Word: muhlbach
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 1970-1979
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
Readers of Evan Connell's The Connoisseur already know Karl Muhlbach, the middle-aged insurance executive and widower who developed a quiet obsession with pre-Columbian art. An innately cool eye for authenticity got him started. Muhlbach's sudden desire to possess statuary caused him embarrassment. In Double Honeymoon, Muhlbach again decides to take a risk within limits. This time it is a brief fling with a beautiful young girl every bit as exotic and cracked as a piece of pre-Columbian pottery...
...unlikely name, Lambeth Brent, and she treats Muhlbach as if he were a middle-aged door mat. Though he makes a fool of himself over her, he never loses his discretion or his cool collector's eye. Here is Muhlbach on entering Lambeth's apartment for the first time: "On the walls a cheap Miro print, a Tantra poster, a blowup of Humphrey Bogart, half a dozen tissue paper collages." On her shelves, "a picture book about Marilyn Monroe. Scientology. I Ching. M.C. Escher prints. One of Heyerdahl's raft trips. A bestseller by a formidable lady...
What is a cultivated, conservative man from Metropolitan Mutual doing in a place like that? The fact is that Lambeth is delicious and Muhlbach is bored. He would not put it quite that way but Señor Rafael Lopez y Fuentes, a Honduran diplomat does. Lopez is a captivatingly unctuous minor character whom Lambeth has lightly discarded. He does more than take pleasure in trying to warn Muhlbach about the hazards of playing with wildfire; he takes him to see Double Honeymoon, a porn movie in which the girl has a rather animated part. Only her death (she either...
With declarative simplicity, The Connoisseur traces Muhlbach's plunge into a world where everyone is "into" some sort of object: wicker baskets, pre-Columbian bowls, Oriental sculptures, early American leg irons. His new acquaintances are sharks, nuzzling through dealers' galleries, circling fiercely at auctions. With cold passion, they study the artifacts of vanquished people; blankly, they watch for signs of ignorance or weakness in competitors, especially newcomers like Muhlbach. Having acquired a little knowledge, he quickly obliges them. He successfully bids on what he takes to be an Olmec jade mask, realizing only as the hammer falls that...
Pangs of Greed. This small novel leaves Muhlbach dangling between pleasure and despair. Packed with pre-Columbian arcana (Connell himself is a collector), it conveys the joyous release that absorption in a stern hobby can bring. Something alien has penetrated Muhlbach's life and opened vistas he can never exhaust. Not certain whether his response is to beauty or authenticity, Muhlbach nonetheless responds. Yet he is aware of some disquieting side effects: increasing pangs of greed for what he can appreciate but not afford, a habit of judging people by their acquisitions -and of being judged and found wanting...