![]() The work seems cold and mechanical on its surface but there's an erotic (and humorous) undercurrent beneath it-it's a Rube Goldberg contraption of unrequited desire. It's a towering work (both physically and historically), and possesses between the two panes of shattered glass that contain it a kind of encoded narrative reflecting the sexual dynamics between men and women. But it's The Bride Stripped Bare that captivated me from the first time I saw it. And fair enough, that simple act changed the way we think about art. Did it capture your imagination in real life, or just suit your fictional purposes? I've found that most people who've heard of Duchamp associate him mainly with his readymades, usually with Fountain, the urinal he signed and submitted to an art exhibition in 1917. Without spoiling anything for readers, can you explain why you focused in on The Bride Stripped Bare by Her Bachelors, Even-a large artwork Duchamp worked on from 1915 to 1923. After that decision the whole backdrop of the novel opened up exponentially and the novel began to take shape. Finally I dropped the idea of writing about him specifically and decided to focus more on his legacy as an artist. But he was elusive and waggish as a person, and I found him just as hard to pin down as a subject. That said, I spent several years working around various misguided attempts to write a version of Duchamp as a character. ![]() I have a tendency to write my obsessions into my fiction, one way or another, so it was only a matter of time before he became a subject. Plus, I've always been drawn to the period he produced his greatest works, the 1910s-its aesthetics, its spirit, its sense of possibility and invention, the fact that provocation and scandal had real cultural relevance then-and Duchamp was right at the center of it. ![]() He had an effortless grace and elegance about him and just seemed vaguely amused by it all. So much of contemporary art traces a direct line to his work, yet he seemed to have very little ego invested in this fact. What made you choose Duchamp and his art as a primary focus for the novel? I've been fixated on Duchamp since high school. In The Readymade Thief, a secretive group called the Societé Anonyme reveres Duchamp and his creations. The word "readymade" was made famous by artist Marcel Duchamp, who presented found objects as "readymade" art. The Readymade Thief (reviewed below) is his debut novel. Originally from the San Francisco Bay area, he now lives in Chicago with his wife and son, and teaches fiction writing at the University of Chicago. Kerry McHugh, blogger at Entomology of a BookwormĪugustus Rose is a novelist and screenwriter. In Lab Girl, she writes with heart about her research, her relationship with her lab partner and her love of nature-and includes plenty of scientific detail about plants and dirt along the way. Hope Jahre is a geobiologist who has dedicated her life to the study of plants, trees and soil (and has received three Fulbright Awards). (For a different take on what happens to our bodies post-death, Tom Jokinen's Curtains: Adventures of an Undertaker-in-Training details the specifics of embalming and decomposition, while Caitlin Doughty uses her experience working in a mortuary as a lens through which to explore various bits of research around death rituals throughout history in her memoir, Smoke Gets in Your Eyes.) Lab Girl moves away from human life (and death) to look at plant life. She puts her scientific knowledge to work as a forensic pathologist now, and details her experiences working as a medical examiner in Working Stiff. Judy Melinek set out to be a surgeon, going so far as to complete medical school and start a residency program before realizing the job was not for her. Damon Tweedy recalls his experience facing racism and bias in the American medical system-as a professional, in his interactions with patients and as a patient himself following a diagnosis of a chronic disease. In Black Man in a White Coat, social justice meets memoir meets medicine, as Dr. As it is, reading about scientific professions will have to suffice. But these explorations of scientific professions make me wish I'd paid just a little more attention in biology class way back when-perhaps then I could have had a career in the sciences as well. ![]() Science has never been my strong suit while I appreciate the role it plays in our world, I never did well on science tests. ![]()
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