Book Review: The Pickup Artist
James J. Walton
Avenue, New York NY 10010, April 2001, 240 pages, hardback,
ISBN 0-312-87403-0
In this future dystopia many artists and the entire body of their work
have been banned from society. Why? So new works of art can be created
without undo criticism and comparisons. Museums which once housed
masterpieces now exhibit bare walls in tribute to the new political
correctness. It is the responsibility of the Bureau of Arts and
Information, via its field agents, to catalog and collect all examples of
banned art works and turn them in for destruction.
Henry Shapiro is one such field agent, known euphemistically as a Pickup
Artist. Henry Shapiro is also a very lonely man. He lives in a small
house with his pet collie, Homer. He has no interests outside of his job
and brooding about his life. The type of lifestyle which makes him
perfect for a Grand Adventure.
Shapiro's curiosity about a particular piece of art leads him to an
involvement with Henry (short for Henrietta) a woman with a shadowy past.
He, of course, soon finds himself on the wrong side of the law. He is not
the first lonely man to be lead astray by a pretty face (or, in this
case, a nice pair of breasts) and he knows he brought his problems onto
himself.
Shapiro, convinced he can save his job if he has enough sick time, begins
a cross country trek in search of a banned Hank Williams album. He is
accompanied by Henry, who may or may not be an agent for a subversive
organization, Cowboy Bob, who is dead but talks a great deal, and Homer
the collie.
Of course the object of the journey is not nearly as important as the
journey itself, (though Shapiro might disagree) and what our characters
learn about themselves and the country.
Bisson's sense of humor makes The Pickup Artist a mixture of Dante's
Inferno, Kafka's The Trial, and Bradbury's Fahrenheit 451. It is
ridiculous and frightening at the same time.
Bisson sends Shapiro through a United States both absurd and plausible.
As we follow Shapiro as he wanders through a mountain of garbage being
excavated by people who pay to be there we at first say "No way!" then we
think a moment and say "Well, if certain things happen...".
How did Shapiro's world become so strange? As the reaction to runaway
technology and a senseless and deadly act of terrorism. The real rulers
of the western world, the business men and the entertainers, pooled their
resources and worked out a method for cleansing the arts. A billionaire
software company owner named Mr. Bill and a has-been movie actress form
the nexus of a shadowy group bent on changing the way the world thinks.
The Pickup Artist may be too cerebral for some tastes and too buffoonish
for others (how is that for contradiction?) but I found it entertaining.