A Collection of Beauties at the Height of Their Popularity
A Novel
by Whitney Otto
List Price: $12.95
Pages: 304
Format: Paperback
ISBN: 0812966813
Publisher: Random House
In a novel about drifting and reckless youth looking for a more permanent form of happiness, Whitney Otto transports us to San Francisco, a magical, fog-shrouded city suffused with possibility and restless energy. Her characters congregate night after night at a North Beach bar called the Youki Singe Tea Room, their lives conjoined by bonds of friendship and shared experience, and by the poignant realization that true ecstasy may be found only in surrendering oneself to someone or something else. A Collection of Beauties at the Height of Their Popularity explores the intricacies, the pain, and the rapture of human connection.
top of the page
1. A Collection of Beauties at the Height of Their Popularity is structured as a series of episodes shifting between incidents that seem separate, despite the common setting and the characters' social connections. For example, what does Gracie and Theo's befriending Margot have to do with Nash's affair with Georgia? Is it odd that these people never directly interact? Does this book feel like a novel (as opposed to a story collection)?
2. Otto's characters in this novel are constantly roving, moving quickly between jobs, apartments, and lovers. Given their transitory natures, do you think these characters find meaning in their lives? Do the characters enjoy living in a kind of day-to-day manner? What would be pleasurable about such a life? What would be difficult? Do you think the characters are grappling with larger life questions, and, if so, what do you think those questions are?
3. Throughout A Collection of Beauties, Jelly, the most visually stunning of Otto's characters, exudes a sense of separation from the people surrounding her. Do you think that beauty can set someone so far apart as to bring on a sort of loneliness? How do you think the novel defines beauty?
4. Do you think the title is ironic -- that is, are the characters in any way "popular"? Many of them feel alienated even in their own crowded apartments and parties. Why do you think Otto gave her novel this title, besides the fact that it is the name of one of the woodblock prints in the book?
5. There has been some discussion lately about the "second adolescence" of American twentysomethings. It is said that this phase of development is a relatively new phenomenon, beginning only with the members of the Baby Boom Generation. Do you think this is true? Do you think that the style of living Otto's characters embrace -- no commitment to anything, anyone, or any place -- has value, in any phase of life? Or does it just seem self-indulgent?
6. Is it significant that the story takes place in the early 1980s? Politically? Socially? Do you think it would change the interaction of the characters if they had cell phones and e-mail?
7. A Collection of Beauties opens and ends with excerpts from Elodie's pillow book. Why do you think Otto frames her novel with this book? Is the pillow book some sort of representation or symbol? How is it relevant to these characters' lives?
8. What is the role of art in the novel? Do the illustrations lend an atmosphere, or some kind of illumination of theme, to A Collection of Beauties? Would the book be the same without them?
top of the page
"Readers in the mood to be seduced [will be] beguiled by this thickly atmospheric book and its restless lovers [who] float languidly through . . . a place of seductive allure . . . where anything is permissible."
—The New York Times
"Beguiling . . . Otto focuses on the minute connections—a glance, a touch—that suddenly bind [her] characters to love's tenuous grasp.”
—Entertainment Weekly
"[Otto's characters know what] might ruin them, but they revel in the risk, or at least dread it with terrible pleasure.”—
—The Oregonian
"Mesmerizing . . . a series of diverting, finely drawn glimpses that evoke a doomed world of escapist pleasure.”
—The Washington Post Book World
