The Pickup Artist is written in deadpan crystal-clear prose that perfectly suits Hank.
Things start to slip a little when he picks up a Hank Williams LP that catches his eye – and then slip a lot when he tries to listen to it. It’s a mundane job but Hank is a mundane guy leading a mundane life. The Fugitive (Harrison Ford version), John Grisham’s novels, paintings by Rockwell Kent, etc. Each day he follows a list of artworks scheduled for deletion, e.g. Hank Shapiro works for the Bureau of Arts and Entertainment. Within these simple rules there are no exceptions, and fame or ‘relevance’ is not a recognised defence. Thus, a monthly lottery takes place to decide which artists will be consigned to the dustbin of history and a random selection of films, books, art and music are regularly deleted – every single example of them tracked down, brought in and destroyed. So that we don’t drown in our own culture and so that future Piranesis, Prousts or Presleys are not crushed by the weight of their predecessors’ work, it has been agreed that space must be made for the new. You see, there’s quite enough of the stuff floating about out there already – where’s all the new stuff supposed to go? I have trouble enough keeping up with the new books that need to be read, without simultaneously absorbing the ‘classics’ and rereading my favourites. It’s easy to sympathise with the dilemma Terry Bisson suggests in The Pickup Artist, that of the mass of cultural artefacts steadfastly accumulating in museums, libraries, galleries, shops, etc, etc. The Pickup Artist THE PICKUP ARTIST, by Terry Bisson
0 kommentar(er)
