Word: detailism
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...York colloquialisms. In painstakingly describing the city, from Robert's green velvet suit and platform shoes to the gaudy decor of the hottest clubs, Gurganus demonstrates a superb sense of kitsch. Since he presents the narrative through the eyes of a displaced Southerner with an eye for rural detail, Gurganus is able to display his virtuosity in writing about nature, from the smell of soil in Central Park to the silver glitter of the Hudson River through the grimy windows of a Manhattan apartment building...
...Fogg), like the other well-chosen and well-placed illustrations, is only a small black-and-white reproduction. The loss of color is lamentable--Dancers, Pink and Green loses its panache in gray--but the lack of clarity in the reproductions is more worrisome. Benfey often refers to minute details, such as an arm painted over but still visible, but even much squinting may fail to reveal the detail in the reproduction...
...result is a hagiography of sorts, but never a breathless one. A wealth of informative detail and an abundance of anecdote bolster even Benfey's boasts in his new book, Degas in New Orleans, a fascinating if flawed evocation of a grand moment in a magnificent city...
Benfey often dives so deep into such detail that the reappearance of Degas is a jolt: Degas, again? The cogent explanations of Degas' paintings interspersed through the text transcend this discontinuity. New Criticism be damned, Benfey glories in tying the fiction of Cable and Chopin and the art of Degas to their personal lives. Whether connecting Degas' cousins to various figures in his paintings or noting how Degas' artistic preoccupation with the unfamiliar presence of African-Americans seeped into his work, Benfey perceptively joins life...
...book's design, it obscures its ostensible subject. "This is a Degas we do not know well," Benfey notes of the not yet very famous man who stayed with the Mussons, and Benfey does not help us know this Degas any better. What Benfey instead introduces with his dense detail is a city peculiarly conducive to creativity. By turns menacing and nurturing, the New Orleans of the 1870s lurks behind every knotty relationship and every political machination of Degas' relatives, behind every story of Chopin's or Cable's and behind many of Degas' works...