After examining ten American bestsellers over the course of a
semester and analyzing which characteristics the typical
"bestseller" possesses, The Agony and the Ecstasy seems an
unlikely candidate for one of the most popular books of this
century. Irving Stone's fictional biography is a 664-page epic
with the convoluted social and political history of Florence and
Rome some 500 years ago as its backdrop. Its subject is the
famed artist Michaelangelo, a man whose work is so prevalent in
today's world as to render him mythic. The work is full of
historical detail and religious discussion, but it contains very
little romance. Its main character, a man who conversed with
Popes and created some of the most famous artistic works in the
world, is hardly identifiable with the average reader. It is
repetitive, complicated, and at times difficult to read. Its
critical reception was mediocre at best. And yet the novel sold
7 million copies within two years of its publication, ranking
it among the top ten bestsellers in America both in 1961 and
1962 (Pearson, Hackett). Indeed, its popularity is
initially puzzling. What about this book, a work whose focus
seems so foreign and scholarly, made it sell? The answer to
this question may be found in the way in which Stone handled
his subject matter. Indeed, his writing reflects years of
historical research and analysis. But beyond this, the book
contains insights and fictional creations that take it out of
the realm of scholarly biography and into the realm of
historical fiction. Stone allowed himself to leave his
research at times and delve into those aspects of Michaelangelo
that were not historically documented, namely his personality
and motivations. In doing this, Stone takes the complicated,
legendary figure and renders him human. He gives him traits
with which an average person is able to identify, and thus
puts a seemingly distant world into a familiar context. It is
this fictional characterization of Michaelangelo that made him
an understandable, sympathetic hero, and thus made Stone's work
a popular success.
The fictional aspects of Stone's writing are almost as
predominant as the factual elements. Michaelangelo left a
great many papers, sonnets, and works of art for biographers to
examine and from which to extract parts of his life. However,
these sources only illuminate so much about the artist. As one
critic put it,
"A lot of known about him, but not what people most want to
know: What was he really like? What did he think while
erecting immortal masterpieces? How did he feel when frustrated
by Popes and slandered by enemies? Biographers can only
speculate about such questions." (1)
Stone's response to this lack of information was to create his
own answers to these questions. Using the works of former
Michaelangelo Vasari as a background, as well as the artist's
letters and sonnets, he invents a personality for Michaelangelo
(Bohrod). He provides the artist's opinions of other artists,
the thought processes leading to his masterpieces, the
motivations for his actions. In this respect, Stone dissects
the genius of Michaelangelo and makes him understandable to
readers. Beyond this, he gives the artist weaknesses. Stone's
Michaelangelo is solitary, has a quick temper, and is often
jealous of some of his famous contemporaries. Michaelangelo
becomes less mythic and more graspable as these very human
traits become apparent in the book. Much of the novel also
focuses on the physical aspects of the artist and his work.
Stone recounts in detail the fatigue and pain Michaelangelo
experienced while sculpting and painting, as well as the
near-starvation conditions he endured for much of his life.
Descriptions of the freezing weather in which the artist often
worked are commonplace throughout the novel. Michaelangelo is
no longer superhuman, but very much an average man with physical
wants and needs (Stone). In this respect, the modern reader
is able to relate to Stone's subject.
Stone also devotes a portion of his novel to the love life of
Michaelangelo. Described in the work are three romances
Michaelangelo may or may not have had with women. Actual
information about this area of Michaelangelo's life is rare,
and much of these portions of The Agony and the Ecstasy are
inferred from the artist's sonnets. This is particularly true
of the second romance in the book, the sexual relationship
between Michaelangelo and a character named Clarissa (Winston).
Stone draws her entire character from a sonnet written to an
unnamed love of Michaelangelo. Stone even goes as far to
include some of the sexual interludes between the woman and the
artist, thus making certain parts of the book seem like old-time
"romances" with "titillations?offered on a note of exalted
protest." (2) Obviously, these "private" moments in
Michaelangelo's life are not explicitly stated in the historical
documents Stone examined during his research. However, their
inclusion in the novel serves to add one more element of
humanity to Michaelangelo. Again, the legend becomes mortal,
and the average reader is able to connect with his character.
Critics were the first people to link the popularity of Stone's
portrait of Michaelangelo with his creative inferences and
fictitious incidents. They were also the first people to
condemn Stone for including those aspects in his book. As one
writer put it, "The very methods that insured his success and
illustrated his talents infuriated some critics." (3)
Essentially, critics denounced Stone's writing because in spite
of all the research he had done, he still included fictional
incidents and characterizations in the novel. One critic
questioned this technique, asking, "?Does Mr. Stone feel that
the verifiable biographical and romantic elements here are
inadequate in themselves for a 'biographical romance?'" (4)
Furthermore, many felt that non-experts would misinterpret
these fictional incidents as real. One obituary described
Stone's critics as saying that "in his very best work it was
difficult to tell what the subject had actually said and what
Mr. Stone had him say. And the better his work, the more
difficult it was." (3) And yet, this seamless transition
between the intricate descriptions of Michaelangelo's and the
thoughts and feelings of the artist were instrumental in making
the subject interesting and approachable for Stone's readers.
By including the ordinary with the extraordinary, Stone made
his years of scholarly research and examination palatable for
the popular masses.
Stone's mixture of fact and fiction is not found only in The
Agony and the Ecstasy. He wrote over twenty "fictional
biographies," a genre he claimed to have invented (Gill). Each
combined years of research by Stone on a certain famous subject
and his own personal insights into that character (Krebs). He
defended the technique, saying, "Even if there is endless
documentation, it would be impossible to know what a man
thought inside his own mind?this is where the novelist's
creative imagination has to take over." (3) Stone explained
that he wanted his readers not just to learn about the life of
his subjects, but to become them. He said in an interview,
"I, the author, spend two to five years becoming the main
character. I do that so by the time you get to the bottom of
page 2 or 3, you forget your name, where you live, your
profession and the year it is. You become the main character
of the book. You live the book." (5)
By Stone's reasoning, including the thoughts and motivations of
his subjects made them all that much more human. He did so with
the intention of creating characters with whom his audience
could easily relate (Gill). Stone also wanted his subject
matter to withstand the test of time. He wanted to tell
stories that were "true for all time?the story of man, against
obstacles, for man." (6) Here again, Stone realized by
bringing legendary figures down to the status of the underdog,
back to the status of being ordinary men and women toiling
against great odds, he could capture a larger audience. It did
not matter if Michaelangelo had lived 500 years before in an
entirely different world, both socially and politically, from
any of his readers. What mattered to Stone, and thus to his
audience, was that the artist was human, a mere man, albeit
with an extraordinary gift. By bringing those human
characteristics out, Stone attempted to make Michaelangelo,
like his work, timeless.
Stone accomplished his goal of creating popular "fictional
biographies." There are some 100 million copies of his works
in print, and not just in the original English. Stones books
have been translated into over 40 different languages, a
testament to his writing's universality (Gill). The Agony and
the Ecstasy was probably his most successful work. It sold
more copies than did any of his other books, and did so in a
shorter amount of time (Pearson). It inspired a film in 1965,
a well-received production that garnered five Academy Award
nominations (Amazon). Stone and his works were incredibly
popular throughout the 1960s. An interview/article in written
in 1969 described him as "the most widely read historical
novelist alive." (6) However, after 1970, Stone's popularity
abated. After the 1965 release of the film version of The
Agony and the Ecstasy, sales of the work rapidly dropped off.
There was almost no subsequent critical reception of the novel
(CLC). This ephemeral popularity was probably due to the
less-than-favorable critical reviews of the book upon its
publication. The work, though popular in the mass market, was
not ever critically studied or used educationally (CLC).
Though reviewers praised Stone's extensive research and
remarkable detail, they found aspects of his writing style to
be slow and somewhat "unconvincing." (7) Many were also highly
critical of the fictitious parts of the novel, as mentioned
above. In particular, the dialogue of the characters, almost
all of which was invented by Stone and served to elucidate
aspects of Michaelangelo's relationships, was brutally attacked
by reviewers as "puerile" and "artificial." (9,10) In this
respect, the very qualities that at first made the book such an
incredible popular success most likely led to its ultimate
decline and disappearance.
The environment into which The Agony and the Ecstasy may also
have played a role in the novel's popularity. Stone was a
well-established writer at the time of the book's release,
having already written several bestselling fictional biographies.
Doubleday launched a tremendous publicity campaign, and the book
was selected before its release as a Book-of-the-Month novel.
The book was set up from its inception to be a big seller.
However, other than the publicity it received, there is very
little about the early 1960s that would make this work more
popular or applicable to society than in the decades that
followed. The time period of the novel was already so far
removed from the 20th century that it does not seem likely that
the novel's declining popularity was due to a its lack of
suitability in the 1970s and 1980s compared to the 1960s. What
seems more probable is that the publicity campaign served to
create a large audience upon the book's release, but that the
writing was not original or innovative enough to retain that
audience over the decades. This idea also lends credence to
the theory that the writing appealed to basic human sentiments,
such as romance and the triumph of the underdog, but lacked
original literary merit. Many books appeal to those popular
feelings, and The Agony and the Ecstasy was just one more,
albeit one that was incredibly popular.
Though The Agony and the Ecstasy was not taken seriously by
critics as a scholarly biography, Stone's goal to create a work
which would be lived by its readers was almost certainly
reached. Indeed, any work achieving sales numbers as massive
as those of this novel can most certainly be said to have
succeeded, at least on some non-critical levels. Furthermore,
it might also be inferred that reaching this "popular" level
was the only goal Stone really had in creating his fictional
biographies. Stone wanted a novel "for man," one that would
allow the average reader to "become Michaelangelo." (6,5) Had
he focused all of his work solely on the over 5,000 pages of
notes he took during his four years of research and left out
his own fictional interpretations, he would have gained more
critical and scholarly acclaim (Gill). However, it is doubtful
that such a work would have been popular among the general
public, or that it would have allowed readers the personal
insights into the character of Michaelangelo that they desired.
Stone sacrificed completely historical accuracy for the sake of
gaining a larger audience. In the end, this sacrifice allowed
Stone to achieve a book that was accepted by his intended
audience, "man," if not by critics. As one reviewer put it,
"Novelist Stone did four years of research on the brilliant
surface of the Italian Renaissance?and?he is totally successful
in conveying the sense of pain and high drama inherent in the
process of sculpture. Though readers may tire of climbing
Stone's mountain of historical detail, they almost certainly
will never stand before carved marble again without that sense
of excitement for the art that Stone has given them." (10)
Quoted Sources:
(1) The New York Times March 17, 1961
(2) Spectator July 21, 1961
(3) The Washington Post August 28, 1989
(4) The Saturday Review March 18, 1961
(5) The Baltimore Sun August 28, 1989
(6) Pace Magazine February 1969 ("The Twenty Lives of Irving Stone")
(7) Chicago Sunday Tribune Magazine of Books March 26, 1961
(8) Library Journal April 1, 1961
(9) The New York Herald Tribune Lively Arts March 19, 1961
(10) Newsweek Magazine March 20, 1961 page 104