey was, indeed, fairly amusing.
While reading this novel I felt cause to think of David Foster Wallace’s comments on how irony has become an end in itself, how “few artists dare to try to talk about ways of working toward redeeming what’s wrong, because they’ll look sentimental and naive to all the weary ironists. Irony’s gone from liberating to enslaving.”
Haber does try to escape the prison of irony, however, to his credit. His narrator, contra the miserable Schmidt, believes that art should be felt through the heart and the emotions, a sentimental approach that leads to “the horrible thing” that his narrator says, and writes, which turns the miserable Schmidt against him, which is that art is subjective and for everyone to experience as they will. The miserable Schmidt becomes his narrator’s enemy, breaking contact until calling him to his deathbed, where the miserable Schmidt does the Bernhardian ranting thing before proclaiming with his dying breath that he’s discovered evidence that their life’s work is all wrong.
The death of Schmidt is thus not the death of irony to be sure, but a way out is there.
Read
October 12, 2024what if we all just stared into the abyss forever. literally the overwhelming sense of loneliness and despair when the only person who ever understood you is gone...it feels like the end of the world, and it is!!!!! its so dark in here guys. the narrator keeps scratching the wound hugo beckenbauer is dead and me i dont feel so good
"When a person commits crimes they must be held accountable, they must be taken to task and who will do it besides me? Who knows the inner workings of your soul better than I?"
"I dreamt of solitude, in fact repeated the word solitude to myself throughout the day like a mantra, solitude, I'd whisper, solitude, I'd repeat, solitude, I'd say, attempting to coax some form of seclusion into being simply by invoking the word itself. Solitude, I'd softly mumble, without you I'll die."
"When a person commits crimes they must be held accountable, they must be taken to task and who will do it besides me? Who knows the inner workings of your soul better than I?"
"I dreamt of solitude, in fact repeated the word solitude to myself throughout the day like a mantra, solitude, I'd whisper, solitude, I'd repeat, solitude, I'd say, attempting to coax some form of seclusion into being simply by invoking the word itself. Solitude, I'd softly mumble, without you I'll die."
December 12, 2022
4,5 - A hilarious novel about two extremely vain art critics, who are also lifelong friends and rivals. They have both dedicated their careers to a single painting they rediscovered together: Saint Sebastian’s Abyss by the early Renaissance Count Hugo Beckenbauer. All other art is trash and only they know good taste.
But under the surface their friendship is undermined by the question who of the two understands the unique beauty of the masterpiece better? Who was actually the first that recognised it as a masterpiece?
The humour worked really well for me, so I just had an excellent time listening to the audio version.
But under the surface their friendship is undermined by the question who of the two understands the unique beauty of the masterpiece better? Who was actually the first that recognised it as a masterpiece?
The humour worked really well for me, so I just had an excellent time listening to the audio version.
August 23, 2024
Picture this:
You’re at a party. Someone starts chatting to you. They tell you about a Medieval painting they love and why they consider it to be the greatest painting ever. You’re interested. But they don’t stop talking. All they talk about is this painting. You realise they’re obsessed with this painting but they’re also kind of fascinating to listen to. You zone out for a bit and when you come back to them they’re still talking about … yeah, the painting.
You’re at a party. Someone starts chatting to you. They tell you about a Medieval painting they love and why they consider it to be the greatest painting ever. You’re interested. But they don’t stop talking. All they talk about is this painting. You realise they’re obsessed with this painting but they’re also kind of fascinating to listen to. You zone out for a bit and when you come back to them they’re still talking about … yeah, the painting.
February 26, 2023
This rating might might seem a bit harsh but in hindsight that's just the book I enjoyed the least, if compared to my most recent 10 reads or so, hence one single star it is.
Don't get me wrong, this book lies on a completely different shelf from utter rubbish, slushy rom-coms or a far-fetched action drivel; it's written REASONABLY well though hear me out - if only something ever HAPPENED in this book for REAL that would be great.
These are for most part endless repetitive ruminations of an art critic and so it the book making continuous fun of such and whereas first 40 pages in that spirit might have done the show, the humour of it wears off pretty quick and it simply becomes tedious. Overall repetitions are big problem of the book, repetitions in vocabulary, in syntax, in paragraphs, in composition: repetitions everywhere and just going on and about these couple dozen or so points is simply tiresome for a long run. Like I get it - the fact alone that there's a group of people making their living and putting the food on the table by unconstructively ripping apart one's work might be annoying but the first 40 pages were completely enough to depict art critics as those phoney, irksome, arrogant and vapid pricks - that hardly pushes the plot in any direction and in all honesty, even the way too long awaited climax doesn't deliver much satisfying closure.
There's no character development or character study in this book, hardly any relationships building and hardly much of a plot - I was overall super excited to read it but was let down pretty early on; gladly it is just a 140 pages long booklet.
Fine, I'm gonna give 2 stars for the nihilist ending if that helps.
Don't get me wrong, this book lies on a completely different shelf from utter rubbish, slushy rom-coms or a far-fetched action drivel; it's written REASONABLY well though hear me out - if only something ever HAPPENED in this book for REAL that would be great.
These are for most part endless repetitive ruminations of an art critic and so it the book making continuous fun of such and whereas first 40 pages in that spirit might have done the show, the humour of it wears off pretty quick and it simply becomes tedious. Overall repetitions are big problem of the book, repetitions in vocabulary, in syntax, in paragraphs, in composition: repetitions everywhere and just going on and about these couple dozen or so points is simply tiresome for a long run. Like I get it - the fact alone that there's a group of people making their living and putting the food on the table by unconstructively ripping apart one's work might be annoying but the first 40 pages were completely enough to depict art critics as those phoney, irksome, arrogant and vapid pricks - that hardly pushes the plot in any direction and in all honesty, even the way too long awaited climax doesn't deliver much satisfying closure.
There's no character development or character study in this book, hardly any relationships building and hardly much of a plot - I was overall super excited to read it but was let down pretty early on; gladly it is just a 140 pages long booklet.
Fine, I'm gonna give 2 stars for the nihilist ending if that helps.
July 19, 2024
You always have the potential to pick up a gem when you grab random books off the library shelf.
I crave critiques and satire on critics. What a breed. As a former self-aware music reviewer, I welcome any and all takedowns, such as Jake Gyllenhaal's character in Velvet Buzzsaw or several Portlandia bits.
The plot of Saint Sebastian's Abyss is coiled around two art critics, both obsessed with one obscure painting. Let the hilarity ensue.
This books exacerbates the self-fulfilling value narcissistic critics provide themselves. The cycle is as follows:
- The critic finds thing compelling. Whether an act of ego or selflessness, they must tell the world their thoughts.
- This thing, being the best thing ever, must be examined in every which way: books, seminars, history courses.
- The critic's ego becomes unstable. The thing now has fans (the predictable outcome of a good review). But no one can enjoy the thing the way the critic does - the plebs don't have the mental fortitude or passion.
- Still, the critic must continue validating one's own tastes, lest he become obsolete. At its most sensible, this involves doubling down on the thing's place in the zeitgeist. At its most deranged, this includes dismissing the value of everything except the thing and creating depth out of thin air. Personal identity: obsolete.
This book takes that path to exaggerated heights. I'm all in.
I crave critiques and satire on critics. What a breed. As a former self-aware music reviewer, I welcome any and all takedowns, such as Jake Gyllenhaal's character in Velvet Buzzsaw or several Portlandia bits.
The plot of Saint Sebastian's Abyss is coiled around two art critics, both obsessed with one obscure painting. Let the hilarity ensue.
This books exacerbates the self-fulfilling value narcissistic critics provide themselves. The cycle is as follows:
- The critic finds thing compelling. Whether an act of ego or selflessness, they must tell the world their thoughts.
- This thing, being the best thing ever, must be examined in every which way: books, seminars, history courses.
- The critic's ego becomes unstable. The thing now has fans (the predictable outcome of a good review). But no one can enjoy the thing the way the critic does - the plebs don't have the mental fortitude or passion.
- Still, the critic must continue validating one's own tastes, lest he become obsolete. At its most sensible, this involves doubling down on the thing's place in the zeitgeist. At its most deranged, this includes dismissing the value of everything except the thing and creating depth out of thin air. Personal identity: obsolete.
This book takes that path to exaggerated heights. I'm all in.
January 3, 2022
I’m so lucky I had the privilege to read an ARC of Saint Sebastian’s Abyss! I read it nearly in one sitting and couldn’t stop laughing; Mark Haber is a master of the absurd. I was deeply invested in the relationship of these two art critics, the narrator and his estranged best friend Schmidt, that devoted their lives to an obsession with a (fictional) painting and the depths they sink to in constant contemplation of the apocalypse. The narrator’s existential musings on art and (non-)belief were fresh and Schmidt was delightfully unlikeable. The ending was perfect. I loved this novel!
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January 17, 2024
Now this was neat. Circular threads overlapping themselves all winding their way to the endless void of meaning/un-meaning in the art world… all with a satirist edge.
Saint Sebastian's Abyss is a very slim novel, barely there—144 pages of long-winded brevity, if you will—just like our protagonist's "terse nine-page email" from his ex-best friend and colleague's deathbed confessional email.
At the risk of sounding condescending in this review, that kind of satiric nonsense is what this novella is all about. (How is a NINE-PAGE email regarded as "barely a jotting", etc.)
This is a novel about two tediously dull art critics who used to be best friends and colleagues. Now they're mortal enemies because one of them said that horrible thing decades ago, and ever since then they write books as barbs against each others' latest works.
Their entire careers, spanning decades and several novels a piece, are centered on the one painting that is their mutual obsession: an early Renaissance work titled Saint Sebastian's Abyss.
But now Schmidt, our unnamed protagonist's nemesis and closest colleague, is dying in Berlin. And our protagonist must see him one last time.
This entire novella takes place in our protagonist's memories as he takes his journey to Berlin. While on this relatively short trip, we unpack the history of his deep bond with Schmidt, their mutual obsession with The Painting, and the facts surrounding the painter himself—who had a similarly bizarre existence mired with madness and obsession.
Part of the fun of this novella is the sheer tedium and satiric hypocrisy of our narrator. He's tedious, Schmidt is tedious, and the two of them together as vignettes over time are... tedious. They're pretentious art critics bemoaning the trite hypocrisy of other art critics and schools of thought while simultaneously being that themselves, fulfilling their own prophecy by spending their lives in endless discussion over one relatively insignificant painting.
The novella handles this wryly hilarious fact by being as tedious and circular as possible. The narrator cycles through similar thoughts, fragments of sentences, and arguments over and over again. We, as the reader, find ourselves lulled into this bizarre thinkspeak of being and are both bored and gripped at the same time like a trainwreck you can't stop looking at.
A hypnotic novella. A tedious novella. Something to read and snicker over if you have any kind of opinions about the art world—pro or con, it doesn't matter, it's still amusing.
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Saint Sebastian's Abyss is a very slim novel, barely there—144 pages of long-winded brevity, if you will—just like our protagonist's "terse nine-page email" from his ex-best friend and colleague's deathbed confessional email.
At the risk of sounding condescending in this review, that kind of satiric nonsense is what this novella is all about. (How is a NINE-PAGE email regarded as "barely a jotting", etc.)
This is a novel about two tediously dull art critics who used to be best friends and colleagues. Now they're mortal enemies because one of them said that horrible thing decades ago, and ever since then they write books as barbs against each others' latest works.
Their entire careers, spanning decades and several novels a piece, are centered on the one painting that is their mutual obsession: an early Renaissance work titled Saint Sebastian's Abyss.
But now Schmidt, our unnamed protagonist's nemesis and closest colleague, is dying in Berlin. And our protagonist must see him one last time.
This entire novella takes place in our protagonist's memories as he takes his journey to Berlin. While on this relatively short trip, we unpack the history of his deep bond with Schmidt, their mutual obsession with The Painting, and the facts surrounding the painter himself—who had a similarly bizarre existence mired with madness and obsession.
Part of the fun of this novella is the sheer tedium and satiric hypocrisy of our narrator. He's tedious, Schmidt is tedious, and the two of them together as vignettes over time are... tedious. They're pretentious art critics bemoaning the trite hypocrisy of other art critics and schools of thought while simultaneously being that themselves, fulfilling their own prophecy by spending their lives in endless discussion over one relatively insignificant painting.
The novella handles this wryly hilarious fact by being as tedious and circular as possible. The narrator cycles through similar thoughts, fragments of sentences, and arguments over and over again. We, as the reader, find ourselves lulled into this bizarre thinkspeak of being and are both bored and gripped at the same time like a trainwreck you can't stop looking at.
A hypnotic novella. A tedious novella. Something to read and snicker over if you have any kind of opinions about the art world—pro or con, it doesn't matter, it's still amusing.
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