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| Book Reviews, Interviews | |
This is the first installment of a three-part interview with bestselling novelist Janelle Brown on the role of art and painting in her two novels, All We Ever Wanted Was Everything and This Is Where We Live. Parts two and three will follow shortly.
Laura Tyler – When we first meet Janice, protagonist of All We Ever Wanted Was Everything, we find her at home listening to the news of her venture capitalist husband’s IPO on the radio. She appears on the cusp of becoming a very wealthy woman. Nothing seems out of reach. She covets a painting, specifically a van Gogh, and “shivers at the thought of what it might let into their home.” Why does Janice covet a painting? And why van Gogh as opposed to any of the other canonized painters? Janelle Brown – Janice grew up poor in the Midwest, and found herself accidentally pregnant before she graduated from college. As a result of that, she had to let go of her vague fantasies about living a semi-bohemian life Europe in order to be a stay at home mom. Nearly thirty years later, she still imagines herself to be an artistically-minded person — despite knowing very little about art (which is why she fantasizes about a van Gogh as opposed to a more obscure artist) — and longs for the stamp of pedigree that being a patron of the arts would give her. Hence, her fantasies about owning art as opposed to real estate. As for van Gogh – there is something wild and free about his paintings (he was, after all, somewhat bats) and I liked how this is symbolic of both her longing for escape from her current life, as well as her simultaneous terror about leaving that life altogether. She’s ambivalent about her world, but is always very controlled about all things, and van Gogh represents both the polar opposite of that control and the worst case scenario of when control is lost: You end up slicing your ear off and sending it to a prostitute. You don’t get any further from Janice’s world than that. | |
