Читать книгу Pollock - Donald Wigal - Страница 12

“No chaos, damn it!”[13]

Age 38

While biographies don’t often include fiction in their resources, there are novels, plays, and movies about Pollock which do, with the usual caveats, help weave over certain holes in the veils that partly cover the subject.

A reviewer for Time Magazine felt the Updike novel was lovely and wise (63). In fact, Updike’s very imaginative portrait of Pollock not only reveals some details more clearly than most serious biographies, but, unfortunately, also collates facts with tabloid rumours concerning alleged homosexuality, affairs and illegitimate children of the artist. More than a few Pollock fans believe the novel, like sensational tabloid headlines, perpetuates unsubstantiated myths unnecessarily. Some feel there is really enough violence, shock and dissipation in the facts, without exaggerating them.

There is also another highly imaginative novel of Pollock’s life: Top of the World, Ma!, by Michael Guinzburg. The novel presents several of the same events from Pollock’s life as Updike’s novel (30). The title refers to a line spoken by actor Jimmy Cagney in the 1949 movie White Heat. The original line is, “Look at me now, Ma! Top of the world!” The line would certainly have been appropriate for a successful Pollock to say to his own mother at the height of his career.