"The Man in the Red Coat"

The Man in the Red Coat
(published November, 2019)

Julian Barnes's recent book The Man in the Red Coat is very puzzling. When I bought it, I thought it was a historical novel. As I began reading I quickly found that it's nothing like that, but I have finished reading the book, and I still don't know what, exactly, it is. Social history? Intellectual history? Personality sketches of a bunch of people who lived in France and England at the end of the 19th century? A bunch of muddled thoughts of a wonderful present-day writer, free associating while looking at very old photos and portraits by famous artists of that day? An attempt to write a biography of Dr. Samuel Pozzi (1846-1918) -- but one that was derailed by too much focus on a whole lot of other people? A successful biography that I just didn't appreciate? Something else that I didn't appreciate? And I wish I had been a more successful reader, as I've liked many of Barnes's other books.

The Man in the Red Coat presents many details about the life of Dr. Pozzi,  who was a famous gynecologist and made the profession much more effective and respectable, as well as being a member of high society in France. Barnes includes details about Pozzi's accomplishments innovating new surgical procedures and new anti-infection techniques, as well as his leadership in the practice of medicine in France and worldwide. As an administrator, for example, his taste in art was reflected when he commissioned art works for the hospital where he worked, such as “Health Restored to the Sick” -- a very large mural (4.4 by 2.75 meters) by Georges Clairin.

Dr. Pozzi was well-connected among the intellectual classes, the artists and stage performers, the aristocrats, and the bourgeois high society of Paris in his day. Consequently much (in fact, too much) of the narrative is occupied with the lives of a number of people who were in some way associated with Dr. Pozzi, some close, some not-so-close. We especially learn a lot about the famous people such as Oscar Wild, John Singer Sargent, Marcel Proust, and Sarah Bernhardt (whose face appeared in Clairin's allegorical mural). I'll spare you a list of the dozens of people who were less-well-known who get a lot of space in the book. Barnes manages to provide a huge amount of detail about Pozzi, his wife and children, and all his many friends, his colleagues, his acquaintances, and of the acquaintances of all of these people.

Dr. Pozzi at Home by John Singer Sargent (1881)

As you can tell, I am a frustrated reader. All these free ranging sketches of numerous people and their relationships to each other as well as to Pozzi simply didn't seem coherent to me. I couldn't follow the choice of all these riffs on portraits by artists of the time, such as the one that gives the book its title.

Occasionally Barnes does offer a hint about what he was doing:

"I was drawn to Dr. Pozzi by the Sargent portrait, became curious about his life and work, wrote this book, and still find the picture a true and dashing likeness." Julian Barnes, The Man in the Red Coat, Kindle Locations 2644-2645).

Throughout the book, Barnes comes back to his interpretation of this portrait, and to the interpretation of many other portraits by Sargent and others, as well as speculation and history of the lives -- especially the sex lives -- of the subjects.

Finally "Things We Cannot Know" is the title of a long section towards the end of the book, where Barnes summarizes all the half-known biographical details and intriguing hints he found in researching the doctor's life and the lives -- especially the sex lives --  of his friends and acquaintances. And he ends this long passage: "All these matters could, of course, be solved in a novel." (Kindle Locations 3188 and 3257).

The book is full of small photographs of all the famous people of the era, as well as of their portraits by famous painters. At times I felt as if this collection of photos and portraits was a driving force in Barnes's choice of subject matter. He explains these photos:

"If, during the first two decades of the twentieth century, you bought a chocolate bar from the grocers Félix Potin, there was an outside chance that you might find in it a small photograph of Dr. Pozzi, the size and shape of a cigarette card. Between 1898 and 1922 Félix Potin produced three series of Célébrités Contemporaines— with around five hundred in each batch— and also sold albums into which you could stick your cards. Pozzi featured in the second series, and was available in two different poses. I have both cards on my desk. Full-bearded and wavy-haired, with a marked widow’s peak, he wears a dark jacket: in one, arms folded, he gazes off to our right; in the other, he stares straight back at us. Both poses exude dynamism and self-confidence; 'Pozzi, Médecin' each of them proclaims." (Julian Barnes, The Man in the Red Coat, Kindle Locations 1184-1189). 

Wait! They are just like the Famous Witch and Wizard cards included in each purchase of chocolate frogs -- the cards that Harry Potter learns about on his first trip on the Hogwarts Express! Never mind. This insight is of no more use to me than any other.

To you, my readers, I apologize for writing such a confused review, but it's all mine and copyright © 2020 by me, mae sander, for maefood dot blog spot dot com, and if you are finding it elsewhere, it's a pirate version!