Re: [F_MINOR] _I Am Not Jackson Pollock_ by John Haskell

[Peter Glenister <Peter.Glenister@MSVU.CA>]

What follows is the publisher's blurb; unfortunately the Gould story is not
summarized.

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.

Peter

On 6 Mar 2004 at 18:24, Ed Price wrote:

(Yes, there is Glenn Gould content in this message.)

My wife Ellen used to work at Farrar Strauss Giroux, a
fine literary publisher here in NYC.

One day I was in her office and a manuscript on her shelf
caught my attention.

It was a book of stories called "I am not Jackson Pollock".
I had never heard of the author, John Haskell.  But one of
the stories was called "Glenn Gould in Six Parts".

That story was indeed good.  It was remarkable in fact.

It's an amazing and remarkable book; I highly recommend it.
I've never read anything like it.

Has anyone else here read it?

Title:  I am not Jackson Pollock
Author: John Haskell.
ISBN:   0374173990

-Ed

PS I was trying to describe the story/book, but (1) I'm
too lazy to put so much effort into writing; (2) reviews
are available online if you want that sort of thing; and (3)
I enjoyed discovering the book on my own, maybe you will
Too, so I don't want to spoil anything....

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