--- "Line of Beauty" takes the Booker. I haven't yet read it and wonder what the phrase, "line of beauty" refers to. I believe (Geary may assist me on this) it's a scholastic medieaval phrase, "linea pulchritudinis". The Romans were noted for _not_ having a sense of 'beauty'. Hence the use of 'pulchritudo', instead. All derivatives of 'beauty' are _romance_ (French, etc.). OTOH, the closest idea to pulchritudo the barbarians (Old-German speakers) had was 'sheen', as in Martin Sheen. But one wonders what Hollinghurst means? Cheers, JL ----- Line of Beauty takes the Booker Alan Hollinghurst's novel of gay love in the Thatcherite 1980s beats bookies' favourites to win £50,000 John Ezard, arts correspondent Wednesday October 20, 2004 The GuardianAlan Hollinghurst's The Line of Beauty, the year's outstanding big literary novel, carried off the £50,000 Man Booker prize last night in the face of strong opposition from rivals and acute disappointment. His cuttingly fastidious view of gay lusts and ambition in Thatcherite Britain beat five other novels, including the runaway favourite, David Mitchell's highly touted and already high-selling Cloud Atlas. Mitchell's imaginative tour of the world and the centuries was evens favourite with Ladbroke's and 5:4 with William Hill. Hollinghurst's book was the first gay novel to win the Booker in its 36 years. The chairman of judges, the former arts minister Chris Smith, said: "This was an incredibly difficult and close decision. It has resulted in a winning novel that is exciting, brilliantly written and gets deep under the skin of the Thatcherite 80s. The search for love, sex and beauty is rarely so exquisitely done". The result was a split vote, with Hollinghurst, Mitchell and Colm Tóibin's The Master, a fictional portrait of the author Henry James, "all very close". The Line of Beauty is a sumptuously written parable of the well-upholstered rise, decline and disgraceful fall of Nick Guest, an Oxford postgraduate who is a proud, detached connoisseur of literature, music and style. He delightedly accepts an invitation to stay at the London mansion of the super-rich Feddens, motivated by his secret love for their son. The father, Gerald Fedden, is an almost effortlessly enriched junior minister, elected in the landslide years of Thatcherism. In his personal life, Nick graduates from a black working class lover to the millionaire son of a Thatcher-ennobled Lebanese supermarket magnate. The action is set in the great houses, apartments, gardens, nudist Hampstead swimming and French park landscapes where he has rawly described covert sex. His bubble is burst by scandal and falling shares as Thatcherism begins to get flaky, and a double physical nemesis. Nick is writing his thesis on the author Henry James, and references to James novels fill his thoughts and stud the book. The final, foreboding two pages are among the most finely wrought endings in modern fiction. Martin Higgs, editor of the bookshop chain Waterstone's magazine, said last night: "The Line of Beauty is a wonderful book, a sophisticated social comedy. What is interesting about this book is that it demonstrates a shift in our views on the 1980s.This era now seems different to today and can therefore be written about with a sense of detachment. "I see a broad audience for this sort of satire on the excessive greed and furious social climbing of Thatcherite Britain. "Hollinghurst, though, has previously been known mainly to a literary audience and particularly to a gay audience so I am delighted that this prize will help elevate his writing and give it a much wider appeal, something he richly deserves." More than £100,000 was bet on the contest at William Hill and Ladbroke's with David Mitchell's Cloud Atlas a runaway favourite, followed by Alan Hollinghurst's The Line of Beauty. Extract: 'His vanity had become a kind of fear' When the women had gone, he went back upstairs, but in the remorseless glare of the news, so that the flat looked even more tawdry and pretentious. He was puzzled to think he had spent so much time in it so happily and conceitedly. The pelmets and mirrors, the spotlights and blinds, seemed rich in criticism. It was what you did if you had millions but no particular taste: you made your private space like a swanky hotel; just as such hotels flattered their customers by being vulgar simulacra of lavish private homes. A year ago it had at least the glamour of newness. Now it bore signs of occupation by a rich boy who had lost the knack of looking after himself. The piping on the sofa cushions was rubbed through where Wani had sprawled incessantly in front of the video. The crimson damask was blotted with his own and other boys' fluids. He wondered if Gemma had noticed as she sat there, making her inanely upsetting remarks. He wasn't letting her in here again, in her black boots. Nick felt furious with Wani for fucking up the cushions. The Georgian desk was marked with drink stains and razor etchings that even the optimistic Don Guest would have found it hard to disguise. 'That's beyond cosmetic repair, old boy,' Don would say. Nick fingered at the little abrasions and found himself gasping and whooping with grief ... The last photo she had shown him was terrible: a Leo with his life behind him. Nick remembered making jokes, early on, in the first unguarded liberty of a first affair, about their shared old age, Leo being 60 when Nick was 50. And there he was already; or he'd been 60 for a week before he died. He was in bed, in a sky-blue hospital gown; his face was hard to read, since Aids had taken it and written its message of terror and exhaustion on it; against which Leo seemed frailly to assert his own character in a doubtful half smile. His vanity had become a kind of fear, that he would frighten the people he smiled at. It was the loneliest thing Nick had ever seen. He thought he should write a letter and sat down at the desk. He felt a need to console Leo's mother, or to put himself right with her. Some deep convolution of feelings about his own mother, as the one person who really suffered for his homosexuality, made him see Mrs Charles as a figure to be appeased as well as comforted. 'Dear Mrs Charles,' he wrote, 'I was so terribly sorry to learn about Leo's death': there, it existed, he'd hesitated, but written it, and it couldn't be unwritten. He had a feeling, an anxious refinement of tact, that he shouldn't actually mention the death. 'Your sad news,' 'recent sad events' ... : 'Leo's death' was brutal. Then he worried that 'I was so terribly sorry' might sound like gush to her, like calling her wonderful. He knew his own forms of truth could look like insincerity to others. He was frightened of her, as a grieving woman, and uncertain what feelings to attribute to her. It seemed she had taken it all in her own way, perhaps even with a touch of zealous cheerfulness. He could see her being impressed by his educated form of words and best handwriting. Then he saw her looking mistrustfully at what he'd written. He felt the limits of his connoisseurship of tone. It was what he was working on, and yet ... He stared out of the window, and after a minute found Henry James's phrase about the death of Poe peering back at him. What was it? The extremity of personal absence had just overtaken him. The words, which once sounded arch and even facetious, were suddenly terrible to him, capacious, wise, and hard. · The Line of Beauty, Alan Hollinghurst (Picador, £16.99) ------------------------------------------------------------------ To change your Lit-Ideas settings (subscribe/unsub, vacation on/off, digest on/off), visit www.andreas.com/faq-lit-ideas.html