Free The Weekend: A Novel by Peter Cameron

said. “Or trying to do.”
    “So you don’t really think of yourself as a painter?”
    “No,” said Robert. “Not really.”
    “That’s interesting,” said Marian. “I always thought it was important for artists to have that strong sense of self-definition,
because the world is so unencouraging. But perhaps artists today are more practical.”
    “I guess I think it’s presumptuous. I just started painting a little while ago. I suppose I see myself as more of a student of painting than a painter.”
    “You were at Skowhegan?”
    “Yes,” said Robert.
    “Then you must be a very good student.”
    “I don’t know. It was kind of a fluke, my being there.”
    “I’m sure it wasn’t,” said Marian. “What do you think, Lyle? Did you think it a fluke?”
    “I don’t believe in flukes,” said Lyle. Marian had the feeling he hadn’t really been paying attention to the conversation.
    “Speaking of flukes,” said John. “Did you get any fish?”
    “Yes,” said Marian. “I got some swordfish. And I’m going to make that salsa marinade, so I’ll need some cilantro from the garden.” She was not going to give up on Robert that easily, however. “I’d like to see your work, sometime,” she said to him. “Or don’t you like people to see it?”
    “No,” said Robert. “I don’t mind.”
    “That’s good,” said Marian. “I never trust those artists who won’t show you their work. It seems to contradict the purpose.”
    “And what do you think the purpose is?” asked Lyle.
    Trust Lyle, Marian thought, to become interested in the conversation once it had turned from the specific to the abstract.
    “To communicate,” said Marian.
    “Do you think that there’s a difference between visual art and literature in that respect?”
    “Well, of course there’s a difference. Visual art no longer communicates as directly as literature, but its purpose hasn’t changed.
Painting shows you one scene, from which you must infer the story. Literature tells the story.”
    “So you’re talking only about narrative art?”
    “Yes.”
    “But narrative art is dead.”
    “Oh, please,” said Marian. “We’ve had this discussion before. Art forms don’t die. They grow fatigued, and are reinvented. But I do know what you mean, and in that respect I think literature is just as fatigued.”
    “How do you mean?”
    “I mean … Well, I mean that the world has changed in a way that precludes literature as we know it. I mean novels, and stories. Poetry, I think, is timeless. But novels—there’s no reason to write novels any longer. The problems that are best solved in novels no longer exist.”
    “What problems are they?”
    “Well, it seems to me that all the great novels dealt with one of a few things: the failure of marriage or the sublimation of homosexuality.”
    Lyle laughed.
    “It’s true!” said Marian. “If you think about it. And now that people get divorced—or don’t even get married in the first place—and now that homosexuals can live openly and honestly, all the tensions that complicate great fiction cease to matter. So the domestic novel, as we know it, will—well, I think it’s already happened. Do you read contemporary fiction?”
    “Not if I can help it,” said Lyle.
    “You see? Neither do I.”
    “Why not?” asked Robert.
    Marian looked at him. She had been enjoying this conversation
with Lyle. They often talked intellectually and argumentatively when they got together, simply because they liked to, and no one else ever indulged them. So they indulged one another. What was said didn’t really matter. It was the experience of saying it that they enjoyed. And Robert’s simple question put an end to all of it. For Marian did read contemporary fiction, and if Lyle had asked the question she could have invented a perfectly good reason why she didn’t, but lying to Lyle was different from lying to Robert. Lyle would know she was lying and Robert wouldn’t, for one