Object of Beauty (Martin)

Discussion Questions 
Use our LitLovers Book Club Resources; they can help with discussions for any book:

• How to Discuss a Book (helpful discussion tips)
• Generic Discussion Questions—Fiction and Nonfiction
• Read-Think-Talk (a guided reading chart)

Also consider these LitLovers talking points to help get a discussion started for An Object of Beauty:

1. The first line of the book reads:

I am tired, so very tired of thinking about Lacey Yeager, yet I worry that unless I write her story down, and see the manuscript bound and tidy on my bookshelf, I will be unable to ever write about anything else.

Why is Daniel so obsessed with Lacey? Why will he be unable to write about anything else? What does he mean when he claims to veiw her as a "science project"?

2. How would you describe Daniel? Why do you think Martin uses his character to tell the story? Why, for instance, doesn't Lacey tell her own story? Or why not use a meta-narrator, an omniscient voice outside the plot itself?

3. What do you think of Lacey Yeager? Is she an endearing innocent, corrupted by a corrupt system? Is she a predator or simply an opportunist? What drives her? Do you like or dislike Lacey? Why?

4. Follow-up to Question 3: If you dislike Lacey, the book's central character, did your dislike of her detract from your enjoyment of reading the book?

5. In what sense does Lacey see herself in the de Kooning painting, "Woman I"? Have you ever had a similar experience, seen yourself in a painting?

6. Is Lacey stirred by art's aesthetic power? Does she have a genuine passion for art? Or is she infatuated with the status that her expertise lends her?

7. Follow-up to Question 6: What do you make of the episode when Lacey buys the Warhol painting, Flowers, even though there "was somethig that exerted no effort at all"? What does her purchase of it say about Lacey...and what does it say about the world of art?

8. Talk about the way Steve Martin portrays the art world and collectors—the pretension and greed. How do collectors distort the value of the work they collect? Does it affect the way you read this book to know that Martin, himself, is a serious collector...that he is an insider to this world?

9. Comparisons of this book have been made to The Great Gatsby. If you've read Fitzgerald's classic, what are the similarities between these two books?

10. Was your understanding of art and art history enlarged after reading this work? What have you learned? Do the color plates enhance the novel? Do you enjoy the way Martin works real art...and real people into his storyline?

11. What is the significance of the title, an object of beauty?

12. Does the art world that Martin portrays do justice to the art in which it traffics? Does the buying and selling denegrate a painting's true worth...or establish it's true worth?

13. Is the ending of the book satisfying for you? Why or why not?

(Questions by LitLovers. Please feel free to use them, online or off, with attribution. Thanks.)

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