Objects in Mirror Are Closer Than They Appear

Objects in Mirror Are Closer Than They Appear, My first novel, published in 1995 and now available in a new paperback from Broadway and, like all six of my books, as a download for e-readers (I am fortunate and pleased to have all of my books in print and available for e-readers as well), is concerned with perceptions and reflections. It's about seeing yet not perceiving. The main character of the novel, Harriet Rose (who also makes an appearance in my third novel, The Little Women), didn't acknowledge the uncanny work of Diane Arbus, who was obsessed with twinning and mirroring and multiples, as she narrated her thoughts and feeling about her own photography. It would have been a good element to include in the story, and I regret not having devoted sufficient thought in that direction.

About photography, Diane Arbus said: "The process itself has a kind of exactitude, a kind of scrutiny that we're not normally subject to. I mean that we don't subject each other to. We're nicer to each other than the intervention of the camera is going to make us. It's a little bit cold, a little bit harsh."

What is a Photograph?

According to Diane Arbus, "A photograph is a secret about a secret. The more it tells you, the less you know." How I wish I had put knowledge of this bit of wisdom into the head of Harriet Rose, the photographer and main character of my first novel, Objects in Mirror Are Closer Than They Appear.

The Corner of Winter and Summer

The middle section of my first novel, Objects in Mirror Are Closer Than They Appear, takes place in a New York suburban neighborhood very much inspired by my childhood surroundings, Forest Hills Gardens. The narrative in this section takes the form of a series of linked third person stories about Harriet in her childhood (in narrative strategy contrast to the epistolary first person of grown-up Harriet in Part One or the straightforward third person of Part Three that returns to the present of the Part One notebook of Harriet's letters).

As Harriet bicycles through those "Oxbridge Gardens" streets, it would have been just right for her to observe the uncanniness of a certain Forest Hills Gardens street corner a block from my childhood home: the intersection of Winter and Summer.

Still Reflecting

Why didn't I mention the German photo-grapher Ilse Bing, the "Queen of the Leica"? Surely she would be Harriet Rose's role model in Objects in Mirror Are Closer Than They Appear.

I love this Bing self-portrait, and have long thought it would be a great cover for a new edition of Objects. (Which is in the works, by the way.) Probably no marketing department would agree, however.

One More Reflection in the Mirror

My first novel, Objects in Mirror Are Closer Than They Appear, is about a photographer obsessed with reflections.

Harriet Rose is young, and tends to be more observant than perceptive. The novel has as a kind of centerpiece the Jan Van Eyck wedding portrait of the Arnolfinis, which was on the very beautiful cover of the hardcover edition (Crown, 1995) and not on the un-good cover of the Picador paperback (Henry Sene Yee is brilliant and this is one of his only flops, ever, in my eyes.) Since publication, I have read a little more about self portraiture (and everything else), and it seems likely that artists chosing to depict themselves really began to flourish in the early Renaissance because of the advent of better and cheaper mirrors, many of them convex, like the mirror in the center of the Arnolfini portrait (which is slyly repeated on the beautiful spine of the Objects jacket, with the two little Arnolfini clasped hands). This is the kind of fact Harriet Rose would possess, or perhaps it is something her friend Anne Gordon would tell her. And there would be mention in this conversation of the Jan Van Eyck self portrait of 1433, which is considered by art historians to be one of the first mirror-influenced self-portraits.