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Also this issue: High Notes Robert Dodge: Chairs -- A Singular Vision and
Jimmy Clark: Shards of the Wissahickon artsquicks Puppetry of the Penis Heaven and Hell Opera on the Square Momentum The Comedy of Errors |
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June 26-July 2, 2003
artpicks
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There are images in art you just have to accept no matter how blatant their disregard for plausibility or common sense. Lest we lose out on an opportunity to experience the artist's vision, we must allow our incredulity a tiny holiday. The sublime beauty of the moment is more powerful than the laws of physics, reason or psychology. Think Magritte's apple (it's just hovering there!). Think every other minute in Magnolia (Come on, that's too many damn frogs!). Davy Rothbart's first collection of short stories, The Lone Surfer of Montana, Kansas (21 Balloons, $8), has its share of these moments. Without giving away too much: The world's biggest liar meets a bizarre -- but not supernatural -- fate befitting his tall tales. A driver hoping for love and searching for meaning encounters a series of epiphanies after breaking the arm of a landlocked surfer. That Rothbart finds poetry, dignity and oddity in the mundane and fleeting moments of everyday life is no surprise. As the founder of Found Magazine, he gathers the discarded and lost bits of people's lives (receipts, shopping lists, letters never sent) and publishes the mysterious vignettes into stories the reader will never fully be privy to. As an author, Rothbart is overly fond of similes and tangents -- he's 28 and very much into hip-hop -- but he's got enough finesse to let action lead the way when the story calls for it. In those moments, The Lone Surfer is as beautiful as gale-force frogs and a hovering Granny Smith.
Davy Rothbart, Sun., June 29, 8 p.m., free, with musical performances by Devon Sproule and The Poem Adept, Fergie’s Pub, 1214 Sansom St., 215-928-8118.
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