WORLD’S FAIR

An artist experiences heartbreak and joy over the course of a long career in Dunlap’s story.

Wilson Armitage, a farm boy from rural Ohio, experiences a moment of profound transformation on a Future Farmers of America trip to the New York City World’s Fair in 1964. Encountering Michelangelo’s Pietà in person, he marvels at its strange beauty, as well as the devotion of a priest in line. From then on, “the worm had turned for him. The city was his future, the farm his past.” Ten years later, wielding a BFA in painting and printmaking from Ohio State University, he’s living in Soho with an “affordable summer rental” in the Hamptons. Renewing his commitment to his art, he moves to the Hamptons year-round and begins a painting practice that heralds his “meteoric rise to prominence.” A turning point in his career comes when he’s awarded the Rome Prize, which comes with a year-long, all-expenses-paid residency at the American Academy in Rome. In the Eternal City, he falls for an “Irish lass” named Cortland Milroy and experiences both great creative breakthroughs and personal tragedy. Upon his return to the States, he connects with his dying father. Dunlap’s careful research and attention to detail are obvious. His knowledge of both contemporary and classical art is capacious, and he uses an omniscient voice that flashes forward to tell readers what will happen: For instance, at the AAR, “the food was passable and would later be transformed to great advantage by Alice Waters and her Rome Sustainable Food Program.” All of this material, however, does not have the effect of making Wilson’s character feel multifaceted or fully present on the page. The plot simply progresses through his life, without much sense of tension or thwarted desires, and the very sparse dialogue means the story is told almost entirely in a distancing summary format. The ending is strangely abrupt, and readers may be distracted by components of the timeline, or by repeated references to “the fastidious Japanese.”

An impressive but dramatically muted blend of compelling art critique and glancing play-by-play of a life.