What do you think?
Rate this book
La colorista
La prima edizione italiana del romanzo di culto della New York degli anni Novanta.
New York, tardi anni Ottanta: Julie vive nell’inquieto e vibrante Lower East Side e lavora come colorista per la Fantômes Comics, casa editrice dalle sorti incerte la cui supereroina, Electra, lungi dal fornirle eroiche risposte, sembra al contrario porle continue domande esistenziali mentre trascorre infinite ore china sulle tavole che narrano le sue gesta, desiderose di nuovi orizzonti. Lo stesso vale per il suo sfuggente oggetto del desiderio, Eamonn, fotografo irlandese impegnato, e di tutta la sfaccettata, spesso geniale umanità che incontra in una New York postmoderna dal fascino crudo e magnetico. Quando alla Fantômes il fato dell’eroina sembra ormai segnato, Julie e Laurel, l’inseparabile inchiostratrice, decideranno di creare la loro versione della storia e di far atterrare Electra sulla Terra, in una città che le mostrerà i mille ambigui volti dell’esistenza umana.
Pubblicato per la prima volta nel 1990 dalla Vintage Contemporaries nell’iconica collana che ha ospitato Cormac McCarthy, Don DeLillo e Raymond Carver, e conquistatosi la fama di romanzo di culto, La colorista arriva nella sua prima edizione italiana con il fascino intatto di un’opera analogica che non smette di porci un quesito fondamentale: siamo o meno la versione più autentica di noi stessi?
New York, tardi anni Ottanta: Julie vive nell’inquieto e vibrante Lower East Side e lavora come colorista per la Fantômes Comics, casa editrice dalle sorti incerte la cui supereroina, Electra, lungi dal fornirle eroiche risposte, sembra al contrario porle continue domande esistenziali mentre trascorre infinite ore china sulle tavole che narrano le sue gesta, desiderose di nuovi orizzonti. Lo stesso vale per il suo sfuggente oggetto del desiderio, Eamonn, fotografo irlandese impegnato, e di tutta la sfaccettata, spesso geniale umanità che incontra in una New York postmoderna dal fascino crudo e magnetico. Quando alla Fantômes il fato dell’eroina sembra ormai segnato, Julie e Laurel, l’inseparabile inchiostratrice, decideranno di creare la loro versione della storia e di far atterrare Electra sulla Terra, in una città che le mostrerà i mille ambigui volti dell’esistenza umana.
Pubblicato per la prima volta nel 1990 dalla Vintage Contemporaries nell’iconica collana che ha ospitato Cormac McCarthy, Don DeLillo e Raymond Carver, e conquistatosi la fama di romanzo di culto, La colorista arriva nella sua prima edizione italiana con il fascino intatto di un’opera analogica che non smette di porci un quesito fondamentale: siamo o meno la versione più autentica di noi stessi?
- GenresFiction
288 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1985
About the author
Susan Daitch
18 books58 followersSusan Daitch is the author of four novels, L.C. (Lannan Foundation Selection and NEA Heritage Award), THE COLORIST, PAPER CONSPIRACIES, THE LOST CIVILIZATION OF SUOLUCIDIR and a collection of short stories, STORYTOWN. A novella, FALL OUT, published by Madras Press donates all proceeds to Women for Afghan Women. Her work has appeared in Tinhouse, Lit Hub, Slice, Black Clock, Conjunctions, Guernica, Bomb, Ploughshares, The Barcelona Review, Redivider, Zeek, failbetter.com, McSweeney's, Salt Hill Journal, Pacific Review, Dewclaw, Dear Navigator,
The Library of Potential Literature, The Pushcart Prize Anthology, and The Norton Anthology of Postmodern American Fiction. Her work was featured in The Review of Contemporary Fiction along with William Vollman and David Foster Wallace. She has been the recipient of two Vogelstein awards and a New York Foundation for the Arts fellowship. She has taught at Barnard College, Columbia University, and the Iowa Writers' Workshop and currently teaches at Hunter College.
The Library of Potential Literature, The Pushcart Prize Anthology, and The Norton Anthology of Postmodern American Fiction. Her work was featured in The Review of Contemporary Fiction along with William Vollman and David Foster Wallace. She has been the recipient of two Vogelstein awards and a New York Foundation for the Arts fellowship. She has taught at Barnard College, Columbia University, and the Iowa Writers' Workshop and currently teaches at Hunter College.
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 - 15 of 15 reviews
December 4, 2009
There was a time apparently when Daitch was billed up there with DFW and William Vollmann as the great hope for literature. This is my third try reading her, I think there isn't anything left to try reading, as she seems to have dropped off the face of the bookworld map since sometime in the mid-90's.
The first novel I read of hers, LC, was not about Leonard Cohen, and also wasn't very memorable. I had to check on goodreads to see if I had read it, and I found out that yes, I had read it about a year ago. That's not exactly a good sign.
Then there was her short story collection, which were hit and miss. When her stories worked best it seemed as if she had read Gaddis, and really was into The Recognitions.
Then there was this book, which is kind of like a light version of The Recognitions, but that's not necessarily a bad thing, since it's a more coherent story. Maybe it's not supposed to be a take off of Gaddis, but maybe I'm just wrong and see the forgery 'theme' that runs through a lot of her work as a Gaddis thing, when really it's something else.
I don't know if I want to give this book four stars, or three, and say it's a high three. I've give it a 7 if I could use ten stars, or three and a half. I'm feeling generous with my stars tonight though.
It's a shame that she didn't write another novel after this one. There is something engaging about her voice here. There is an insecurity in the first person tone, that gives her main character a spectator quality, or maybe just a human element of frailty and flaws. I have no idea what I'm saying. I kind of see this book like DFW's Broom of the System, a good book, but more in it's promise for future things than as being the pinnacle of what a writer can do. But unlike DFW this could possibly be the pinnacle of what Daitch does.
The first novel I read of hers, LC, was not about Leonard Cohen, and also wasn't very memorable. I had to check on goodreads to see if I had read it, and I found out that yes, I had read it about a year ago. That's not exactly a good sign.
Then there was her short story collection, which were hit and miss. When her stories worked best it seemed as if she had read Gaddis, and really was into The Recognitions.
Then there was this book, which is kind of like a light version of The Recognitions, but that's not necessarily a bad thing, since it's a more coherent story. Maybe it's not supposed to be a take off of Gaddis, but maybe I'm just wrong and see the forgery 'theme' that runs through a lot of her work as a Gaddis thing, when really it's something else.
I don't know if I want to give this book four stars, or three, and say it's a high three. I've give it a 7 if I could use ten stars, or three and a half. I'm feeling generous with my stars tonight though.
It's a shame that she didn't write another novel after this one. There is something engaging about her voice here. There is an insecurity in the first person tone, that gives her main character a spectator quality, or maybe just a human element of frailty and flaws. I have no idea what I'm saying. I kind of see this book like DFW's Broom of the System, a good book, but more in it's promise for future things than as being the pinnacle of what a writer can do. But unlike DFW this could possibly be the pinnacle of what Daitch does.
January 4, 2010
one definition of a novel, say, is that which honestly tries to organize the chaos of thought into a semi-satisfactory, semi-consistent semantic machine of about eighty-thousand words. this definition might help us understand a book that's mainly digressive in structure or one that fails to draw a moral conclusion.
only the simple and the pedantic want an art that purports to teach you something. or, as robert creeley said it: "Had I lived some years ago, I think I would have been a moralist, ie, one who lays down, so to speak, rules of behavior with no small amount of self-satisfaction. But the writer isn't allowed that function anymore, or no man can take the job on very happily, being aware (as he must be) of what precisely that will make him."
a big sic to the genderizing, but you get the point.
one is drawn to susan daitch's magnificent novel because a reader can feel, can sense, the writer thinking as she writes. both to the reader and herself, the author is unpredictable and surprising. she is gratifyingly clever; she is free.
i think, because of this freedom, the book is capable of mysterious and beautiful passages that are wonderfully unanchored and yet, which in accretion, create a trusted, consistent experience... passages like the following which describes a uniquely modern state of desire, a ghost of love -- a momentary and unpassionate desire:
She looked at a photograph of an attractive young man, not an advertisement, but almost. It was something passed by quickly, flipping through the pages of a book or a magazine. Laurel was drawn to the picture, although she didn't turn back to it. She put the volume down and left the store. Even if the man himself stood near her in the store, she would have left. That kind of pursuit, whether she was its object or the pursuer, seemed unfathomable to her. It was something she was no longer capable of, she'd lost the language. As engaging or as easy as he or any random person looked, she knew she'd only feel embarrassed about it later (200).
i re-read this book after about fifteen years and i think it feels even fresher than when i first came to it... susan daitch's fantastic novel tells the tale of julie greene and her boyfriend, eamonn, a weegee-admiring photographer. julie is a colorist, one who colors comic book panels for a living -- specifically a comic book about electra, a heroine who can make duplicates of herself.
electra's doubles, the comic book industry, eamonn's photography -- all allow a focused but continued and varied meditation on the artifice of representation, its constantly shifting mimetic, mythic and mystic functions. this meditation meanders and digresses while slyly and courageously never coming to a conclusion.
late in the book, Daitch writes:
Electra's world had turned into a house of mirrors. She reflected or mimicked every situation she found herself in. I considered this condition a kind of disease, one which had lain dormant for years: she'd probably caught it in space. The first symptoms were awkward polyphonic parrotings of other people. Residents of Allen Street avoided Electra because she copied them involuntarily. She would instantly look and sound like each random passerby in turn. Her reflexivity reached such proportions that Electra was, for all intents and purposes, invisible. She had no control over herself. People saw themselves in her, which was confusing to both parties, or she blended in with buildings. It was an anti-solipsistic condition, and it explained why Eamonn's photographs of her were blank. In the early stages of the disease, the camera was more sensitive to invisibility and mimicry than the naked eye (212).
daitch's style is never ostentatious, almost modest. and yet, using subtle juxtapositions and transitions, this work creates all kinds of new holes of indeterminacy, weird and new thoughts.
an opposing but related definition to the above for the novel might nonetheless also be true: the novel as a totem -- a symbol to ourselves that the ineffable unfolding of the world cannot (and should not) be made into a reductive narrative. the novel then can only exist as a fractal, unresolvable piece of the whole. THE COLORIST is thus a brave type of paradoxical work -- a powerful and almost impossible novel that attempts to organize the unknowable and yet also one that refuses to do so.
only the simple and the pedantic want an art that purports to teach you something. or, as robert creeley said it: "Had I lived some years ago, I think I would have been a moralist, ie, one who lays down, so to speak, rules of behavior with no small amount of self-satisfaction. But the writer isn't allowed that function anymore, or no man can take the job on very happily, being aware (as he must be) of what precisely that will make him."
a big sic to the genderizing, but you get the point.
one is drawn to susan daitch's magnificent novel because a reader can feel, can sense, the writer thinking as she writes. both to the reader and herself, the author is unpredictable and surprising. she is gratifyingly clever; she is free.
i think, because of this freedom, the book is capable of mysterious and beautiful passages that are wonderfully unanchored and yet, which in accretion, create a trusted, consistent experience... passages like the following which describes a uniquely modern state of desire, a ghost of love -- a momentary and unpassionate desire:
She looked at a photograph of an attractive young man, not an advertisement, but almost. It was something passed by quickly, flipping through the pages of a book or a magazine. Laurel was drawn to the picture, although she didn't turn back to it. She put the volume down and left the store. Even if the man himself stood near her in the store, she would have left. That kind of pursuit, whether she was its object or the pursuer, seemed unfathomable to her. It was something she was no longer capable of, she'd lost the language. As engaging or as easy as he or any random person looked, she knew she'd only feel embarrassed about it later (200).
i re-read this book after about fifteen years and i think it feels even fresher than when i first came to it... susan daitch's fantastic novel tells the tale of julie greene and her boyfriend, eamonn, a weegee-admiring photographer. julie is a colorist, one who colors comic book panels for a living -- specifically a comic book about electra, a heroine who can make duplicates of herself.
electra's doubles, the comic book industry, eamonn's photography -- all allow a focused but continued and varied meditation on the artifice of representation, its constantly shifting mimetic, mythic and mystic functions. this meditation meanders and digresses while slyly and courageously never coming to a conclusion.
late in the book, Daitch writes:
Electra's world had turned into a house of mirrors. She reflected or mimicked every situation she found herself in. I considered this condition a kind of disease, one which had lain dormant for years: she'd probably caught it in space. The first symptoms were awkward polyphonic parrotings of other people. Residents of Allen Street avoided Electra because she copied them involuntarily. She would instantly look and sound like each random passerby in turn. Her reflexivity reached such proportions that Electra was, for all intents and purposes, invisible. She had no control over herself. People saw themselves in her, which was confusing to both parties, or she blended in with buildings. It was an anti-solipsistic condition, and it explained why Eamonn's photographs of her were blank. In the early stages of the disease, the camera was more sensitive to invisibility and mimicry than the naked eye (212).
daitch's style is never ostentatious, almost modest. and yet, using subtle juxtapositions and transitions, this work creates all kinds of new holes of indeterminacy, weird and new thoughts.
an opposing but related definition to the above for the novel might nonetheless also be true: the novel as a totem -- a symbol to ourselves that the ineffable unfolding of the world cannot (and should not) be made into a reductive narrative. the novel then can only exist as a fractal, unresolvable piece of the whole. THE COLORIST is thus a brave type of paradoxical work -- a powerful and almost impossible novel that attempts to organize the unknowable and yet also one that refuses to do so.
April 12, 2020
"How is being on a train like being in a movie? The answer has something to do with linear motion and a finite number of characters. The journey comes to some sort of end, just like a story" (84-85).
"So if L. Carne, like Martin, was equally lost and so easily washed off, what will end up mattering? If most of memory is vague, embarrassing detritus, conversations one was ashamed of ever having had, gestures which in retrospect seem clownish (at best), then I think of myself as one of those long, flexible pencils, the ones which erase what they write as they mark along" (150).
"If I find myself reducing the names of my paints to the simplest primaries, I go to the drugstore. Here I find a warehouse of names like Jamaica Peach, Oyster Blush, Rose Twist. The names are subject to copyright laws, so one company can't call another company Mood Indigo if a color named Mood Indigo, regardless of what it looks like, has already been produced. The colors themselves can't be copyrighted, just the names. I have never seen a pink oyster; the woman behind the counter said it was a new color for eyes. I find the idea of newness in a color to be a little jarring. Haven't all the colors already been mixed or invented or seen somewhere?" (214).
"Laurel saw a picture of her mother when she was twenty years old in China. She looked so innocent and vulnerable that Laurel said, without meaning to sound harsh, you look like a nice person. What was more shocking than the discovery of this picture was one of herself taken when she was sixteen. Laurel had always thought of herself as alert and cynical, an early smoker, street-smart, early at everything, rarely fooled. The face in the photograph, smiling sweetly, looked exactly like the one of her mother in China. She asked if there were any more photographs of her mother when she was young; perhaps that particular picture had been an exception, a moment caught unawares. Her mother had always been as she was now, bitter, often scowling. Other pictures of Mrs. Liu would prove she had always been as she was now, and disprove the evidence of the photograph of Laurel at sixteen. These were flukes. Laurel had always been as she presently was. If Laurel had looked so innocent when young, just as her mother had, she feared that meant she might risk growing older as her mother did, becoming bitter and scowling. They had left China in a hurry. The photograph was the only one saved, or perhaps ever taken" (220).
"So if L. Carne, like Martin, was equally lost and so easily washed off, what will end up mattering? If most of memory is vague, embarrassing detritus, conversations one was ashamed of ever having had, gestures which in retrospect seem clownish (at best), then I think of myself as one of those long, flexible pencils, the ones which erase what they write as they mark along" (150).
"If I find myself reducing the names of my paints to the simplest primaries, I go to the drugstore. Here I find a warehouse of names like Jamaica Peach, Oyster Blush, Rose Twist. The names are subject to copyright laws, so one company can't call another company Mood Indigo if a color named Mood Indigo, regardless of what it looks like, has already been produced. The colors themselves can't be copyrighted, just the names. I have never seen a pink oyster; the woman behind the counter said it was a new color for eyes. I find the idea of newness in a color to be a little jarring. Haven't all the colors already been mixed or invented or seen somewhere?" (214).
"Laurel saw a picture of her mother when she was twenty years old in China. She looked so innocent and vulnerable that Laurel said, without meaning to sound harsh, you look like a nice person. What was more shocking than the discovery of this picture was one of herself taken when she was sixteen. Laurel had always thought of herself as alert and cynical, an early smoker, street-smart, early at everything, rarely fooled. The face in the photograph, smiling sweetly, looked exactly like the one of her mother in China. She asked if there were any more photographs of her mother when she was young; perhaps that particular picture had been an exception, a moment caught unawares. Her mother had always been as she was now, bitter, often scowling. Other pictures of Mrs. Liu would prove she had always been as she was now, and disprove the evidence of the photograph of Laurel at sixteen. These were flukes. Laurel had always been as she presently was. If Laurel had looked so innocent when young, just as her mother had, she feared that meant she might risk growing older as her mother did, becoming bitter and scowling. They had left China in a hurry. The photograph was the only one saved, or perhaps ever taken" (220).
partial-credit
November 24, 2013Bailing.
It might be me more than Daitch, but I doubt it.
Maybe it’s too 1985 ; or too young ; or too something. Or maybe I’m reading too many two hundred page novellas.
It’s a fine enough novella. But I haven’t been this disappointed in something since Lethem’s Motherless novel. Which, see? says perhaps more about me than about the novelette.
It was rather unfair of the RCF to have her share an issue with WTV and DFW. It really was. Mark Leyner may have been a better pairing. He’s got a blurb here ; and I don’t agree with a single word he says. Rushdie also has a throw-away line on the front cover.
Sorry. But it ain’t happening.
It might be me more than Daitch, but I doubt it.
Maybe it’s too 1985 ; or too young ; or too something. Or maybe I’m reading too many two hundred page novellas.
It’s a fine enough novella. But I haven’t been this disappointed in something since Lethem’s Motherless novel. Which, see? says perhaps more about me than about the novelette.
It was rather unfair of the RCF to have her share an issue with WTV and DFW. It really was. Mark Leyner may have been a better pairing. He’s got a blurb here ; and I don’t agree with a single word he says. Rushdie also has a throw-away line on the front cover.
Sorry. But it ain’t happening.
October 23, 2022
Finally, a story about the unsung heroes of the comic book industry.
December 29, 2022
“How is a camera like a gun?” one of the characters asks. The idea is that there is a clear power imbalance between person A holding the gun and person B on the wrong end of the barrel. I think one of the ideas that The Colorist explores is the hypothesis that there isn’t a difference between a camera and a gun; or that it’s a matter of degrees (or shades?), with the stakes perhaps not as obvious. Using the gun/camera simile, The Colorist then asks, what’s the difference between the camera and your eyes? Is looking always predatory? Who benefits from this seemingly one-sided transaction of viewer/viewee?
What follows is a book deeply interested in observing a kind of widespread, detached and disinterested voyeurism endemic in contemporary America, which is heavily constructed from images (ads, tv, movies, photographs, paintings), i.e. objects to look at. I think ultimately The Colorist explores the semiotic and epistemological implications of perception, how the objects we look at convey meaning and how that meaning shapes us. It uses colour as an initial premise:
“When any single color or hues of a color are isolated or given special status in a social context, the color becomes connected to ideas or becomes symbolic of a set of ideas. Color is more than an optical phenomenon, more than masses of rods and cones in your retinas...Color induces mental and emotional states regardless of the nature of the object itself.”
If colour has this kind of inherent power, then it’s not a stretch to assume that the many other things we see on a daily basis might also carry symbolic weight.
Anyway, I find these kinds of ideas and thoughts interesting, and I think Daitch handles them well in her novel. The writing is clean. The book is super short and virtually every line is doing something for the overall vision. I’ll look (pardon the pun) for her more recent work to see (again…sorry) if she’s perhaps expanded on these themes given the tech that’s evolved and changed the way we look at things since The Colorist was written.
What follows is a book deeply interested in observing a kind of widespread, detached and disinterested voyeurism endemic in contemporary America, which is heavily constructed from images (ads, tv, movies, photographs, paintings), i.e. objects to look at. I think ultimately The Colorist explores the semiotic and epistemological implications of perception, how the objects we look at convey meaning and how that meaning shapes us. It uses colour as an initial premise:
“When any single color or hues of a color are isolated or given special status in a social context, the color becomes connected to ideas or becomes symbolic of a set of ideas. Color is more than an optical phenomenon, more than masses of rods and cones in your retinas...Color induces mental and emotional states regardless of the nature of the object itself.”
If colour has this kind of inherent power, then it’s not a stretch to assume that the many other things we see on a daily basis might also carry symbolic weight.
Anyway, I find these kinds of ideas and thoughts interesting, and I think Daitch handles them well in her novel. The writing is clean. The book is super short and virtually every line is doing something for the overall vision. I’ll look (pardon the pun) for her more recent work to see (again…sorry) if she’s perhaps expanded on these themes given the tech that’s evolved and changed the way we look at things since The Colorist was written.
May 28, 2014
Scattered, not well-researched
June 28, 2017
This dense little book was a treat. The prose was beautiful, weird, informative. The plot snuck up on you, I felt. Developments would happen in a sneaky way, a pleasing way; they surprised you. There's a lot in this one though, and I do not feel like I was able to read to my satisfaction just one time through. I will have to read again. I recommend this book to anyone who wants to read something sophisticated, something out of the ordinary. The subject matter is delightful: comics, reproductions, gods, sex work (from a unique point of view -- not the customer's but the seller's), etc. I loved the alternate Electra episodes that she came up with. I found them delightful and inspiring as a creative work. I also liked the way it created an internal narrative that ran parallel to the main narrative of the book. This is an exciting book. I think they should reprint it a lot.
January 23, 2023
I don't know how I found this book. It's just one of those things that might happen when you are in a bookstore trying to remember the books you are looking for. I went to the B section like usual to see what Ballard books they had, and if there was anything by Bolano. I checked certain letters, like K and M, but then I found this one. I have a thing for "The" titles, too. And the thing about this book is no one else could have written it. I know that seems generic, but so many books I pick up I feel there's just nothing to them. It's what happens in a world where a style gets popularized, where everybody learns to write the same way. Maybe I look too much for imagination. I want something unique. I know no one else feels this way. Case in point- look at the world. It's without color. There is a colorist, though.
July 27, 2026
Non saprei riassumere di cosa parla, ma avrei continuato a leggerlo per altre centinaia di pagine.
December 9, 2009
Took me about 80 pages to get in to this, and it still reads like a series of interconnected short stories rather than a novel, but that's not at all a bad thing. Definitely cerebral but with plenty of punchy scenes, like this one:
"Mimicry in the service of parody and travesty but not in the service of survival or seduction. Here's an example. Martin once imitated Mr. Loonan when he was out of the office. He punched holes in a Styrofoam cup, rubbed his nose, and hunched over a drawing table in just the same way. He spoke with Loonan's intonation as he described how lovely Electra was, how she should come into his apartment, make herself at home, while he put on a sound-effects tape. Office sounds, factory sounds, war or period effects, but would Electra know what a water wheel or a steamship was? It was not a romantic solution. Laurel and I laughed. Martin was very funny. Then we saw Loonan standing in the office door. I don't know how much of Martin's mimicry he overhead. He might not have had many illusions about our respect for him, but when we made fun of him, his eyes grew red. This is what I'll have to confess to Maat when my heart is weighed. Mr. Loonan's face in the doorway. Rather than confess, I say to myself that Martin is despicable. He showed no remorse. Maat would ask me, why, then, did you laugh, and why did you find him so interesting after work? Admit it, she'll demand, he mimicked Mr. Loonan partly to please you, and he went on to mimic your feelings for himself. You never knew the difference between the genuine and the imitation. The bird with the human head tries to escape the jaws of the Devourer by flying away."
"Mimicry in the service of parody and travesty but not in the service of survival or seduction. Here's an example. Martin once imitated Mr. Loonan when he was out of the office. He punched holes in a Styrofoam cup, rubbed his nose, and hunched over a drawing table in just the same way. He spoke with Loonan's intonation as he described how lovely Electra was, how she should come into his apartment, make herself at home, while he put on a sound-effects tape. Office sounds, factory sounds, war or period effects, but would Electra know what a water wheel or a steamship was? It was not a romantic solution. Laurel and I laughed. Martin was very funny. Then we saw Loonan standing in the office door. I don't know how much of Martin's mimicry he overhead. He might not have had many illusions about our respect for him, but when we made fun of him, his eyes grew red. This is what I'll have to confess to Maat when my heart is weighed. Mr. Loonan's face in the doorway. Rather than confess, I say to myself that Martin is despicable. He showed no remorse. Maat would ask me, why, then, did you laugh, and why did you find him so interesting after work? Admit it, she'll demand, he mimicked Mr. Loonan partly to please you, and he went on to mimic your feelings for himself. You never knew the difference between the genuine and the imitation. The bird with the human head tries to escape the jaws of the Devourer by flying away."
March 19, 2011
This book was seriously disappointing. The beginning of the novel, where the title character is working as a comic book colorist, is full of glaring errors and omissions when talking about how comic books are produced. As someone who knows a lot about comics, I was very annoyed by this. A little simple research could've helped the author a lot. Maybe this shouldn't have bothered me as much as it did, but it prevented me from really getting into the book. There's also an extended subplot concerning the protagonist's roommate, an Irish-American photographer, but that seems to go nowhere. The book just kind of stops at the end, it doesn't really end with any satisfaction. A lot of potential here that just didn't pan out. Too bad.
August 12, 2010
Reading this for a second time. I really love Daitch and thought that her novel L.C. was one of the most brilliant Po-Mo historical fiction pieces.
I don't recall how this struck me the last time I read it, I think it was in the 90s and so the 80s hadn't yet totally fallen into this fissure of nostalgia. Reading it today is like stepping through a dirty, concrete wormhole taking me back to NYC in the 80s, the crime-ridden environment (think After Dark instead of Wall Street) and that tangentially punk sense of apocalypse and poverty.
I don't recall how this struck me the last time I read it, I think it was in the 90s and so the 80s hadn't yet totally fallen into this fissure of nostalgia. Reading it today is like stepping through a dirty, concrete wormhole taking me back to NYC in the 80s, the crime-ridden environment (think After Dark instead of Wall Street) and that tangentially punk sense of apocalypse and poverty.
March 30, 2008
my. absolute. favorite. book. great language. great story.
Read
March 7, 2019I'm not quite sure how I found out about Susan Daitch, but I know she was once considered a writer of promise, a big name back in the heady days of the late '80s and early '90s, when postmodernism filled the air and sandwiches were described as "intertextual" (I'll have the roast beef au jouissance, thank you kindly).
The Colorist was, I can say without compunction, a good novel. Like the best writing of DFW and DeLillo, it managed to be formally experimental without giving up its heart, weaving between characters, some of whom happen to be comic book characters as well. If you can track down a copy of The Colorist, give it a shot. I think Daitch is one of those writers that deserves rediscovery.
The Colorist was, I can say without compunction, a good novel. Like the best writing of DFW and DeLillo, it managed to be formally experimental without giving up its heart, weaving between characters, some of whom happen to be comic book characters as well. If you can track down a copy of The Colorist, give it a shot. I think Daitch is one of those writers that deserves rediscovery.
Displaying 1 - 15 of 15 reviews