The most compelling writing in Molly Prentiss‘ debut novel, Tuesday Nights in 1980 (2016), surrounds a synesthetic writer, whose descriptions of the New York art scene in the late 1970s and early 1980s are fantastically vivid and surprising. He is not quite an art critic, more of a critical virtuoso, whose ability to identify emotional resonance in artists proves to be a bellwether for critics and collectors alike.
I don’t believe it is a description of synesthesia in a strict sense–his ability to perceive color and smell and sensation from works of art vanishes and returns at key points in the novel’s plot–but as a conceit, it works very well, allowing Prentiss to pull together creative and unexpected adjectives to evoke the varieties of style and emotion, especially in the visual arts of the era.
The rest of the characters–an Argentinian painter in exile on the verge of success, a naif from Idaho trying to find her way into the scene, along with a full company of supporting roles–are drawn well, and their personalities and motivations remain distinct throughout the book.
This is a novel about art, about what it takes to create it, but moreso about what it might mean to lose it, to never find or no longer have access to the outlet that it provides, and it is most successful when it is engaging directly with those themes, and with their impacts on the lives of the characters.
Clearly, the more this historical moment–New York City once Warhol has peaked, the gentrification of southern Manhattan has barely begun, and the HIV/AIDS crisis is still in its infancy–appeals, the more the novel will as well.
#WhatIWishICouldDo
Continually create descriptions that are as poetically surprising as Prentiss’. Yes, the synesthesia thing grants her a huge amount of leeway, but (a) what a great idea to find something to provide that, and (b) she still executes it with aplomb and precision.