[In the following positive review, Pavey offers a positive assessment of The Big Glass, praising its “seamless quality.”]

The Big Glass of Gabriel Josipovici's title is closely related to the artist Marcel Duchamp's “Large Glass, the Bride stripped bare by her Bachelors, even.” That singular work, with the accompanying Green Box of Duchamp's notes, has attracted respect and the word “enigmatic” ever since it was (un)finished in 1923. Josipovici is not seeking to explain it, nor to fictionalise Duchamp's life. He has written a novel, using his rare capacity to be both maker and critic at the same time.

Harsnet the artist and Goldberg the critic are the main characters. Harsnet retains much of Duchamp; he too is working on a “delay in glass,” writing notes to go with it, taking a long time, playing chess, being intimidating. But he is doing it in London in the sixties, and is not Duchamp. He is an invention, but a recognisable one, fitting into the uncrowded, priestly, all-male group for whom the pursuit of a goal excludes everything else. We know about him because Goldberg, a sort of Sancho Panza, is busy typing up Harsnet's notes, while adding a few comments of his own.

The typing is taking place some time later, when Harsnet has already abandoned both the work and his friend. This story is told at a remove, like a room seen through a window. At first glance, the clearest things are Harsnet's commitment, his loathing for compromise, and the almost heroic proportions of his disregard for other people. His former girlfriends are particularly unenviable. Yet though the importance of his work is convincing (a rare thing, in novels about creativity), one is not being asked to join in a genuflection to The Artist.

In fact, far from the inspiration-swept-genius version of artistic activity, we often see Harsnet at a standstill, depressed or indifferent. He makes shopping lists and remembers the launderette. And he does a lot of thinking, an activity not popularly associated with artists. It may be because of the thinking that the 110 pages of The Big Glass run without a break or even an indentation. It gives the work a seamless quality. I lost my place once, started further on, realised by chance, came back to fill in, and felt it was just as good as the normal approach. For most writing that might be an insult, but in this case, not.

To say someone's work is serious runs the risk of implying it is heavy, pompous. The Big Glass is serious, but with a light heart. The scholarship and thought that fill it are there for the connections they make and the light they shed, not for show. Harsnet aligns himself with “those for whom the whole self is at stake.” His work is unquestionably for love.

Gabriel Josipovici has turned to the work of an earlier artist. This ploy, fairly common among contemporary novelists, can prompt the question, are we borrowing from the past because the present is so thin? Such doubts are unnecessary in The Big Glass, but reassert themselves, with Nicholas Salaman's The Grimace. Like Josipovici, Salaman is concerned with artistic obsession, and draws inspiration from the life of an historical character; in this case, the 18th-century sculptor, Franz Messerschmidt. Thereafter, likeness between the two novels fades.

Messerschmidt, alias Froberger, feels driven to sculpt 69 heads, exploring the range of facial expressions. Fantastical events overtake him once he becomes embroiled with Mesmer and his arcane experiments. He lets go a promising career as court sculptor, then gradually parts company with reality. All this might have been more convincing without the constant jollity of tone, and the very knowing 20th-century tinge to the cleverness. With them, it becomes an enjoyable novel that sits awkwardly in its historical setting.