{"product_id":"optic-nerveisbn-9781646220022","title":"Optic Nerve","description":"\u003cb\u003e\"In this delightful autofiction―the first book by Gainza, an Argentine art critic, to appear in English―a woman delivers pithy assessments of world–class painters along with glimpses of her life, braiding the two into an illuminating whole.\" ―\u003ci\u003eThe New York Times Book Review\u003c\/i\u003e, Notable Book of the Year and Editors' Choice\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eThe narrator of \u003ci\u003eOptic Nerve\u003c\/i\u003e is an Argentinian woman whose obsession is art. The story of her life is the story of the paintings, and painters, who matter to her. Her intimate, digressive voice guides us through a gallery of moments that have touched her.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eIn these pages, El Greco visits the Sistine Chapel and is appalled by Michelangelo’s bodies. The mystery of Rothko’s refusal to finish murals for the Seagram Building in New York is blended with the story of a hospital in which a prostitute walks the halls while the narrator’s husband receives chemotherapy. Alfred de Dreux visits Géricault’s workshop; Gustave Courbet’s devilish seascapes incite viewers “to have sex, or to eat an apple”; Picasso organizes a cruel banquet in Rousseau’s honor . . . All of these fascinating episodes in art history interact with the narrator’s life in Buenos Aires―her family and work; her loves and losses; her infatuations and disappointments. The effect is of a character refracted by environment, composed by the canvases she studies.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eSeductive and capricious, \u003ci\u003eOptic Nerve\u003c\/i\u003e marks the English–language debut of a major Argentinian writer. It is a book that captures, like no other, the mysterious connections between a work of art and the person who perceives it.\u003cb\u003ePraise for \u003ci\u003eOptic Nerve\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003eFinalist for the 2020 \u003ci\u003eLos Angeles Times\u003c\/i\u003e Art Seidenbaum Award for First Fiction\u003cbr\u003e\u003ci\u003eThe New York Times Book Review\u003c\/i\u003e, 1 of the 100 Notable Books of the Year\u003cbr\u003e\u003ci\u003ePublishers Weekly\u003c\/i\u003e, One of the Top Ten Books of the Year\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e“In this delightful autofiction—the first book by Gainza, an Argentine art critic, to appear in English—a woman delivers pithy assessments of world–class painters along with glimpses of her life, braiding the two into an illuminating whole.” —\u003ci\u003eThe New York Times Book Review\u003c\/i\u003e, Editors’ Choice\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e“Appealing and digressive . . . María’s store of information about painters and their lives can make reading the book feel, delightfully, like auditing a course . . . Consistently charms with its tight swirl of art history, personal reminiscence and aesthetic theories.” —John Williams, \u003ci\u003eThe New York Times Book Review\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e“A roving, impassioned hybrid of art history and memoir . . . The pithy biographical portions of \u003ci\u003eOptic Nerve\u003c\/i\u003e are bracing correctives to potted textbook histories . . . Treat the chapters like stand–alone essays, each one enlivened by the delightful variety and idiosyncrasy of artistic obsession.” —Sam Sacks, \u003ci\u003eThe Wall Street Journal\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eStartlingly original . . . Both Gainza’s writing style and her taste in art display a preference for understatement . . . One senses a certain arbitrariness, a sincerity of taste that brings to mind Borges’s literary enthusiasms . . . Rare and exquisite.” —Maxine Swann, \u003ci\u003eLos Angeles Review of Books\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e“Gainza’s narrator is an Argentinian woman with a great interest in art and she weaves in and out of anecdotes from her own life, information about artists, and engagement with the art itself. Its discursiveness is its greatest strength; the smooth movement from one subject to the other is engaging and satisfying. Gainza also has an ability to wrestle with the contradictions and small lies that operating in the Art world, so to speak, produces.” —Bradley Babendir, \u003ci\u003eChicago Review of Books\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e“Here, art is a trellis around which life knots and overlaps, severs, climbs upward . . . \u003ci\u003eOptic Nerve\u003c\/i\u003e’s episodic iridescence—the way each chapter shimmers with the delicacy of a soap bubble—belies its gravity. Gainza has written an intricate, obsessive, recherché novel about the chasm that opens up between what we see and what we understand . . . a radiant debut.” —Dustin Illingworth, \u003ci\u003eThe Nation\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e“Gainza’s long–awaited English–language debut is a provocative novel that investigates the power, value, and emotional significance that art carries, from the perspective of one deeply curious Argentinian woman.” —David Canfield, \u003ci\u003eEntertainment Weekly\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e“\u003ci\u003eOptic Nerve\u003c\/i\u003e would be worth reading as an art history lesson alone; its descriptions of great paintings are phenomenal, as are its lives–of–the–artists anecdotes . . . With each chapter, María finds a new artist to love, and, in doing so, accesses a new part of herself. It's a pleasure to watch her do both.” —Lily Meyer, \u003ci\u003eNPR\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e“Falling somewhere between essay and close personal narrative, \u003ci\u003eOptic Nerve\u003c\/i\u003e reads like a museum. It encompasses countless styles, eras, and characters, offering new stories and ideas for our narrator to follow down winding hallways. Considering artist legacies, Argentine culture, and the accuracy of perception, Gainza paints life and art as adjacent forces; fabricated images and stories become real, casting their shadows onto memory.” —Nikki Shaner–Bradford, \u003ci\u003eThe Paris Review\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e“Is there anything more exciting than when art defies categorization, resists genre, operates only within the boundaries of its creator’s intentions? María Gainza's \u003ci\u003eOptic Nerve\u003c\/i\u003e is one such piece of art; its words shimmer and shimmy inside your head as it leads you to places you’ve never been, and could only ever have imagined. Part autofiction and part inquiry into the consumption of art, \u003ci\u003eOptic Nerve\u003c\/i\u003e is a vital read for anyone who knows that seeing something isn't the same thing as perceiving it, and that once you understand the distinction between the two, entirely new worlds can open up, unconstrained from the restrictions too often placed upon them.” —Kristin Iversen, \u003ci\u003eNYLON\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cb\u003eMaría Gainza \u003c\/b\u003ewas born in Buenos Aires, where she still resides. She has worked as a correspondent for \u003ci\u003eThe New York Times\u003c\/i\u003e in Argentina, as well as for \u003ci\u003eARTnews\u003c\/i\u003e. She has also been a contributor to \u003ci\u003eArtforum\u003c\/i\u003e, \u003ci\u003eThe Buenos Aires Review\u003c\/i\u003e, and \u003ci\u003eRadar\u003c\/i\u003e, the cultural supplement from Argentine newspaper \u003ci\u003ePágina\/12\u003c\/i\u003e. She is coeditor of the collection \u003ci\u003eLos Sentidos\u003c\/i\u003e (\u003ci\u003eThe Senses\u003c\/i\u003e) on Argentinean art, and in 2011 she published \u003ci\u003eTextos elegidos\u003c\/i\u003e (\u003ci\u003eSelected Texts\u003c\/i\u003e), a collection of her notes and essays on contemporary art. \u003ci\u003eOptic Nerve\u003c\/i\u003e is her first work of fiction and her first book to be translated into English.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eThomas Bunstead\u003c\/b\u003e is a writer and translator based in East Sussex, England. He has translated some of the leading Spanish–language writers working today, including Eduardo Halfon, Yuri Herrera, Agustín Fernández Mallo, and Enrique Vila–Matas, and his own writing has appeared in publications such as \u003ci\u003eKill Author\u003c\/i\u003e, \u003ci\u003eThe White Review\u003c\/i\u003e, and \u003ci\u003eThe Times Literary Supplement\u003c\/i\u003e. He is an editor at the translation journal \u003ci\u003eIn Other Words\u003c\/i\u003e.","brand":"Catapult","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":46301010395365,"sku":"NP9781646220022","price":16.95,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/1842\/7735\/files\/9781646220021_826fe514-d362-46b6-98ce-3eace0da4976.jpg?v=1730746543","url":"https:\/\/k12savings.com\/products\/optic-nerveisbn-9781646220022","provider":"K12savings","version":"1.0","type":"link"}