Steven Erikson! He takes jabs at commercial art! He throws a haymaker at critics! He strikes body blows at “serious” artists! No one is safe from this biting satire! No one escapes the revolving door of inevitable decline into anarchy.
You know, I may have said this before, but Erikson really doesn’t get enough credit for his humor. In this story about the art industry somewhere, in some random artsy city, we get a glimpse into the weirdness that permeates the scene. We see people so detached from reality that they live in a perpetual state of judgment, either being judged or judging others. Where the art itself doesn’t matter as much as the personality behind the art, or the lack thereof. There is one particular character in here, Arthur Revel, who represents so many different ideas you could lose track of them. He is the symbol of growing old, the repressed artist, the faulty medical industry, the commercial growth that destroys everything around it until it collapses under its own weight, and the everyday man all in one. As you are laughing at his predicament, you’re simultaneously subjected to the envious horror of what he represents, a bloated health care system and an overindulgence in artistic commercialism. There are plenty of other characters who also edge in and out of the artistic spectrum, be they established artistic mogul, vaunted critic, or wannabe newbie. They all serve to shine a light on a rotten industry that has no right existing save for the fact that reality wouldn’t know what to do with them otherwise. There are revolutionaries in here as well, serving the opposite function in order to bring a twisted balance to the art scene that, in sheer brilliant irony, people wouldn’t even pay attention to without. They revel in intellectual disobedience and counter cultural terror antics.
I had a great time with this story and probably don’t even understand half of it. One of my favorite lines– “He’s discovered his inner self, who he is deep down inside, and now we’re all going to pay!”
“Why, what is he?”
“An artist!”
Hilarious. If you can’t take Erikson making fun of the whole world, most likely including himself, in a completely absurd manner, then this book is probably not for you. But if you are the type who laughs at life because to do otherwise would set you to tears, then this is the story for you. Enjoy!
PS: did I mention the Neanderthal and the Octopus?
