The Great Man

THE GREAT MAN

by Kate Christensen

 

Award: PEN/Faulkner Winner 2008

 

Date Read: September 6, 2022

 

Oscar Feldman was a famous painter whose popularity hasn’t seemed to diminish with his passing. In fact, he seems more popular than ever. Two biographers are vying to be the first to write about his life and in so doing, interview the women that surrounded Oscar’s life. A notorious womanizer, Oscar had a wife, Abigail, a mistress, Teddy, and countless affairs. Teddy was more than just a mistress – she and Oscar had twins together. Abigail and Oscar had one son, Ethan, who is severely autistic.

 

Oscar’s genre was the female form, naturally. The women in his life continually refer to him as a “great man” but was he really? After reading about the different perspectives about Oscar, his motivations, his talent – Oscar seems to be a man that found his niche but had little in the way of an inner life. He seems like a man absorbed by his own pleasure and fascination with women. Talented? Mostly. Narcissistic? Almost certainly.

 

Oscar surrounded himself with strong women. Abigail and Teddy were aware of the other’s existence and tolerated one another in the life of their beloved. They both understood that Oscar needed both women in his life and to deny him would be to lose him. Although they never spoke while Oscar was alive, the arrival of the two competing biographers causes them to come together to agree on the legacy they wish to portray for Oscar. Included in this meeting of the minds is Maxine, Oscar’s sister, who doesn’t really care for either Abigail or Teddy.

 

Further, Maxine is trying to hide a secret she promised Oscar she would never tell – that one of the paintings hanging in MOMA was actually painted by her. As young painters, Maxine and Oscar made a bet that he couldn’t paint in the abstract like Maxine and that Maxine couldn’t paint in Oscar’s style. The painting they produced had to be accepted into their next gallery show to consider it a “win.” Needless to say, Oscar’s was a disaster and Maxine’s made it into MOMA under Oscar’s name. Although she had promised to take that secret to her grave, the model of the painting ended up telling a New York Times art critic and the truth comes to light.

 

I can’t imagine being as intimate as Teddy and Oscar were, but Teddy being the mistress, only finds out about Oscar’s death through the obituary in the newspaper. He was the father of her children, yet she had no claim on his life or legacy. Distinctly lacking in Teddy’s home, for example, are any paintings by Oscar. 

 

I would argue that Oscar was not a great man. The women ultimately agree that he was one of those charmed people that, no matter what he did, came up smelling like roses. Whether he deserved it or not. Perhaps that is the mark of a great man after all.