I Am Not Jackson Pollock Stories

by Haskell, John

• ISBN13: 9780312421861
• ISBN10: 0312421869
• Edition: Reprint
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2004-04-01
• Publisher: Picador

Summary

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. John Haskellcofounded the Huron Theatre in Chicago, where he began performing his own writing. He received an M.F.A. from Columbia University, and is the recipient of a 2002 New York Foundation for the Arts Fellowship. APublishers WeeklyBest Book of the Year A circus elephant named Topsy was executed at Coney Island in the year 1903 for killing a man. That's part of history. The Hottentot Venus was exhibited in Paris in the first half of the nineteenth century because she was considered an oddity. That's also history. According to myth, the Indian god Ganesha had his head lopped off and replaced with the head of an elephant. In John Haskell's expert hands, these three curious strands are ingeniously woven together in one story called "Elephant Feelings." And so it is with all these provocative short stories about artists, actors, writers, and musiciansfrom Glenn Gould to Joan of Arcwho are at once painfully human and larger than life. In his bewitching collection, Haskell expands small psychological moments within larger, famous lives to explore the nature of habit and desire. In "Dream of a Clean Slate," Jackson Pollock struggles with the gulf between Pollock the man and Pollock the artist; in "The Judgment of Psycho," Haskell probes the sexual dynamics between Janet Leigh and Anthony Perkins inPsycho; Orson Welles presides over the long story "Crimes at Midnight," a tense exploration of power and the consequences of using it. Haskell has written a series of myths for modern times, hypnotic meditations on the ways in which we are distant from ourselves and about the way art can sometimes help us imagine other worlds and begin to reimagine this world. "Stunningly sophisticated storied in which everything is new . . . [Haskell] makes language seem limitless in its possibilities."Los Angeles Times "Haskell and his wild imagination put some fictional oomph into reality . . . The highly original, Hemingway-esque prose is just as colorful and provocative as Pollack's paintings."Time Out New York "In these wholly unique meditations on what it is to be human, John Haskell inhabits the famous and infamous, crawling inside outsiders ranging from painter Jackson Pollock, side-show act Topsy the elephant, thePsychopathology of Anthony Perkins and Janet Leigh, and onto Capucine, Glenn Gould and more. Haskell makes the familiar his ownplaying with language and history, turning time inside out, he delivers our culture back to usmade entirely new."A.M. Homes "John Haskell'sI Am Not Jackson Pollackis a wonderfully intelligent, audacious and perverse collection of . . . what exactly? Fiction? Gossip? Film studies? Iconography? Liberty taking? Here's a book that defies the usual categoriesbut one thing's for sure, I savored every mythic, mesmerizing word of it."Jim Crace "The marriage of essay and story just entered brilliant and fresh territory with this revelatory collection."The Buffalo News "John Haskell turns works of art into stories and stories into a weird blend of magically unrealist commentary. His investigations into the dream-life of movies and the way th

Author Biography

John Haskell is a former actor, playwright, and performance artist who has worked in New York and Chicago. He studied playwriting at UCLA and is a graduate of the MFA program at Columbia University. He lives in New York City.

Table of Contents

DREAM OF A CLEAN SLATE	1	(22)
ELEPHANT FEELINGS	23	(16)
THE JUDGMENT OF PSYCHO	39	(18)
THE FACES OF JOAN OF ARC	57	(16)
CAPUCINE	73	(12)
GLENN GOULD IN SIX PARTS	85	(16)
GOOD WORLD	101	(18)
CRIMES AT MIDNIGHT	119	(42)
NARROW ROAD	161