Character Analysis
(Avoiding Spoilers)
Overview… a painter in the midst of a struggling marriage to a jealous doctor named Ralph. Marian spends her time sitting by her spacious home’s vista of the LA Basin, painting nude portraits. While not painting, she and her husband seek solace in drink (particularly tequila). Ralph doesn’t take kindly to Marian’s pretentious art-speak. She says that her paintings of nude women are “about seeing, and the responsibility that comes with that.” Such talk reminds him of another artist with whom he suspects she’s had a bit of a fling.
Personality… intellectual, soft-spoken, and sophisticated. Marian knows that her husband feels threatened by her airy, arty milieu, so she does her best to keep the abstract discussion to a minimum. In between her own marital fights she councils her sister through an abusive relationship of her own.
Get to Know her in...
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Multi-storied, fish-eyed look at American culture with some 22 characters intersecting--profoundly or fleetingly--through each other's lives. Running the emotional gamut from disturbing to humorous, Altman's portrait of the contemporary human condition is nevertheless fascinating. Based on nine stories and a prose poem by Raymond Carver.
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The nine stories and one poem collected in this volume formed the basis for the astonishingly original film “Short Cuts” directed by Robert Altman. Collected altogether in this volume, these stories form a searing and indelible portrait of American innocence and loss. From the collections Will You Please Be Quiet, Please?, Where I’m Calling From, What We Talk About When We Talk About Love, and A New Path to the Waterfall; including an introduction by Robert Altman. With deadpan humor and enormous tenderness, this is the work of “one of the true contemporary masters” (The New York Review of Books).
