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Oregon Confetti
Portland art dealer Devin Adams is content earning a semi-honest living until one night his friend John Sun comes knocking at the door, bearing a mysterious baby. Rumored to be the greatest painter of his generation, Sun lives in a crumbling warehouse under the Fremont Bridge. Despite Devin’s strong natural preference for easy profits and easy women, the baby moves him in his wayward soul to join Sun on an absurd quest—a life-or-death adventure that stretches from the temples of junk to the corridors of power, from the shadowy streets of gangland to the wide, wide deserts of lust.
If Lee Oser intended to give readers a kind of Catholic Portlandia he succeeded. In this fast-paced, adventure-packed narrative about a Portland art dealer, a colorful cast of characters—from Jesuit priests to Chinese gang members—pursue the meaning of art and love, while the mysterious movement of grace directs their exploits to a satisfying conclusion. The dream of the Catholic novel is alive in Lee Oser’s Oregon Confetti.
–Jeffrey O. Nelson, Intercollegiate Studies Institute
Oregon Confetti is a fantastic mash-up of Portland vogue, crime fiction, contemporary art, and Christian myth. It’s a post-secular fable for people who don’t want to be cynics any longer. In witty, energetic prose, Oser takes on easy American cultural pieties and pushes his characters (despite themselves) to believe in something ultimate that can’t be ironized out of existence.
–R. Clifton Spargo, author of Beautiful Fools: The Last Affair of Zelda and Scott Fitzgerald
Author Bio: Novelist Lee Oser was born in New York City in 1958, of Irish and Jewish extraction. He grew up on Long Island and, after working in his father’s publishing firm, moved to Portland, Oregon in 1978, where he played bass in a series of rock bands including The Riflebirds, one of Portland’s best-known groups during the New Wave period. He graduated from Reed College in 1988 and went on to do graduate work in English at Yale University, which awarded him the doctorate in 1995. Around this time he returned for good to the Catholic faith. He taught at Yale and Connecticut College before landing at Holy Cross in 1998, becoming full professor in 2010. Oser has published three influential books of literary criticism and a well-received novel, The Oracles Fell Silent, also through Wiseblood Books. Professionally, he is known for his efforts on behalf of the Association of Literary Scholars, Critics, and Writers (ALSCW), a literature-advocacy group based in Washington, D.C.
If Lee Oser intended to give readers a kind of Catholic Portlandia he succeeded. In this fast-paced, adventure-packed narrative about a Portland art dealer, a colorful cast of characters—from Jesuit priests to Chinese gang members—pursue the meaning of art and love, while the mysterious movement of grace directs their exploits to a satisfying conclusion. The dream of the Catholic novel is alive in Lee Oser’s Oregon Confetti.
–Jeffrey O. Nelson, Intercollegiate Studies Institute
Oregon Confetti is a fantastic mash-up of Portland vogue, crime fiction, contemporary art, and Christian myth. It’s a post-secular fable for people who don’t want to be cynics any longer. In witty, energetic prose, Oser takes on easy American cultural pieties and pushes his characters (despite themselves) to believe in something ultimate that can’t be ironized out of existence.
–R. Clifton Spargo, author of Beautiful Fools: The Last Affair of Zelda and Scott Fitzgerald
Author Bio: Novelist Lee Oser was born in New York City in 1958, of Irish and Jewish extraction. He grew up on Long Island and, after working in his father’s publishing firm, moved to Portland, Oregon in 1978, where he played bass in a series of rock bands including The Riflebirds, one of Portland’s best-known groups during the New Wave period. He graduated from Reed College in 1988 and went on to do graduate work in English at Yale University, which awarded him the doctorate in 1995. Around this time he returned for good to the Catholic faith. He taught at Yale and Connecticut College before landing at Holy Cross in 1998, becoming full professor in 2010. Oser has published three influential books of literary criticism and a well-received novel, The Oracles Fell Silent, also through Wiseblood Books. Professionally, he is known for his efforts on behalf of the Association of Literary Scholars, Critics, and Writers (ALSCW), a literature-advocacy group based in Washington, D.C.
- GenresFiction
318 pages, Paperback
Published August 13, 2017
31 people want to read
About the author
Lee Oser
17 books14 followersLee Oser (born in 1958 in New York City) is a Roman Catholic novelist and literary critic. He was educated at Reed College and Yale University, where he received his PhD in English in 1995. He teaches Religion and Literature at the College of the Holy Cross, in Worcester, Massachusetts.
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Displaying 1 - 7 of 7 reviews
October 10, 2019
I haven't laughed this hard in a long time. Nor have I had so much to think about while reading a work of fiction. Oser is a brilliant writer. Authors should read him to learn how to write (I know I learned quite a bit) and everyone else should read him just to enjoy the English language. And a good story.
Oh, the story. You'll be turning the pages to keep up, trust me. Suffice to say that the protagonist, Devin Adams, gets into some interesting situations. Sometimes of his own making. This makes him fully believable. And that makes the story and its zany characters so very helpful in understanding the real world and its not-so-funny downward spiral.
Fortunately, books like Oregon Confetti give us a boost--both with a laugh and with a thing or two to think about.
Oh, the story. You'll be turning the pages to keep up, trust me. Suffice to say that the protagonist, Devin Adams, gets into some interesting situations. Sometimes of his own making. This makes him fully believable. And that makes the story and its zany characters so very helpful in understanding the real world and its not-so-funny downward spiral.
Fortunately, books like Oregon Confetti give us a boost--both with a laugh and with a thing or two to think about.
March 19, 2018
Wonderfully written, full of comic wit and irony.
To access the breadth and depth of Oser's latest novel, check out this intelligent review by Trevor Merrill: http://www.kirkcenter.org/bookman/art...
To access the breadth and depth of Oser's latest novel, check out this intelligent review by Trevor Merrill: http://www.kirkcenter.org/bookman/art...
December 30, 2022
Oregon Confetti comprises two novels competing for pages. One of those novels is described in the summary: a noir tale about a kidnapped baby, a Pacific Northwest Asian gang turf war, and a corrupt former Marine hunting the protagonist (the Marine is also somehow entangled with Oregon's governor). This story works adequately, leads to nice bits of action, and creates some page-turning moments. Still, it also carries with it some clunky language (especially about women's anatomy) and some unresolved or undeveloped ideas. Also, this story seems, oddly, to lack moral complexity. The narrator just goes along with it all.
The second is more complex, namely the story of an art dealer navigating—physically and otherwise—the treacherous and sometimes sinister world of love, art, business, social justice moralism, and politics in contemporary Portland. Oser's Portland has some of the veneers of its contemporary Portlandia TV show. There are odd landmarks, people, and romantic scenarios. But Oser's version captures the dark beneath the quirk. It's in this component that the narrator exists in a moral universe and is plagued by questions of ethics, aesthetics, loyalty, virtue, and meaning. That may not sound as exciting as airport shootouts, but this is where the novel has something unique and engaging to give. It’s also the stuff that sticks around after the cover closes.
When Devin, the novel's narrator and protagonist, moves within love and the art world, questions of conscience rise. Sometimes these questions slip into preaching moments (most notably, the pages of unbroken commentary/lecture by a priest who, for reasons not fully explained, Devin is drawn to). Generally, though, these complications are more subtle, as most questions of morality and freedom are—even though the competing female voices risk being allegorical when named "Eve" and "Agatha" (the Greek for "good"). Still, the side characters—including a controversial cartoonist—add good depth and texture in an almost Pynchon-like way.
I admit to being torn while reading the book. On one hand, it seems like the editor let Oser down, both in terms of some clunky language and in developing fully rounded and consistent characters. I honestly kept thinking, "It's a shame that this didn't get one or two more revisions." That being said, the novel is sticking with me. And perhaps my frustration with what I see as a need for development is the way Oregon Confetti came so close to what I—and contemporary literature—am desperately lacking: a good character-led novel that has page-turning plot, humor, insight, religion, and serious treatment of moral complexities without falling into ideological or moralistic tirades.
In other words, my frustration with the book is unfair: I wanted this to be my favorite novel of the decade. It had all the parts, but not quite the finishing touches. But falling short of that, Oregon Confetti kept me engaged, entertained, and thoughtful. It offered a perspective sorely lacking in contemporary lit fiction, namely an awareness that the world is still a mysterious, diabolical, and magical place—and that behind all the bustle and action and politics, the ongoing struggle for the soul remains at the heart of meaningful stories.
The second is more complex, namely the story of an art dealer navigating—physically and otherwise—the treacherous and sometimes sinister world of love, art, business, social justice moralism, and politics in contemporary Portland. Oser's Portland has some of the veneers of its contemporary Portlandia TV show. There are odd landmarks, people, and romantic scenarios. But Oser's version captures the dark beneath the quirk. It's in this component that the narrator exists in a moral universe and is plagued by questions of ethics, aesthetics, loyalty, virtue, and meaning. That may not sound as exciting as airport shootouts, but this is where the novel has something unique and engaging to give. It’s also the stuff that sticks around after the cover closes.
When Devin, the novel's narrator and protagonist, moves within love and the art world, questions of conscience rise. Sometimes these questions slip into preaching moments (most notably, the pages of unbroken commentary/lecture by a priest who, for reasons not fully explained, Devin is drawn to). Generally, though, these complications are more subtle, as most questions of morality and freedom are—even though the competing female voices risk being allegorical when named "Eve" and "Agatha" (the Greek for "good"). Still, the side characters—including a controversial cartoonist—add good depth and texture in an almost Pynchon-like way.
I admit to being torn while reading the book. On one hand, it seems like the editor let Oser down, both in terms of some clunky language and in developing fully rounded and consistent characters. I honestly kept thinking, "It's a shame that this didn't get one or two more revisions." That being said, the novel is sticking with me. And perhaps my frustration with what I see as a need for development is the way Oregon Confetti came so close to what I—and contemporary literature—am desperately lacking: a good character-led novel that has page-turning plot, humor, insight, religion, and serious treatment of moral complexities without falling into ideological or moralistic tirades.
In other words, my frustration with the book is unfair: I wanted this to be my favorite novel of the decade. It had all the parts, but not quite the finishing touches. But falling short of that, Oregon Confetti kept me engaged, entertained, and thoughtful. It offered a perspective sorely lacking in contemporary lit fiction, namely an awareness that the world is still a mysterious, diabolical, and magical place—and that behind all the bustle and action and politics, the ongoing struggle for the soul remains at the heart of meaningful stories.
February 24, 2018
I think this book was intended to be written more in the style of Flannery O'Connor. The publishing company is Wiseblood Books which states it fosters works that find redemption in uncanny places and people. That is all well and good, but for a Catholic author to include vivid scenes of fornification just doesn't sit right with me. I can't get these images out of MY mind. I think this book may be meant to reach people who are sitting on the sidelines, but I think it could be seen as a near occasion of sin. Maybe, I am not "educated enough" to appreciate this book and it's nuances. I am disappointed as it was a book recommended from a trusted Catholic blog.
April 17, 2023
Materialistic but good-natured Portland art dealer, Devin Adams, gets swept into international intrigue when his friend, the mystically talented artist John Sun, shows up unannounced one night with a kidnapped infant being sought by agents of Communist China.
As the laconic Devin meanders through both the criminal underworld and the criminal art world, he takes several romantic but basically ego-driven detours, rents his home to a talented but hated local cartoonist, and struggles to compete against an up-and-coming new gallery, all while avoiding head-on confrontation with life's most serious questions. He takes the series of absurd and increasingly dangerous events in stride, and with a hearty dose of sarcastic wit.
Given the protagonists's agnostic mindset and promiscuous lifestyle, there's a hefty serving of sex and sexual references in here, pretty much all handled with an unapologetic, politically-incorrect flavor. But eventually, key points from Devin's Catholic education reassert themselves, and astute readers can see the working of grace in him as he ambles his way towards the harbor of a more loving, less self-centered life.
I found this a thoroughly charming yet ultimately bittersweet (although perhaps unintentionally so) ramble through Portland culture in the “before-times” of 2017---before Covid, lockdowns, Antifa riots and drug zombies transformed the city into a dystopian hell-hole and made it impossible to parody. (Trust, me, I've tried). But still, even given the more tame era that Oser depicts, he manages a stellar job of skewering the denizens of that more rarified 'art' scene.
Having graduated from PSU with an art degree in the 90's, I can attest that Oser's picture of the general mindset of that community is spot-on. It's difficult to parody a milieu that is completely arrogant, greedy, tone deaf and possibly blind, one that worships ugliness and snark, one that fears or ridicules true beauty, but he does an excellent job of capturing the essentials.
Often laugh-out-loud funny, this engaging, wonderfully-written, erudite literary confection provides lots of sparkling humor and some surprisingly deep and lovely reflections on modern life.
As the laconic Devin meanders through both the criminal underworld and the criminal art world, he takes several romantic but basically ego-driven detours, rents his home to a talented but hated local cartoonist, and struggles to compete against an up-and-coming new gallery, all while avoiding head-on confrontation with life's most serious questions. He takes the series of absurd and increasingly dangerous events in stride, and with a hearty dose of sarcastic wit.
Given the protagonists's agnostic mindset and promiscuous lifestyle, there's a hefty serving of sex and sexual references in here, pretty much all handled with an unapologetic, politically-incorrect flavor. But eventually, key points from Devin's Catholic education reassert themselves, and astute readers can see the working of grace in him as he ambles his way towards the harbor of a more loving, less self-centered life.
I found this a thoroughly charming yet ultimately bittersweet (although perhaps unintentionally so) ramble through Portland culture in the “before-times” of 2017---before Covid, lockdowns, Antifa riots and drug zombies transformed the city into a dystopian hell-hole and made it impossible to parody. (Trust, me, I've tried). But still, even given the more tame era that Oser depicts, he manages a stellar job of skewering the denizens of that more rarified 'art' scene.
Having graduated from PSU with an art degree in the 90's, I can attest that Oser's picture of the general mindset of that community is spot-on. It's difficult to parody a milieu that is completely arrogant, greedy, tone deaf and possibly blind, one that worships ugliness and snark, one that fears or ridicules true beauty, but he does an excellent job of capturing the essentials.
Often laugh-out-loud funny, this engaging, wonderfully-written, erudite literary confection provides lots of sparkling humor and some surprisingly deep and lovely reflections on modern life.
October 21, 2025
Lee Oser's barely a few years older than me, and I share his Irish-Jewish overlap, his West Coast birth, his alt-rock roots, as I witness his bemused spin on such as pg. 121: the "'Free Speech in Oregon Act' exempted from its protection 'those secured against hate jokes by historical privilege, for instance, by their unreconstructed rhetoric of reason and/or binary thinking'"...if not precisely Devin's, his louche protagonist's, posture supine on couch "up to my knuckles in bourbon, wearing my old gray suit and a loosened necktie, listening to jazz, a few timid taps from without interrupt[ing] my reverie about woodpeckers, lesbians, and death." (61) This 2017 caper set in upscale art gallery and boozy Portland resonates in the jaundiced tone of curmudgeon Alexander Theroux, crossed with Walker Percy, as it ladles Augustinian precepts, lusty romps, Pynchonesque shaggy dog conspiracy, and satirical jibes.
It rambles along, full of arch digressions and cultivated allusions, tailored for a bespoke audience of I suppose a more affluent, better connected, and less scruffy clientele than the likes of thrift-store me. It doesn't care about straightforward dynamics, as Oser lounges rather than lunges out (cf. Ignatius Reilly in John Kennedy Toole's New Orleans) amidst his cocktail characters, practiced in their barstool cushioned rhetoric and rehearsed references as they close a charmed circle against both the dullards' hoi polloi heartland and "No hate in our state!" (ALL CAPS) "torchbearers" of secular enlightenment.
"We agreed that social justice was very important. We did not examine the paradox of how social justice could be achieved if civilization went to the dogs." (175) Such snippets persist, but halfway in, the plot slows and sly negotiations between tipsy elitists on aesthetic (or its absence) claptrap don't enliven the narrative, as it's absorbed in Devin and company's comeuppances. Still, their sidebar chat about a fictional (but quite plausible) cable series "Organized Religion," an R. Crumb-ish "Bikini Bob" comix strip, and charged seductive exchanges keep the atmosphere electric despite lots of static cling.
There's a theological lecture late on, delivered by one of the few, tellingly elderly, grounded Jesuits, who warns of the digital "wall of lies" thwarting free will. I didn't quite grasp the metaphor, but it's "fostering a state of mind whose prevailing moods were hatred of dissent and adulation of success." (220) The espionage-clotted climax doesn't pay off. The denouement dissipates, although this may reflect reality rather than "the author's arsenal of ironic devices" (307) as quotidian lack of resolution.
Although issued by upright Wiseblood Press, known for a conservative and largely Catholic catalogue, it boasts messy erotic episodes outside confines of any conjugal bed sacramentally sanctioned. (Cf. my GR entry on WP's Glenn Arbery, "Bearings + Distances" 2015; pious pearl-clutchers may opt for what the imagined but plausible Amor Christi Press in Oser's 2022 "Old Enemies"--also reviewed--fussily concocts as to bowdlerizing the classics of naughty bits.) As with Percy and Theroux, OregonC woozily deploys lust to explode our current (same as it ever was, if the future Bishop of Hippo's self-penned rap sheet presciently anticipates) lapses into excess in alcohol, affairs, armory, analogies, and abuses.
So, yes, it's a daffy morality tale, unsurprisingly given our author's and publisher's shared ideological credentials. How to sell naughty ethical escapades, when neither Percy nor Theroux survive scrutiny of cancel culture and campus scolds, remains a promotional, practical challenge. I checked out this and his 2022 sendup of academic-activist groupthink "Old Enemies" via interlibrary loan (not found in Portland, relevant aside) from liberal arts bastion, Michigan's traditional Hillsdale College; neither appears to have been perused by a Christian undergraduate or faculty cohort, unless extremely gently.
It rambles along, full of arch digressions and cultivated allusions, tailored for a bespoke audience of I suppose a more affluent, better connected, and less scruffy clientele than the likes of thrift-store me. It doesn't care about straightforward dynamics, as Oser lounges rather than lunges out (cf. Ignatius Reilly in John Kennedy Toole's New Orleans) amidst his cocktail characters, practiced in their barstool cushioned rhetoric and rehearsed references as they close a charmed circle against both the dullards' hoi polloi heartland and "No hate in our state!" (ALL CAPS) "torchbearers" of secular enlightenment.
"We agreed that social justice was very important. We did not examine the paradox of how social justice could be achieved if civilization went to the dogs." (175) Such snippets persist, but halfway in, the plot slows and sly negotiations between tipsy elitists on aesthetic (or its absence) claptrap don't enliven the narrative, as it's absorbed in Devin and company's comeuppances. Still, their sidebar chat about a fictional (but quite plausible) cable series "Organized Religion," an R. Crumb-ish "Bikini Bob" comix strip, and charged seductive exchanges keep the atmosphere electric despite lots of static cling.
There's a theological lecture late on, delivered by one of the few, tellingly elderly, grounded Jesuits, who warns of the digital "wall of lies" thwarting free will. I didn't quite grasp the metaphor, but it's "fostering a state of mind whose prevailing moods were hatred of dissent and adulation of success." (220) The espionage-clotted climax doesn't pay off. The denouement dissipates, although this may reflect reality rather than "the author's arsenal of ironic devices" (307) as quotidian lack of resolution.
Although issued by upright Wiseblood Press, known for a conservative and largely Catholic catalogue, it boasts messy erotic episodes outside confines of any conjugal bed sacramentally sanctioned. (Cf. my GR entry on WP's Glenn Arbery, "Bearings + Distances" 2015; pious pearl-clutchers may opt for what the imagined but plausible Amor Christi Press in Oser's 2022 "Old Enemies"--also reviewed--fussily concocts as to bowdlerizing the classics of naughty bits.) As with Percy and Theroux, OregonC woozily deploys lust to explode our current (same as it ever was, if the future Bishop of Hippo's self-penned rap sheet presciently anticipates) lapses into excess in alcohol, affairs, armory, analogies, and abuses.
So, yes, it's a daffy morality tale, unsurprisingly given our author's and publisher's shared ideological credentials. How to sell naughty ethical escapades, when neither Percy nor Theroux survive scrutiny of cancel culture and campus scolds, remains a promotional, practical challenge. I checked out this and his 2022 sendup of academic-activist groupthink "Old Enemies" via interlibrary loan (not found in Portland, relevant aside) from liberal arts bastion, Michigan's traditional Hillsdale College; neither appears to have been perused by a Christian undergraduate or faculty cohort, unless extremely gently.
June 20, 2019
This novel is a rollicking romp with a relatable main character and a cast of dozens. It contains stories within stories and an artist at the center of it all who brings home a lost baby. I laughed out loud several times while reading this book, and was moved to tears more than twice. I will be adding this to my to-read-again shelf!
Displaying 1 - 7 of 7 reviews