Dismantling Steve Martin

The Object of Beauty masquerades as a social satire—a sort of Bonfire of the Vanities, updated to cover the recent bubble in contemporary art—but really the book is a just a drab soap opera about the doings of one superficially hot but deeply unappealing young woman. Martin is too lazy or too diffident to try to describe this universe freshly or in any detail. Instead he lazily relies on knowingness. He drops names of famous people and famous restaurants without bothering in the slightest to tell you anything precise or new or imaginative about them. They are merely brands; shorthands for chic. If you already know what Sant’Ambroeus looks like, or who Bill Acquavella and Larry Gagosian are, you do not need to read the book. If you do not know who they are, or why they might have a claim on your time and attention, Martin will not tell you anything that will enable you to picture them. He does not even tell you why you should find them humanly interesting. All he makes you feel is that your ignorance should arouse your envy—that you, poor thing, are less fortunate than he and the fancy people in his book. The reader of this novel is like a tourist banished to the outside of the velvet rope.

More at The New Republic.

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