Or, When's That Phone Going To Ring, and How Many Books Can I Read At One Time?

I thought a 3-month severance/vacation would be fun.  And, for the most part, it has been.  Beach trip, hanging out with Budd and the cat, reading the paper from cover to cover every day.  But now, I'm getting antsy to get back to work.  Lots of resumes sent, several interviews, and now I find myself sitting by the phone every weekday, especially since our shared answering machine has a really bad version of "Hello, I Love You" on it sung by Budd's father.  He refuses to change it because Budd's maternal grandmother just loved it everytime she heard it, even though she is now in the Great Beyond and is highly unlikely to call.  I'm sure I'm not alone in this endeavor.  By the way, if you are reading this and need a top-notch administrative assistant/graphic designer/marketing assistant, I'm available for hire.  Email me and I'll send my resume right along.  I'm also available through Creative Scamper, my freelance endeavor. 

In the meantime, I'm trying to increase my reading.  I've read those great books that I reviewed earlier, White Noise and The Colorful Apocalypse.  Now I'm working on Cosmopolis, another DeLillo novel, and in my stack (I'm trying to keep up with Budd who reads at least 5 books at a time) are The Reader by Bernhard Schlink; Plainsong by Kent Haruf; Straight Man by Richard Russo; and What is the What by Dave Eggers.

I chose these because, 1) I like DeLillo; 2) Russo's book got great reviews and he won a Pulitzer; 3) Schlink's book was a NY Times Notable Book of the Year and LA Times Book of the Year; 4) Haruf's book was a National Book Award finalist; and 5) Eggers' book also got great reviews and the first couple of chapters are mesmerizing.

I seem to gravitate toward books that are award-winners.  I'm particularly interested in reading National Book Award winners and finalists, and I've found some good ones that were NY Times Notables, in particular, Special Topics in Calamity Physics by Marisha Pessl. 

If you've read any that are in my pile of five mentioned above, let me know what you think.  And if you have any employment leads, I'd love to hear from you as well. 

Learning About The Gray Area Between Madness and Christian Ecstasy

Another book I took to the beach was The Colorful Apocalypse: Journeys in Outsider Art by Greg Bottoms.  It was so good I read it in one day.  I expected this book to be a little more like Colin Rhodes' book, which I purchased at the same time for Budd; one with artist bios and pictures.  The Colorful Apocalypse was quite different - not a picture in sight except for the cover art, by William Thomas Thompson and Norbert Kox.

Mr. Bottoms travelled to meet with the family of the Rev. Howard Finster, whom he had seen years earlier in a documentary depicting his famous Paradise Gardens in Georgia.  Finster began the Gardens in 1961 before receiving a vision to create religious or sacred art in 1976. 

Bottoms then travels to meet William Thomas Thompson and his family, living in an antebellum mansion in Greenville, South Carolina.  Thompson is most famous for a  300-foot painting of The Revelation, entitled Revelation Revealed.  The painting is in six sections of 50 feet each.  Bottoms reveals that Thompson's family, deeply rooted in the Pentecostal church, has great disdain for his artwork, and would not even allow the art depicted on the cover, which was co-created by Thompson and Norbert Kox, to come into their home because of its depiction of Christ with a dagger through the forehead.  Bottoms interviews Thompson extensively and the transactions are fascinating.  Thompson's beliefs are deeply rooted in what most would consider hardcore fundamentalist Christianity, yet he is vehemently anti-church, and believes that the Church is anti-Christ.  At the end of his interviews, which apparently span some several years, Thompson's wife gives him a tape of their 50th wedding anniversary, and tells Bottoms that Thompson "wasn't always like this...he was a family man, a church-going man, a business man..." as if Thompson has lost all respect in his family's eyes due to his artwork, which he is driven to paint.

Bottoms' final subject is Norbert Kox, an ex-Outlaw motorcycle club member living above an abandoned general store in Wisconsin.  His living space is filled with junk he has collected for his art, most noticeably the body parts of baby dolls which he uses for his anti-abortion art.  He has a unique ability to recreate Warner Sallman's famous painting of Jesus, seen in almost every Protestant church in America.  Kox used that image  to create an exhibit entitled "Picture Perfect Jesus: The Glamourous Fraud".  Take a look at this interesting slideshow of Kox's work. 

The Colorful Apocalypse is an utterly fascinating study of these three people who are compelled to share their belief with the world through their artwork.  You may not agree with their beliefs, but they certainly are thought-provoking.  As William Thomas Thompson put it, "I'm not ashamed of my belief, and I'm not crazy because of what I believe."  I think he's right about that.  

I recommend this book highly for those interested in outsider art and religious iconography and its impact on our cultural development and beliefs.  The artists profiled are interesting and likeable people, too, and Bottoms does a great job in highlighting their personalities and beliefs without being condescending or judgmental.   While Finster has passed away, Thompson and Kox are two people that I think would be very intriguing to meet.

National Book Award Winner is a Winner With Me

Trolling through Budd's staggering collection of books for something to read at the beach, I stumbled across White Noise, a 1985 novel by Don DeLillo.  Naturally, not being as literate as Budd, I had never heard of DeLillo; I now know that he's a great writer and has a new book out, Falling Man.

White Noise is a tale about a family, an airborne toxic event, the fear of death, and what lengths people will go to in order to hide their phobias from their loved ones.  It's also very, very funny.  Jack Gladney, professor of Hitler studies at a Midwestern college is on his fifth marriage to his fourth wife (he married one wife twice), Babette.  They live with their own children and some from numerous previous marriages, including infant Wilder, preteens Steffie and Denise, and 14-year-old Heinrich, a sullen conspiracy-theorist type.  Throughout the first section of the book, in the backdrop of their daily lives lives another set of characters: the voices of television and radio.  " 'Void where prohibited', said the radio."  Jack's ex-wives appear in hilarious anecdotes, along with other children who live apart from him.  His life with Babette includes debating who gets to die first and her reading erotica to him in bed.  Jack and Babette's daughter, Denise, soon discover that Babette is taking some sort of mysterious pill, one which can't be identified through the PDR or Babette's doctor.

The second section of the book involves the Airborne Toxic Event, which is a railroad car accident resulting in the emission of a gaseous cloud.  The town is evacuated; symptoms of exposure include deja vu, and Jack's obsessive fear of death is introduced. These may seem like frightening and dark themes, but DeLillo delivers his dialogue with great levity; I had to read some of the passages out loud to Budd because they were just so damn funny.

After the airborne toxic event, things seem to return to a somewhat normal state for the Gladney family, except we discover that the mysterious pill Babette is taking is an experimental drug to cure her death phobia.  She goes to great lengths to obtain the drug, which ultimately does not have the efficacy she had hoped for, but she arouses a curiosity in Jack to try the drug for himself, all the while trying desperately to dissuade him from that action.

What makes this book really worthwhile in my opinion is the dialogue between characters, particularly the children.  Most of their dialogue consists of a constant barrage of questions, answering questions with questions, revealing their insight and intelligence, showing us that they are fully aware of their parents' limitations.  Another aspect that I found quite interesting is DeLillo's suggestions about American consumerism and its use by people as a way to ward off death.  And yet another interesting aspect - DeLillo used absolutely no profanity in the entire book - not even the word "damn" appears.  For a tale as darkly humorous and layered as this, I found that quite surprising.  It shows that DeLillo has great command of the English language and can weave a fascinating novel that's appropriate for a larger audience.  As a matter of fact, Budd's copy was stamped in the front, "Williams High School" (wherever that is) -- he obviously bought it at one of those book sales he and his father frequent.

I'm not one to give away a whole lot in reviews of books in terms of plot - I think most people can find synopses of the book all over the Internet; I know I did.  I can just tell you that if you want a first-rate read (that's also a quick read) that offers quirkiness, deadpan black humor, fascinating characters and a very thought-provoking ending, White Noise is a good choice.  I'm not surprised that it is highly acclaimed and won the National Book Award.  I'm looking forward to reading more by DeLillo.