I Am Not Jackson Pollock: Stories by John Haskell

From the Publisher

A bewitching collection of short fiction--haunting and hypnotic meditations on art, movies, literature, and life. In "Dream of a Clean Slate," Jackson Pollock the man struggles with the separation he feels from Jackson Pollock the artist; "The Judgement of Psycho," probes the sexual dynamic of Janet Leigh and Anthony Perkins in Psycho, and then delves into the relationship between Hector and Paris in the Iliad; and Orson Welles presides over "Crimes at Midnight," a tense evocation of desire and its consequences. A series of myths for modern times, this is an astonishing debut.

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. (Apr.) Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information.

Library Journal

Haskell assures us at the opening of his first story that he is not Jackson Pollock, but this does not hinder him from peeking inside the artist's brain and showing us what happens when Pollock the artist finds himself far from Pollock the man. All of the pieces in this first collection map out the complicated interior landscapes of various artists (Orson Welles, John Keats) and cultural icons (Janet Leigh, Capucine, Laika the space dog). Haskell, a former actor, playwright, and performance artist, imaginatively situates himself inside the minds of these disparate characters, looks around, and tells us what he sees in simple, precise language. The result is a sympathetic exploration of the common circumstances that link them all-desire, habit, powerlessness. Readers looking for plot-driven stories will be disappointed-Haskell's pieces lie somewhere between story and essay, and plot is secondary to capturing emotional truth. Genre aside, these pieces are deftly written and create a melancholy mood with few words. The spare, almost resigned prose accurately matches the sorrow, hope, and tortured genius of his characters. Recommended for literary and film collections.-Julia LoFaso, New York Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information.

Kirkus Reviews

Nine intriguing debut pieces explore the point where art and life intersect-or collide-in the lives of artists, performers and movie characters. While "Dream of a Clean Slate" examines Jackson Pollock's last affair, it mainly contemplates how the painter's unhappiness and frustration fed his art even as they destroyed him. The story asks, who is more authentic, the artist as person or the person as artist? "Elephant Feelings" juxtaposes a show elephant on Coney Island with a South African woman who was a freak-show attraction in France. According to Haskell, both loved and were discarded by the men who controlled their lives. Less fortunate than Pollock, they had no outlet for communicating their feelings and died broken-hearted. In "The Judgement of Psycho," the Hitchcock movie is re-envisioned along with the role of Paris in the Trojan War. Haskell's interest is the power of unattainable desire. "Crimes at Midnight" plays several riffs on Orson Welles films (including a walk-on by Janet Leigh) and on Welles himself as actor/character/creative force. These stories tend to be written in short segments, often seemingly unrelated. "The Faces of Joan of Arc," for example, jumps from a discussion of Mercedes McCambridge as the devil in The Exorcist to a silent-screen version of Joan of Arc, to Hedy Lamarr as Delilah, to Godard's wife (Anna Karenina) in a film persona as a prostitute. For Haskell, actors and their parts are seemingly interchangeable. "Capucine"-about the actress's suicide-is one of the more unified stories, as is "Glenn Gould in Six Parts," which also stands out for its few almost happy moments. "Good World" takes its cue from Aristotle's pronouncement about habit as thefoundation of virtue as it imagines the short life of the first Soviet dog in space and Richard III's courtship of Anne. "The Narrow Road" shows the poets Basho and John Keats forced to choose between art and life. Intellectually dazzling, emotionally chilly, and bound to provoke.

Product Details

• ISBN: 0312421869
  
• ISBN-13: 9780312421861
• Format: Paperback, 192pp
• Publisher: Picador
• Pub. Date: March 2004
• Edition Description: REV
• Sales Rank: 667,823

• Table of Contents

Table of Contents