In Pursuit of a Vanishing Star: A Novel Book

In writing about a reclusive actress who's apparently Greta Garbo, Sobin has given us another of those novels about stardom in the early days of film. It's about idolatry, with the actress emblematic of Garbo seen as goddess, those who attend and handle her as acolytes. And in this way it's more about the perception of those who create and nurse those beautiful and lofty enough to be supported in that olympian fashion. There are scenes in which the goddess is prepared and cared for, scenes in which some who attend her are assigned a specific duty in enhancing her image, both on screen and off. The trouble is that it's a hollow devotion. It's such a cold and self-absorbed attention to the goddess that it becomes steeped in death rather than celebration. There's a powerful section of the novel in which the director, Stiller, looks after Garbo following a day of filming on the streets of Constantinople. While he does her hair, they gaze, rapt but emotionless, at their reflections in the mirror. Twins or doppelgangers or mirror images crowd the novel. It's only through them that these characters can find the life they seek. Meaning they find it in themselves, essentially. Philip Nilson is writing a screenplay about Garbo, but he's reminded of his obsession for a young woman long gone from his life. His relation to the lost love mirrors the director's consuming passion for Garbo and for everything supporting her image on the screen. As much as I liked the structuring and central conceit of the novel, the breathless, overcharged language blighted it. I suppose it's meant to suggest Nilson's comfort with a continental milieu, and, in fact, at times it reads as Nabokovian. But the novel lacks the rich characterizations, moral depth, and tangled games of a Nabokov novel so that what we're left with is a very direct narrative told in studied and stilted prose which most often shows Sobin's clumsy two step rather than Nabokov's elegant waltz.