Two Performance Artists Kidnap Their Boss And Do Things With Him

Name: Two Performance Artists Kidnap Their Boss And Do Things With Him
Author: Scotch Wichmann
ISBN: 978-0-9910257-0-1

by Scotch Wichmann ‧ RELEASE DATE: April 14, 2014

An entertaining but overstuffed send-up that sometimes bogs down in provocations.

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Avant-garde scenesters subject a square billionaire to cultural readjustment in this raucous debut satire.

In despair, Larry Frommer and his buddy Hank, two down-on-their-luck performance artists in San Francisco’s seedy Tenderloin neighborhood, resort to jobs at soulless computer company SI, where they labor in a cubicle gulag and stage subversive pranks like overflowing the men’s room toilet. When that goes south, the duo mount their most audacious piece yet: abducting Bill Gates–ian software mogul Bill Kunstler and transforming him into a “performance art machine” in much the same way he has molded legions of programmers into workaholic nerds. Their improbable but entertainingly choreographed caper goes smoothly, and Bill, held naked and helpless in a filthy cage in Larry’s apartment, undergoes a sadistic makeover as he’s kept in darkness, subjected to deafening yoga records and brainwashed with theater jargon: “NOW EXPAND IT! ABSTRACT! MOVE YOUR BODY!” The reprogramming, depicted in bloody, scatological and rather disturbing detail, succeeds all too well, and Bill blossoms into a mystical performance savant who soon has Larry and Hank once again dancing to his tune. Larry and Hank’s picaresque adventures lampoon many deserving subcultures, from the scurvy geekdom of Silicon Valley to performance art itself, which comes off as a quagmire of turgid pretention and straw-grabbing sensationalism. “HARK! TARRY! I SUBORDINATE YOUR TEXTUAL DADDY IN MY TWO-FOLD SOLIPSISTIC VAT,” intones one artiste as she bites into a formaldehyde-preserved toad. Wichmann takes aim at these overripe targets with whip-smart prose and a fertile, scabrous comic imagination that feels a bit like a mashup of Rain Man (1988) and Fight Club (1999). Yet there doesn’t seem to be much effort put into shaping or pacing the narrative other than to pile on more craziness until the proceedings implode. As scenes of gross-out excess drag on, the novel starts to feel as exhausting as one of the haphazard performance pieces it parodies.

An entertaining but overstuffed send-up that sometimes bogs down in provocations.

Pub Date: April 14, 2014

ISBN: 978-0-9910257-0-1

Page Count: 440

Publisher: Freakshow Books

Review Posted Online: Dec. 5, 2013

Review Program: Kirkus Indie

Categories:

GENERAL FICTION

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BETWEEN SISTERS

by Kristin Hannah ‧ RELEASE DATE: May 1, 2003

Briskly written soap with down-to-earth types, mostly without the lachrymose contrivances of Hannah’s previous titles...

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Sisters in and out of love.

Meghann Dontess is a high-powered matrimonial lawyer in Seattle who prefers sex with strangers to emotional intimacy: a strategy bound to backfire sooner or later, warns her tough-talking shrink. It’s advice Meghann decides to ignore, along with the memories of her difficult childhood, neglectful mother, and younger sister. Though she managed to reunite Claire with Sam Cavenaugh (her father but not Meghann’s) when her mother abandoned both girls long ago, Meghann still feels guilty that her sister’s life doesn’t measure up, at least on her terms. Never married, Claire ekes out a living running a country campground with her dad and is raising her six-year-old daughter on her own. When she falls in love for the first time with an up-and-coming country musician, Meghann is appalled: Bobby Austin is a three-time loser at marriage—how on earth can Claire be so blind? Bobby’s blunt explanation doesn’t exactly satisfy the concerned big sister, who busies herself planning Claire’s dream wedding anyway. And, to relieve the stress, she beds various guys she picks up in bars, including Dr. Joe Wyatt, a neurosurgeon turned homeless drifter after the demise of his beloved wife Diane (whom he euthanized). When Claire’s awful headache turns out to be a kind of brain tumor known among neurologists as a “terminator,” Joe rallies. Turns out that Claire had befriended his wife on her deathbed, and now in turn he must try to save her. Is it too late? Will Meghann find true love at last?

Briskly written soap with down-to-earth types, mostly without the lachrymose contrivances of Hannah’s previous titles (Distant Shores, 2002, etc.). Kudos for skipping the snifflefest this time around.

Pub Date: May 1, 2003

ISBN: 0-345-45073-6

Page Count: 400

Publisher: Ballantine

Review Posted Online: June 24, 2010

Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2003

Categories:

GENERAL FICTION

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TO KILL A MOCKINGBIRD

by Harper Lee ‧ RELEASE DATE: July 11, 1960

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A first novel, this is also a first person account of Scout's (Jean Louise) recall of the years that led to the ending of a mystery, the breaking of her brother Jem's elbow, the death of her father's enemy — and the close of childhood years. A widower, Atticus raises his children with legal dispassion and paternal intelligence, and is ably abetted by Calpurnia, the colored cook, while the Alabama town of Maycomb, in the 1930's, remains aloof to their divergence from its tribal patterns. Scout and Jem, with their summer-time companion, Dill, find their paths free from interference — but not from dangers; their curiosity about the imprisoned Boo, whose miserable past is incorporated in their play, results in a tentative friendliness; their fears of Atticus' lack of distinction is dissipated when he shoots a mad dog; his defense of a Negro accused of raping a white girl, Mayella Ewell, is followed with avid interest and turns the rabble whites against him. Scout is the means of averting an attack on Atticus but when he loses the case it is Boo who saves Jem and Scout by killing Mayella's father when he attempts to murder them. The shadows of a beginning for black-white understanding, the persistent fight that Scout carries on against school, Jem's emergence into adulthood, Calpurnia's quiet power, and all the incidents touching on the children's "growing outward" have an attractive starchiness that keeps this southern picture pert and provocative. There is much advance interest in this book; it has been selected by the Literary Guild and Reader's Digest; it should win many friends.