Rachel Cusk’s 2021 novel “Second Place” takes inspiration from Mabel Dodge Luhan’s 1932 memoir of the time D. H. Lawrence came to stay with her in Taos, New Mexico. Cusk picks up some of the pieces of Luhan’s memoir to tell a numinous story in which a woman (M) invites a famous painter (L) to stay at her remote, coastal guesthouse. M hopes the landscape will inspire the painter, but what she really wants is for the painter to capture, or at least validate, some dark and impalpable part of her artistic soul. And yet, “Second Place” is far from being a simple ‘artist’s novel’. The relationship between M and L doesn’t quite pan out the way she hoped, and in the course of its unravelling the novel expands to encompass a variety of relationships and moral questions. Cusk takes on female fate in a man’s world and, in an age when a painting can sell at any price, asks how much a painter must pay for their art?
Some of the books and authors discussed in this episode include:
Additional segments throughout the podcast include:
Apple Podcast: https://lnkd.in/gF2zVhQT
Spotify: https://lnkd.in/gTHtxVh5
Podbean: https://onthesamepagepodcast.podbean.com/
Twitter: https://twitter.com/thesamepagepod_
Email: seamusandblake@gmail.com
IG: https://www.instagram.com/on.the.same.page.podcast/
--------