Somebody Else's Life

Stephen Cooper, a highly respected, middle-aged college professor, suddenly craves wealth and adventure and resorts to forgery on a grand scale to obtain it

Men who want to escape from their lives and assume new identities seem to be cropping up everywhere this season. Like Philip Roth's Zuckerman, Stephen Cooper suddenly finds his existence empty and purposeless. A 50-year-old professor of philosophy at Northwestern, he experiences an epiphany while viewing a Whistler painting in the Peacock Room of Washington's Freer Gallery, and thereafter concocts a con scheme that he hopes will restore his will to live and at the same time make him very rich. Cooper's mistress, Alice Chase, an expert in authenticating works of art, is the perfect ally in Stephen's plan to forge a copy of an antique leather wall hanging. Circumstances motivate Stephen to marry her, a union of convenience rather than passion, since he is incapable of true feeling. Alice is a shrewd and ingenious conspirator, a lot smarter than Stephen, and it is to her credit rather than his that they pull off the scam, using disguises that are in themselves transformations of personality. A bitterly ironic twist of fate spoils Stephen's triumph, however. Philipson's ( Secret Understandings dry, detached style makes the narrative slow going for nearly half its length, and although it does take on tension once the scam gets underway, the characters never acquire flesh-and-blood dimensions. While it has elements of a sedate thriller, the novel is really a psychological study concretized by interesting details of the art world and by the well-rendered Chicago background.
Copyright 1986 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Bored by his job as professor of the history of philosophy and envious of his half-brother's wealth, Stephen Cooper embarks on a scheme to produce and market a million-dollar art forgery. His accomplice soon becomes his wife, and they share a new identity under the androgynous name Leslie Egmont. The marriage remains tenuous, however, disintegrating completely once their plot is successful. The title thus alludes to the liberating effects of assuming a new identity but also to the immense difficulties of sharing "somebody's else's life." While Philipson (director, University of Chicago Press) provides an intriguing account of a high-class scam, his major interest is in examining the manners and values of a privileged class. His characters collect things but seldom discover what is truly authentic and valuable. Albert E. Wilhelm, English Dept., Tennessee Technological Univ., Cookeville
Copyright 1987 Reed Business Information, Inc.