Read On Beauty for Free Online Page B

to whom. The matter was too deeply clouded and perverted for him by the excruciating memory of the following two sentences:
    Even given the extreme poverty of the arguments offered, the whole would of course be a great deal more compelling if Belsey knew to which painting I was referring. In his letter he directs his attack at the Self-Portrait of 1629 that hangs in Munich. Unfortunately for him, I make it more than clear in my article that the painting under discussion is the Self-Portrait with Lace Collar of the same year, which hangs in The Hague.
    These were Monty Kipps’s sentences. Three months on they clanged, they stung, and sometimes they even seemed to have an actual weight – the thought of them made Howard’s shoulders roll forward and down as if someone had snuck up behind and ladenhim with a backpack filled with stones. Howard got off the train at Baker Street and crossed the platform to the northbound Jubilee line, where the compensation of a waiting train greeted him. And of course, the thing was that in both of these self-portraits Rembrandt wears a white collar, for Christ’s sake; both faces emerge from murky, paranoid shadows with a timorous adolescent look about them – but no matter. Howard had failed to note the differing head position described in Monty’s article. He had been going through an extremely difficult time personally and had let his guard down. Monty saw his chance and took it. Howard would have done the same. To enact with one sudden tug (like a boy removing his friend’s shorts in front of the opposing team) a complete exposure, a cataclysmic embarrassment – this is one of the purest academic pleasures. One doesn’t have to deserve it; one has only to leave oneself open to it. But what a way to go! For fifteen years these two men had been moving in similar circles; passing through the same universities, contributing to the same journals, sometimes sharing a stage – but never an opinion – during panel discussions. Howard had always disliked Monty, as any sensible liberal would dislike a man who had dedicated his life to the perverse politics of right-wing iconoclasm, but he had never really hated him until he had heard the news, three years ago, that Kipps too was writing a book about Rembrandt. A book that, even before it was published, Howard sensed would be a hugely popular (and populist) brick designed to sit heavily atop the New York Times bestseller list for half a year, crushing every book beneath it. It was the thought of that book, and of its likely fate (compared to Howard’s own unfinished work, which, in the best of all possible worlds, could only ever end up in the bookshelves of a thousand art history students), that had pushed to him to write that terrible letter. In front of the entire academic community Howard had picked up some rope and hanged himself.
    Outside Kilburn Station Howard found a phone-box and called directory inquiries. He gave the Kippses’ full address and received in return a phone number. For a few minutes he hung about,examining the prostitutes’ cards. Strange that there should be so very many of these ladies-of-the-afternoon, tucked away behind the Victorian bay windows, reclining in post-war semis. He noticed how many were black – many more than in a Soho phone-box, surely – and how many, if the photos were to be believed (are they to be believed?), were exceptionally pretty. He picked up the handset again. He paused. In the past year he had grown shyer of Jerome. He feared the new adolescent religiosity, the moral seriousness and silences, always somehow implicitly critical. Howard took courage and dialled.
    â€˜Hello?’
    â€˜Yes, hello.’
    The voice – young-sounding and very London – threw Howard for a moment.
    â€˜ Hi .’
    â€˜Sorry, who’s this?’
    â€˜I’m . . . who’s that?’
    â€˜This is the Kipps residence.