Author(s): Mark Haber

Novel | Humour & Satire

"What I wanted more than anything was to be standing beside Schmidt, in concert with Schmidt, at the foot of Saint Sebastian's Abyss along with Schmidt, hands cupped to the sides of our faces, debating art, transcendence, and the glory of the apocalypse."

Former best friends who built their careers writing about a single work of art meet after a decades-long falling-out. One of them, called to the other's deathbed for unknown reasons by a "relatively short" nine-page email, spends his flight to Berlin reflecting on Dutch Renaissance painter Count Hugo Beckenbauer and his masterpiece, Saint Sebastian's Abyss, the work that established both men as important art critics and also destroyed their relationship. A darkly comic meditation on art, obsession, and the enigmatic power of friendship, Saint Sebastian's Abyss stalks the museum halls of Europe, feverishly seeking salvation, annihilation, and the meaning of belief.

"Haber's comic novel tracks the friendship, falling-out and sort-of reconciliation of two critics who have devoted their careers to a 16th-century painting of St. Sebastian that both find sublime-though for different reasons. What is it about art that can move us to extremes? This absurdist take on very serious people hazards a guess." -The New York Times, "Editor's Choice"

"[A] sparkling comic novel. . . . Every few pages Haber, the author of one other novel and a story collection, throws in a gem. . . . Schmidt is one of Haber's keenest inventions." -Jackson Arn, The New York Times

"[Saint Sebastian's Abyss] poses huge questions that tax the heart as much as the brain. . . . Haber's slim volume quietly contemplates a possible distinction of art and not-art, as well as the nature of authority and of elitism. Taut as a drum, it also calls to mind the early novellas of Roberto Bolano and reads, at times, like an outtake from William Gaddis's The Recognitions." -Andrew Ervin, The Brooklyn Rail

"Haber relishes opportunities to tip sacred cows. . . . Beckenbauer and his painting are the work of Haber's imagination. But his critics feel so richly realized that one could be excused for Googling 'Saint Sebastian's Abyss' to glimpse at a canvas that only exists in the book." -Andrew Dansby, Houston Chronicle

"In sinuous, recursive sentences infused with equal parts reverence and venom, Haber constructs a darkly parodic portrait of aesthetic devotion and intellectual friendship, in which the redemptive practice of collaborative interpretation becomes a cage that two egos relentlessly rattle." -Nathan Goldman, Jewish Currents

"A delightful and dizzying excursion into the relationship between art and criticism, and all the ways that we often deceive ourselves about the things and people we love. Concise and deftly rendered, it moves forward like a rocket-or more accurately, like the transatlantic flight his unnamed American narrator takes to visit his friend and nemesis Schmidt in Berlin. . . . In each of their lives, the painting has become a kind of mirror, reflecting their ideas and their assertions back upon themselves." -David L. Ulin, Alta Journal

"Very, very funny, especially if you are an artist, or if you know any. The barbs . . . are outlandish and glorious. But it's not only a farce about ill-placed obsessions-this novel, short as it is, asks profound questions about the nature and value of art and art criticism, and also manages to be a moving account of a friendship." -Emily Temple, Literary Hub

"Saint Sebastian's Abyss seems written for readers of Enrique Vila Matas, Cesar Aira, Roberto Bolano, and Clarice Lispector. . . . But what makes Haber's book feel like it contains, as Aira puts it, 'an accumulation of time,' is its sense of a larger, expanding world." -Sean Cleary, Cleveland Review of Books

"Haber writes in a deliberately hyperbolic literary style that is a lot of fun, provided you're the type of person who has a sense of humor about your own pretensions. His work reads like it has been translated from a Balkan language by an unfunny academic, which makes it, paradoxically, utterly engaging. This, Haber's second novel, takes on art, professional rivalry, and male friendship. It is an all-too-brief delight!" -Ed Nowatka, Publishers Weekly

"[A] careful, fuguelike intellectual satire. . . . Haber deliberately withholds details about the painting itself-we know there's a donkey, a cliffside, rays of light, and apostles, but not enough to sense why [his characters] are so thunderstruck. And in a way, they hardly seem to know themselves. . . . A darkly funny novel about the wages of small-stakes intellectual combat." -Kirkus

"Saint Sebastian's Abyss feels exactly like the description of the painting-deceitfully small in scale, containing a cosmic abyss at its center. The mimetic impulse between the book and its themes pervades the whole reading experience. Aesthetic value, history, institutions, criticism, authorship, material conditions-these are only some of the terms in the critical constellation that emerges in Haber's beautiful, elegant novel." -Hernan Diaz

"A brilliantly sustained performance: clever, droll and entrancing. Mark Haber creates something entirely new, and greatly impressive, within the Bernhardian universe." -Chloe Aridjis

"The narrative follows the self-serious and hilarious antics of two friends-turned-rivals as they attempt to unlock the meaning of what is, by all accounts, an insignificant work by a raving and perverse madman from the 16th century. With the absurdity of academia and the meaninglessness of capital D discourse as his fodder, Haber has written one of my favorite books of 2022." -Bennard F., Politics & Prose Bookstore

"In Saint Sebastian's Abyss, we are swept away by the hilarious and misguided preoccupations of two compulsive pedants, a comedy duo, whose misadventures are as irresistible as they are outrageous." -Rikki Ducornet

"There is a refreshing lightsomeness to the writing in Mark Haber's new novel about art and the absurdity of academic life. The mix of love and hostility exchanged between the two art critics in this novel is both endearing and ridiculous at once. Their territorial battles over the same work of art, their willingness to upend their marriages and much of their lives over a single painting, made me laugh aloud with recognition. An absolute delight, and Haber's love of writing comes through on every page." -Idra Novey

"Something about the deadpan confidence of Haber's work has the power to convince me that imaginary paintings are real, conjured writers have walked the Earth, and the sky is purple and filled with green clouds. We're all gullible neophytes before Mark Haber's breathless novels. Saint Sebastian's Abyss is one of the first of its kind by an American writer, a sleek novel about Renaissance art, rivalry between friends and devotees, the 'perilous promise of a dead canvas,' and the meaning of the obsessions that orbit our careers (and what happens when we glimpse, even briefly, meaninglessness and the abyss beyond our singular obsessions). There's not a single sentence in this book that isn't ecstatic. To read it once is staggering; to read it again is necessary." -Spencer Ruchti, Third Place Books

"The master of absurdity returns with a tale of two pedants in search of transcendence (and, of course, a holy donkey). Haber's prose is hypnotizing, pulling the reader through his character-driven novel as surely as languorous paint strokes lead an eye across a canvas. Saint Sebastian's Abyss is obsessive, reverent, and so unique." -Laura Graveline, Brazos Bookstore

"I loved everything about Saint Sebastian's Abyss. A fantastic tale of the glories and tribulations of chasing an ecstatic relationship to art." -Matt Bell

"What a wonderful, short shock of a novel this is. A superb exploration of friendship and enmity through a single painting of a long-dead and exquisitely imagined artist. An amazing meditation on life, loss, meaning, and suffocation. Funny, dark, strange, gothic, and beautiful-an extraordinary journey through three broken lives." -Edward Carey

"In Saint Sebastian's Abyss, art is the most important thing in the world, or the least; a holy calling or a pastime for narcissists; secular prayer or something that can be traded for sex. With exuberant wit and a superb array of fine-edged paradoxes, Mark Haber flays art of its pieties and pretensions, and when the cutting's done, he has us look to see if anything's left." -Adam Sachs

"Evocative of the work of Thomas Bernhard, Laszlo Krasznahorkai, Gilbert Sorrentino, and other great literary obsessives of a satirical stripe, Saint Sebastian's Abyss by Mark Haber is whip smart, scalpel sharp, wicked funny, and, ultimately, genuinely moving. Fans of Haber's excellent Reinhardt's Garden are in for a serious treat with this one. I loved it and can't wait to see what comes next." -Laird Hunt