Reviews by Patricia Prijatel – Books, Brews & Banter

Get the Picture, by Bianca Bosker

Bianca Bosker looked at art in her New York neighborhood and wondered what others saw.

Trying to figure out what paintings and sculptures made it into galleries and museums, she spent nearly two years working in the New York art world, trying to learn what and who makes art important right now. Because she was a journalist, getting even a menial job in this world was difficult; she was blocked by gallery owners who saw her as a potential enemy capable of distorting their work to the world. It’s an insular, paranoid world where reputations are fragile yet essential.

In Get the Picture, Bosker shares what she learned as a gallery art assistant, an artist’s apprentice and as a guard at the Guggenheim Museum. The subtitle demonstrates the book’s breadth: A Mind-Bending Journey Among the Inspired Artists and Obsessive Art Fiends Who Taught Me How to See.

Bosker developed close relationships with some of the top players in the art game, doing menial work, such as stretching canvasses and painting walls, to prove her commitment in an exhausting journey of multiple 12-hour days ending in late-night art openings and parties. Through this immersion, she learned that contemporary art often is judged by context rather than content, its meaning coming from its story. Not only who made it, but why and where, and who owns it. Art for grandma’s condo has less value than that purchased by influential collectors—even if it looks the same to us.

In fact, galleries representing “important” art are often hidden away from the annoying public. They don’t want us to bother them. The wrong buyer can spoil the story and reduce the work’s value. And it can be ruinous for an artist when her work sells at auction for many times its original selling price. While that might seem a good thing, none of that money goes to the artist, and the result of the inflation can be a deflation of the artist’s reputation. It looks like collectors see no future in holding onto the art and are dumping it for whatever they can get—which can be 100s of times the original price. Plus, being too popular cheapens the importance of the piece.

It’s a confusing world in which work that is “too pretty” is denied admittance because it is seen as simplistic and lacking in meaning, although meaning shifts so much it’s hard to keep up. The idea of an intuitive relationship with art is often seen as naïve. The art needs to earn its standing not just by being a cut above, but also by being less accessible than other works.

At the Guggenheim Museum, Bosker spent hours doing nothing but staring at art. And she learned her way of finding meaning—through immersion, waiting for the details, the meaning, the beauty to inevitably emerge. The way most of us go to art exhibits, she learned, is wrong. We dutifully look at each painting, read its description, then go on to the next. Pros, by comparison, enter the room, find the piece that captures their eye immediately, go to it, and do a deep dive. Not just for a few minutes, but for 10, 20 or more. Forget the description and let the art speak for itself. Some art instructors, in fact, require students to look at the same piece over and over throughout a semester, sometimes every class session, spending hours on one work. Each time they look, they see something different.

But there’s another reason to avoid reading the descriptions of art in galleries and museums—they are written in “International Art English,” a batch of fancy words that most of us don’t understand—and aren’t supposed to. As an example, Bosker quotes a news release for a show that will “summon forces of indexicality and iconicity from the aspirations, alibis and abuses of sovereignty.” You betcha.

So, what is art? For enjoyment, it’s up to us—what engages us and gives us joy. For profit, it’s up to the collectors and investors—what ends up in museums and art warehouses and sells for six figures or more.

Bosker introduced us to several artists that might be fun to follow, especially Erin O’Keefe and Julie Curtiss. And even though Jack Barrett took up far too much space in the book and came off as a person we need not ever meet, she nevertheless recommends his gallery in Tribeca, a block from the DIMIN gallery, whose owner, Rob Dimin and former partner Elizabeth Denny are committed to helping new artists. As for Amanda Allfire and her face-sitting art—the less said the better.

— Pat Prijatel

The Master Butchers Singing Club, by Louise Erdrich

The Master Butchers Singing Club is a mouthful of a title. But read closely, and you’ll see how the role of songs is critical to the book’s message. This is a book about a community in which music is a connector, bringing together people who have grown up in the town, but nevertheless are outsiders, immigrants who are building businesses and relationships, and native Americans who live nearby yet worlds apart.

The traumas of two world wars and of Wounded Knee, of family loss and community estrangement permeate the ground. Songs heal. Songs of patriotism, of war, of love and belonging pervade the book as this engaging cast of characters seeks belonging and a sense of home, not always sure where that is.

The book starts after WWI, as Fidelis Waldvogel leaves Germany for the United States, planning to take a train to Seattle, paying his way selling sausages. He runs out of money in Argus, North Dakota, and ends up making a life there. When his can afford it, he brings his wife Eva and her son Franz to join him. Fidelis and Eva run a successful butcher’s shop and he leads the men’s singing group, which includes Roy, the town drunk, a competing butcher, the sheriff, a doctor, and poor Porky Chavers whose singing might have gotten him killed.

While the men are singing, the women are talking. Eva, by now the mother of four sons, nurtures Delphine, who grew up a motherless misfit in the town, but left for a brief stint as a table in a balancing act with Cyprian, her gay unmarried husband with whom she shares a strong emotional bond. Delphine is close friends with Clarisse, the town undertaker, who is shunned by men because of her occupation. Hock, the sheriff, thinks he’s a prize because he wants her no matter what. The “no matter what” wasn’t what he was expecting. Franz’s girlfriend Mazarine lives in poverty, which makes her the butt of jokes until Delphine helps her with a new wardrobe. And Step and a Half keeps walking and watching, helping from the sidelines.

Fidelis and Eva’s sons are vital to the story as World War II looms and Franz learns to fly, marries Mazarine, and heads to Europe to be a hero. Markus becomes bookish and leans on Delphine to fill the void left by his mother’s death, either trapping Delphine or offering her sanctuary—Delphine’s not too sure. And the twins, Emil and Erich, move back to Germany with their stern aunt, Tante, becoming Hitler youths ready to fight their American brothers.

Then there’s the mystery of the bodies in Roy’s basement—and the beads embedded in an odd sealant that kept the cellar door shut. What was Roy’s role in their deaths? Was Clarisse involved? How did the beads get there? And why won’t the sheriff move on and acknowledge it was a tragic accident?

Erdrich explains some of this, but not all. She leaves crumbs for us to find in careful reading. But she isn’t there to answer all our questions, or to leave all plot points neatly tied up. That’s neither real life nor a good book, and she masterfully gives as both.

— Pat Prijatel

The One-in-a Million Boy, by Monica Wood

Ona is 104 when she first meets the boy, who comes on Saturdays to work for her as part of a Boy Scout project. He fills her birdfeeders and does odd jobs around her house. She is impressed that he always shows up and does what he says he’s going to do. But then he disappears.

Three weeks later, his father, Quinn, comes over to help finish the boy’s job. He offers no explanation for the boy’s absence. He has seven more weeks of work to do for Ona, which he does competently but distractedly at first. But Ona charms him with card tricks, animal cracker treats, and honesty; the two develop a relationship that fills a need neither have had the courage to face before.

Quinn never tells Ona the boy has died; she learns through a newspaper story. The boy got up very early one morning, went on a bike ride, and his heart gave out because of long QT syndrome. But the boy, who is never named, remains ever present in this beguiling story of belonging; of memories lost then regained; and of people picking up the broken pieces of their lives and gluing them together with one another into a messy but marvelous collage.

The boy is 11, small for his age, and has no friends. He’s anxious, and counts actions, plans, and thoughts off on his fingers in groups of ten to calm himself. He is obsessed with The Guinness Book of World Records. His mother, Belle, knows he’s not like most other boys, and has sought treatment for him. Rather than seeing him as odd and labeling him as having a disorder, she sees him as one-in-a-million. The reader might conclude that he has OCD, but author Monica Wood presents him not as a diagnosis, but as a treasure.

Quinn, who is in his 40s, has made a living as a roving guitarist, always with his eye toward his big break. Several years before, he’d provided guitar backup one magical evening to musician David Crosby, who had said, “Look at this guy!” while Quinn played. He was sure Crosby saw him as a rare talent. But working through the boy’s death helps Quinn see more clearly and he realizes that he completely misunderstood Crosby‘s comment. It was a starry night, and Crosby had said, “Look at the sky!” He was in awe of nature, not Quinn. Finally, Quinn can face that he is a good, not great, guitarist and he needs to face reality and grow up.

Belle shows the grief Quinn can never face. Quinn and Belle have been married twice—they truly appear to love one another—but Quinn is just not up to marriage and fatherhood. Music is more vital to him. He has been an absent father, and Belle has had to shoulder the responsibility of raising the boy. Only after the boy dies does Quinn realize he loved him.

Throughout the book, Ona tells the story of her life through a series of interviews with the boy. When the boy learns how old she is, he begins his quest to get her into The Guinness Book of World Records. But she is not old enough, plus she doesn’t have the documents to prove her age. This sets off a quest in which Ona faces her own life while Quinn grows into his. Bit by bit, words from her native Lithuanian start coming to her, vestiges of long-buried memories of a brother, her two sons who died, and a third son who is now in his 80s. And she unearths the truth of people who loved her, disappointed her, and betrayed her.

Wood tells us the story with one exquisite scene after another falling together precisely and often unexpectedly. She breaks the narrative throughout with parts of the boy’s interview with Ona and with random snippets from The Guinness Book of World Records, both presented in lists of ten. His presence is especially palpable in these interruptions, which also serve as connections. When the boy gets to Part 10 of the interview and realizes he has more story to tell, he simply calls it “also Part Ten.”

Included in the lists of world feats: largest gathering of clowns (850); harriest family (the Gomez family of Mexico, with 98 percent body hair); fastest time nonelectric window opened by a dog (11.34 seconds); and heaviest bus pulled by hair (17,359 pounds).

Throughout the interviews, the boy searches for ways to get Ona into the Guinness book. Ona calls him “my steadfast little fellow” for his efforts. Maybe she could be the oldest person to fly in an airplane? he asks. Ona scoffs—prematurely, as it turns out. Or she could be the oldest person who still drives, a record currently held by “Fred Hale.109. Country of USA.” Ona has a car but no license, although she nevertheless drives to the store weekly. The boy sets out to help her pass her driving test. He doesn’t finish, but Quinn does.

Also making appearances are a Christian boy band and their hard-driving manager Sylvie, who offers Quinn a chance for a different life and another way of belonging; Ted Ledbetter, the upstanding Scout leader who woos Belle, gives her comfort and offers Quinn a glimpse into a responsible relationship; Ona’s first husband who wrote a song she considered a failure, but which the boy band loves and which shows he loved her; and Quinn’s local band, which consists of manager-level childhood friends who envy him while he envies them.

The ending is heartbreaking—and uplifting. While Quinn thought he and the boy never connected, the boy saw him as the one person who could bring beauty and music back into Ona’s life. And he was right, although it happened differently than he expected. His loss is tragic, but he remains alive in these beautiful, lost characters who discover themselves through one another, and create a makeshift family because of him.

He was one in a million. Maybe that should get him into The Guinness Book of World Records.

— Pat Prijatel