The Face Of A Naked Lady

by Rips, Michael

• ISBN13: 9780618273522
• ISBN10: 0618273522
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2005-02-01
• Publisher: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

Summary

Nick Rips's son had always known him as a conservative midwesterner, dedicated, affable, bland to the point of invisibility. Upon his father's death, however, Michael Rips returned to his Omaha family home to discover a hidden portfolio of paintings - all done by his father, all of a naked black woman. So begins Michael Rips's exquisitely humane second work of memoir, a gloriously funny yet deeply serious gem of a book that offers more than a little redemption in our cynical times. Rips is a magical storyteller, with a keen eye for the absurd, even in a place like Omaha, which, like his father, is not what it First appears to be. His solid Republican father, he discovers, had been raised in one of Omaha's most famous brothels, had insisted on hiring a collection of social misFits to work in his eyeglass factory, and had once showed up in his son's high school principal's ofFice in pajamas. As Rips searches for the woman of the paintings, he meets, among others, an African American detective who swears by the clairvoyant powers of a Mind Machine, a homeless man with Five million dollars in the bank, an underwear auctioneer, and a ying trapeze artist on her last sublime ride. Ultimately, Rips Finds the woman, a father he never knew, and a profound sense that all around us the miraculous permeates the everyday.

Author Biography

Michael Rips is a fifth-generation Nebraska native. A graduate of Oxford University, he served as a law clerk to a Supreme Court justice, is now an adviser to several museums and foundations, and, when not writing in coffee shops around New York City, continues to practice criminal litigation. He is the author of Pasquale’s Nose: Idle Days in an Italian Town. He lives at the Chelsea Hotel with his wife and daughter.

Excerpts

THE WOMAN IN THE BASEMENT1.A woman set a coffee before me, and I thought of the first time that I saw a woman fly.2.Among quiet neighbors, we were the quietest. Father came home every day at the same time, greeted my mother, settled on the couch, and slept; occasionally he would sit in a chair. In either case he would sleep. At six-thirty he would be called to dinner. After dinner he would return to the couch. Mother would sit next to him. When he finished reading, he would go to his room and sleep. My father was the appreciative product of his own privileged life. Born in Nebraska, he was Republican, affluent, and content. As to his relationship with my mother, I heard not a single argument between them. They were respectful and admiring.3.Mother was sitting on the steps in the hall. In front of her was a box of letters. She pointed to a room in the back. There in tandem on the bureau were his belongings. This was the purpose of my return-to remove what I cared to have. My father had died several years before, and Mother was moving. But the objects in that room gave o no trace of my father. He fit so smoothly into the order of things, the circuitus spiritualis, that he had passed on nothing that was not more perfectly expressed by something nearby; if he had an emotion or thought that was individual to him, it lacked the power of emanation. I gathered the few things of his and my own that I had decided to take back to New York. Needing a box, my wife, Sheila, and I went into the basement. After a few minutes, I found a small container and then retraced my steps. Sheila asked me about a black portfolio that had been slipped behind a cabinet. She pulled it out and laid it on the floor; the portfolio was held together with black ribbons. An arm, a leg, a torso, another arm, a torso, a head came out of the portfolio. A naked black woman. Sheets and sheets of a naked black woman, and below each the initials of my father. On the other side of the basement wall was a small room used to develop black-and-white photographs. Scribbled on the wall of that room was this:"They do not sweat and whine about their condition, They do not lie awake in the dark and weep for their sin, They do not make me sick discussing their duty to God, Not one is dissatisfied...." Whitman.Mother was preparing dinner. For as long as I could remember my family had a cook. The ablest was Mary. But even the worst were capable of being taught, and my mother did a very good job of that. They were different from the meals I would get at our neighbors. Claire was one of our neighbors and I enjoyed visiting her. One evening at Claires, we heard her brother, Ronald, singing "Surrey with the Fringe on Top" from the musical Oklahoma! That was unusual because Ronald had for years sat quietly in his room. I imagined that he was writing or composing or juggling and that one day I would hear that he had won a prize. Claire went st

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Excerpted from The Face of a Naked Lady: An Omaha Family Mystery by Michael Rips
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