THE BOSTON GLOBE

THE COST OF LIVING FOR ART OR GOD

By Caroline Leavitt  |  October 17, 2004

One of the great myths of life -- at least in my life
-- is the idea that we can really control anything.
Oh, maybe we can shape our lives by the kind of
government we elect or the spiritual beliefs we hold,
but the price we pay can turn out to be control by
others -- and repression.
"Torture the Artist" (MacAdam/Cage, $23), by Joey
Goebel, is a frisky little satire based on the
assumption that from great pain come great
achievements. Pampered, wealthy artists usually don't
have any misery they need to transform into art, so
they often produce trifles, but give a person a
tragedy or two, and voila, brilliance. But how are we
to keep our artists suffering? Goebel gives us a
wickedly ingenious solution: the entertainment
conglomerate New Renaissance. Fed up with the pap that
passes for entertainment -- the mindless Hollywood
movies, the glossy bestsellers, the prefab music --
New Renaissance has a goal of uplifting society by
tormenting its artists into producing exceptional
works. Handpicking a few hundred prodigies, it
secretively encourages them toward greatness, not
through the usual avenues of fame or money or sex, but
through stealthy acts of horrible deprivation. The
justification for such brutality? "Our torture is
temporary, your work is forever."
Enter our hero, Vincent, whose ragtag single mother
willingly sells him to the corporation and then
disappears without explanation, promising to keep her
mouth shut in exchange for regular, fat checks.
Vincent's left with only his misery and his manager,
Harlan, a former music critic with a tarnished heart
of gold. Harlan promptly sets to work, further ruining
Vincent's life, telling himself it's for the good of
the masses. He poisons Vincent's beloved dog, burns
down his house, and even pays Vincent's girlfriend to
leave the country. The more miserable Vincent becomes,
the better his art, and he grows hugely famous. But
then Harlan himself falls in love, and because it's
with a woman who likes Vincent as much as she hates
the corporation, Harlan has a crisis himself. Stop the
torture, she orders Harlan, and he tries.
All seems as though it is moving merrily along until
one night at a party, an unexpected guest spills the
beans about New Renaissance to Vincent. And because
Harlan took what was most precious from Vincent,
Vincent returns the favor and Harlan's life falls
apart.
Goebel's ebulliently funny writing sparkles off the
page. He's created a whole, living, breathing world,
filled with vividly sympathetic souls, and deliciously
evil ones. But toward the grand finale, Goebel loses
just a touch of his control. The ending -- where
Harlan learns the meaning of torture himself -- feels
clipped short, and because of that, the last chapters
seem both too schematic and a little unearned. Despite
that one misgiving, this is one of the most
interesting and engaging books I've read in a while, a
smart, witty, deeply moving parable about the things
we do for art -- and for love.
But if corporations are kings of control, repressive
religions can come in a close second. Welcome to
bleak, rural Manitoba, Canada, where 16-year-old Nomi
struggles against the confines of her strict Mennonite
community in Miriam Toews's stunning debut novel, "A
Complicated Kindness" (Counterpoint, $23).
Toews was raised a Mennonite herself, leaving the fold
the nanosecond she graduated high school, and her
re-creation of the society -- and the price you pay
for living in it -- is horrific and sad. The
Mennonites control everything, including happiness,
which means there are bans on "movies, drinking, rock
'n' roll, having sex for fun, swimming, . . . going to
cities, and staying up past nine." Life on earth is
brief, brutish, and cruel because the rewards are in
the afterlife. As Nomi says, if a Mennonite surveying
you on the phone asks "Would you prefer to live or die
a cruel death, and . . . you answer 'live' the Menno
doing the survey hangs up on you." To follow the rules
means you're one of the fold. To move away from them
means you risk being shunned, becoming one of the
ghosts who haunt the town -- never acknowledged or
spoken to, but never able to leave your community
either.
But there are those who do leave, with terrible
repercussions. Nomi's older sister, Tash, has already
fled the unbearable coop, and seven weeks later,
Nomi's mother, Trudie, on the cusp of being shunned,
follows. As Nomi's father, Ray, withdraws more and
more into despair, Nomi finds her own life spinning
out of control. She shaves her head, ditches school,
and embarks on an ill-fated romance.
Ah, love is always the rub in these two books, the one
thing that can't be controlled. Love makes people fall
apart; it rattles the chains of the system and creates
chaos. Gentle Ray is so tormented at his own inability
to choose between his devotion to his church and his
love for his wife that he finally takes the only
action he can. Secrets emerge, people are shattered,
and in this astonishing novel, whether or not lives
can be put together again is anyone's guess.
"Is it wrong to trust in a beautiful lie if it gets
you through life?" Nomi asks wistfully. Who will she
become if she leaves the Mennonite community and the
town? In "Torture the Artist," Harlan might finally
decide to fix his life, but will he succeed? What lies
ahead when you give up the security of a system and
opt for a wide-open life? Mystery, possibility, and
love are gambles, the very thing any system of control
fights against, but in these two fine novels, they
become exhilarating destinations.
Caroline Leavitt's novel "Girls in Trouble" will be
out in paperback next spring. She can be reached at
www.carolineleavitt.com.  

LIBRARY JOURNAL review-- TORTURE THE ARTIST

"I'm sorry to be the one to tell you this, but you
will never be happy." So opens this surprisingly
funny, anything-but-predictable story about a hapless,
perpetually miserable young artist named Vincent and
Harlan Eiffler, the manager being paid to make sure he
stays that way. Foster Lipowitz, the ailing CEO of the
world's biggest media conglomerate, feels guilty about
his company's hand in churning out dreck disguised as
entertainment. Dying from a slow cancer, Lipowitz
tries to redeem himself by inventing an experimental
company called New Renaissance. Children with artistic
potential will be found and fostered, each by his or
her own manager, until they are ready to produce works
of timeless artistic merit for a massive audience.
There's one catch: since all true works of art are the
product of intense suffering by the artist, New
Renaissance artists must have their lives manipulated
(read: ruined) by their managers. Vincent's family
home burns down, his dog dies, girlfriends love him
and leave him-the list goes on. This novel, a pointed
commentary on the media machine that continuously
grinds away at our culture, is by turns hilarious,
thought-provoking, chilling, and sad. Goebel (The
Anomolies) is a quirky, fresh, and relevant voice for
our time. Highly recommended for all public
libraries.-Jyna Scheeren, Troy P.L., NY Copyright 2004
Reed Business Information.

The Best Henderson Kentucky Under-25 Novelist

By Joe Ashby Porter

(***This piece was going to appear in the Oxford
American’s “Best of the South” Issue.  Unfortunately,
the magazine folded before that issue went to press.)

Last spring I attended “the largest book fair in
Kentucky” (there’s a superlative already) in Bowling
Green, to promote my new Touch Wood: Short Stories
(paper, $15.95, “irresistibly readable,” Richard
Wilbur), and also because I was born and raised nearby
in western Kentucky, that hinterland of the south (if
Mississippi is the deep south, is Kentucky the shallow
south?).

I sat in place at one of the hundred-odd two-person
tables set up in an echoing convention center, sold a
few books, slipped out for lunch with family who’d
driven over from nearby towns, and socialized a bit
with others in the literary minority (a book fair,
unlike a literary festival, has room for self-help and
cat paintings, plumbing and tell-all).  Robert Morgan,
my visiting colleague at Duke for the semester, was
there to read from Brave Enemies, his strong
forthcoming novel about a woman who fights in the
American Revolution disguised as a man.  I finally met
the poets Frederic Smock, who’d taken a story of mine
years ago when he was editing The American Voice,
there with his tempting new collection The Good Life,
and James Baker Hall, sometime state poet laureate,
there with his delightful new verse novel Praeder’s
Letters.  In the car back to the Nashville airport I
met Martin Pousson come up from New Orleans with his
Noplace, Louisiana [check] which I look forward to
reading, and his tattoos.

Mostly though I was getting to know my table-mate,
22-year-old Joey Goebel, there with advance copies of
his comic first novel The Anomalies (hardback, $22)
about a sort of pickup rock band of misfits including,
for instance, according to the back cover, “sex crazed
Opal [who] lives for partying despite being eighty.”
At the end of the day when I was leaving, Joey said “I
lucked out.”  “Me too,” I said.  I had liked him
immediately when we introduced ourselves and he asked
this sixty-year-old was it okay for him to call me
Joe.  We had affinities besides our surname(s).  We’re
both actual Kentuckians, indeed both natives of
western Kentucky, whereas many of the book guests
seemed not to have any particular connection with the
state.  And then, despite some not surprising
wariness, neither of us seemed inclined to pull any
kind of rank, such as age difference, which could tell
for or against either of us.  I’ve since read Joey’s
The Anomalies and taken pleasure even from its
youthful brashness.  It’s funny and good-hearted, and
it can turn on a dime.

Neither exactly besieged by customers, we had time to
talk.  Having mentioned his girlfriend, Joey
volunteered the information that she was his first
[serious one].  Then, with a glance at my ringless
hand, he asked had I ever been married.  Long ago for
a short time, I explained, but for the past 33 years
I’ve lived with my male partner, and the law hasn’t
allowed us to marry.  Without batting an eye, without
so much as nodding, young straight Joey said, “So
what’s your man like?”

At one point Joey used a word I’d last heard 45 years
before in western Kentucky, and even then it hadn’t
been in my own dialect.  When he mentioned his
“papaw,” his grandfather, I did a mental double take:
can this be authentic, and can he know how it sounds?
Yes on both counts, I guessed.  Only thirteen pages
in, The Anomalies confirmed it.  Opal and
eight-year-old Ember, the youngest in the band, arrive
at a Red Lobster whose waitress tells Opal her
granddaughter is so cute.  Opal replies, “She’s not my
granddaughter, and I ain’t no mammaw.”

I don’t know of a better under-25 novelist in
Henderson, Kentucky, where Joey lives with his widowed
mother, having graduated from Owensboro, Kentucky’s
tiny Brescia University with a BA in English, and
where he was lead singer of the punk band The Mullets.
Nor, off the top of my head, can I think of a better
one from the rest of the south.