I Am Not Jackson Pollock: Stories, by John Haskell
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I Am Not Jackson Pollock: Stories, by John Haskell
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A bewitching collection of short fiction-haunting and hypnotic meditations on art, movies, literature, and life
A circus elephant named Topsy was executed at Coney Island in the year 1900 for killing a man. That's true. So is the life of Saartjie (Sar-key) Baartman, the Hottentot Venus, who was herself a circus act in the first half of the nineteenth century. What is myth is the Indian god Ganesha, whose head was lopped off by his father, Shiva, and replaced-with an elephant's head-by his disconsolate mother, Parvati. In John Haskell's expert hands, these three curious strands are ingeniously woven together in one story called "Elephant Feelings."
And so it goes with the rest of these dreamy meditations on the lives of artists, actors, writers, and musicians who are at once painfully human and larger than life. In "Dream of a Clean Slate," Jackson Pollock the man struggles with the separation he feels from Jackson Pollock the artist; in "The Judgment of Psycho," Haskell probes the sexual dynamic of Janet Leigh and Anthony Perkins in Psycho, and then delves into a different relationship, the one between Hector and Paris in the Iliad; Orson Welles presides over the long story "Crimes at Midnight," a tense evocation of desire and its consequences. Haskell has written a series of myths for modern times, stories about the ways in which we are distant from ourselves and about the way art can sometimes help us imagine other worlds and other possibilities. It is an astonishing debut.
I Am Not Jackson Pollock: Stories, by John Haskell- Amazon Sales Rank: #1898618 in eBooks
- Published on: 2015-06-09
- Released on: 2015-06-09
- Format: Kindle eBook
From Publishers Weekly Haskell evades definition in his audacious debut collection, creating an innovative blend of fact and fiction and deliberately eliding the difference between them. Most of the nine stories are imaginative extrapolations of the lives of real people (or, in some cases, real animals), such as the eponymous painter and his wife, Lee Krasner; Psycho stars Janet Leigh and Anthony Perkins; Laika, the first dog in space; and Saartjie, the early 19th-century South African woman brought to London as the famous sideshow attraction the Hottentot Venus. Haskell mixes anecdotes from the lives of these artists and celebrities with fictitious events to compose deceptively simple vignettes in which he distills and clarifies moments of intense psychological struggle. Jackson Pollock sees a beautiful woman as he enters a bar in "Dream of a Clean Slate," "but he was feeling a thing he called nervousness, a feeling in his body that he didn't like, so he stopped at the bar for a drink, a whiskey... part of him--his desire-goes to the girl, and the rest of him stays at the bar, drinking and trembling." In "The Faces of Joan of Arc," Mercedes McCambridge, the voice of the devil in The Exorcist, tries vainly to stop drinking; actress Renee Falconetti tries to understand her role as the title character in The Passion of Joan of Arc; and an aging Hedy Lamarr shoplifts a tawdry department store dress. "Elephant Feelings" weaves together the stories of the Hottentot Venus; Topsy, the elephant whose electrocution was famously captured on film in the 1900s; and the Indian god Ganesh, half man, half elephant. Betrayal and humiliation, coupled with an inability to communicate, drives all three to acts of violent rage. Haskell subtly explores questions of exploitation and agency through the eyes of his celebrity characters, winking all the while at his own attempts to get into their heads. His hypnotic writing creates its own genre, unsettling and quietly bizarre. Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information, Inc.
From Booklist Jackson Pollack created images of passion and mystery and sparked a new fervor for abstraction in the art world. Similarly, Haskell's collection of stories--not quite fiction, not always true--equally tells of passions, mystery, and abstraction. He takes real-life situations: Pollack himself trying to separate the man from the artist in "Dream of a Clean Slate"; the infamous Coney Island man-killing elephant, Topsy, in the year 1900 and the fabled Hottentot Venus, an African woman whose body was a Parisian circus spectacle, both seek the true love of a man in "Elephant Feelings"; Janet Leigh's character in Psycho and her relationship with Anthony Perkins' character is analyzed and romanticized in "The Judgment of Psycho"; Glenn Gould's hypochondria is examined in "Glenn Gould in Six Parts"; and the tribulations of Laika, the Russian dog that was the first animal in space, are addressed in "Good World." These are just a few of the wonderful, quirky, even extraordinary tales that intersperse Hollywood gossip with plumbing the depths of the human spirit. Michael SpinellaCopyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved
Review
“Haskell uses language like a surgical instrument....These are stunningly sophisticated stories in which everything is new....[Haskell] makes language seem limitless in its possibilities.” ―Los Angeles Times
“A dazzlingly inventive collection of nine uninhibited narratives that uses myths, meditation, and old-fashioned morality to examine age-old conundrums of life and art.” ―Elle
“Simultaneously charming, innovative, and moving.” ―Esquire
“Haskell and his wild imagination put some fictional oomph into reality....The highly original, Hemingway-esque prose is just as colorful and provocative as Pollock's paintings.” ―Time Out New York
“A wonderfully intelligent, audacious, and perverse collection...I savored every mythic, mesmerizing word of it.” ―Jim Crace
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Most helpful customer reviews
4 of 4 people found the following review helpful. Best Book I've Read This Year By JAL Believe the review on this page that says the book is astonishing. I've never read anything quite like it. Why would anyone who read it call it "senseless" - ? That reader really missed the mark. This is fascinating writing - the author is a master at seeing similarities between things which, on the surface, are dissimilar. From high culture to low, Haskell brings it all together into one frame. I recommend it wholeheartedly to anyone interested in ficition that isn't dead in the water. If you're tired of formulaic writing, this one will wake you up. This is infused with motion and risk. A lovely book, my favorite of many read in the last year.
6 of 8 people found the following review helpful. Terrific premise with very good execution. By Benjamin John Haskell's first short story collection takes key figures from history, identifies them at defining moments in their existence and builds a story around them to explain their significance. It's an interesting take on the short story, which some say is a dying art, and Haskell does good work, for the most part.His premise, though, turns the "stories" into more analysis of moment than a narrative. Occasionally, the stories become bogged down and feel like essays, though this is itself is intellectually stimulating.He gives the reader a look inside Jackson Pollock's head in one piece, granting you the opportunity to follow Pollock's reasoning.In "Elephant Feelings," the best of the stories, Haskell takes three figures from culture and history and draws parallels between them. (It feels like a shorter version of "The Hours," even, except with mythical characters and an elephant playing the Virginia Woolf part.) But not enough is done with the premise, in my opinion.As with all the stories, I felt like the characters and moments were well-drawn. But, to justify going into all this detail, I wished it'd featured less analysis and more plot.
5 of 7 people found the following review helpful. Vagaries in the search of reality By Grady Harp John Haskell is a writer new to the reading (though not the performing) world and his voice is one that stirs interest, primarily because it is unique. He tells these nine 'short stories' - they seem more like extended meditations or themes and fugues - in a manner that combines known public figures (a particular penchant for old movie stars and old movies) with imaginary cast members to explore the thin line of reality vs fiction. He makes bizarre choices in combining such people as Orson Welles, Joseph Coton, Falstaff, Prince Hal and Janet Leigh to ponder self perception:"...once we think we know who we are, to change who we are means giving up what we love, even if we hate it." The haiku poet Basho is intertwined with thoughts about John Keats; Keats falls short of relating to Fanny Brawne until he faces his moment of death; Basho confesses he "...wants to find beauty and harmony, but something is always distracting him - people usually - pulling him off the road." Mercedes McCambridge, the devil voice of Linda Blair in "The Exorcist", struggles with alcoholism, Joan of Arc is recallled historically and through the various guises of the actress who portrayed her in the film. Sound confusing? Well it is, and sometimes the obtuseness of Haskell's technique borders on not the absurd, but the senseless. I think we're seeing the early work of a mind that is rich in fluid imagination. I feel as though this author has a lot to say but is hiding behind the likes of Jackson Pollock and Joan of Arc and Ganesha for fear of not being noticed. I don't think he needs this gimmick and I eagerly await his next novel. He WILL be noticed on his own rights.
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