St. Sebastian’s Abyss
I finished St. Sebastian’s Abyss while on Sylt, the northernmost island of Germany. I had picked it up at House of Books, a charming independent bookstore in Kent, CT, known for its hand-written staff recommendations. Before the trip, I made a beeline for the “travel fiction” section, and this title caught my eye.
The novel follows two art historians from the cloistered halls of academia to the lesser-known museums of Europe—settings that hold personal interest for me. In this trim, sharply observed book, Haber satirizes the stereotypical male art scholar with wit and precision.
As someone who dabbled in art history at Vanderbilt, I was especially amused by the obsessive attention to detail. Like many professors I encountered, the narrator and his intellectual soulmate (and sometimes nemesis), Schmidt, fixate on the minutiae of a single artist’s work. Their devotion begins when they stumble upon a passing reference to an obscure painter, Hugo Beckenbauer, and track down his painting in the Museu Nacional d’Art de Catalunya (a real institution, though the artist is fictional).
Upon seeing the work in person, they begin a lifelong, all-consuming academic (and emotional) entanglement. Their relationship—part collaboration, part competition—comes to define their identities and careers.
Haber uses this premise to lampoon the insular, self-important world of academia. As we all know, academics often carve out ultra-specific niches to secure tenure and prestige. But with that comes a narrow worldview. The narrator and Schmidt are both brilliant and absurd—fun to mock, but also eerily recognizable. The real voices of reason? The ex-wives and girlfriends who see through the posturing.
I made it to the final page before Googling the details: the museum is real; the artist is not. And the characters, while fictional, are clearly modeled after real personalities you might encounter in university lecture halls or museum corridors.
There’s also a sly jab at the general public—the “regular people” who breeze through museums, check them off a sightseeing list, and move on. If you consider yourself somewhere in the middle—someone who appreciates art but doesn’t live for it—you’ll find this book both entertaining and insightful.
Personally, I often smirk at the overblown gallery labels that accompany works of art. While context is helpful, I prefer to interpret art through my own lens. In a time when academic institutions face scrutiny over their relevance and funding, St. Sebastian’s Abyss offers a timely, clever critique—and deserves a moment in the sun.
Read on: Sylt, Germany | Best paired with: sea air + hot broth from the Lanserhof
One Line Summary: A razor-sharp satire of art-world pretension wrapped in a love-hate friendship.
For fans of: The Goldfinch, academic satire, art-world dramas
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