Incidental Contact

by Jim White

Incidental Contact is outsider musician/Pushcart Prize winning author Jim White’s long awaited debut novel. Part memoir, part urban fable, the quixotic narrative unspools around a cluster of truly baffling events that befall White during a severe mental health spiral, episodes which lead to him being “discovered” by Talking Heads frontman David Byrne.

Chronicling a harrowing ten year stretch mostly spent disintegrating behind the wheel of a New York City taxi cab, White navigates a daisy chain of gritty intersections between the real and surreal, encountering a dizzying array of agents of synchronicity: drug lords, con men, deviant proctologists, errant pigs, doomed lovers, psychics and psychos, and ultimately a string of true cultural luminaries, each bearing enigmatic messages for White from the Great Beyond.

Above all Incidental Contact is a love letter to the fans of White’s Wrong-Eyed Jesus oeuvre—the marginalized seekers among us: the freaks, the outsiders, the lost souls—anyone who, as White points out in his iconic song Static on the Radio, “thinks less of what is written than what’s wrote between the lines.”

Genres: Music, Nonfiction

313 pages, Kindle Edition

Published June 21, 2022

Reviews

[M.R. Dowsing · Rating 5 out of 5]

Although the blurb on the back flap describes this as 'White's debut novel', the author himself has referred to it as a memoir and it appears not to be fiction at all, but an autobiography, albeit a pretty unusual and non-chronological one. White has an amazing stock of jaw-dropping stories and if he has made any of this up, well... that would only make it even more impressive.

To be honest, I was almost put off by the opening chapter's tone of over-excited whackiness and was dreading another 300 pages of that, but from chapter 2 onwards I was completely hooked. Many of the most memorably bizarre anecdotes come from the decade or so White spent as a New York City cab driver. This was a real eye-opener, and I'd never realised how difficult it is to make a living doing that. Along the way, we get fascinating encounters with figures such as David Byrne, Tom Waits, Woody Allen, Philip Glass and (possibly) Samuel Beckett, along with less famous characters like the terrifying Andras Groff.

There's something about White which seems to attract incredible coincidences. He views these as messages from what he terms the 'unseen forces' and, if he seems a little nutty, who wouldn't be after having had such an unusual amount of serendipity in their life? In any case, he certainly has a unique and intriguing world-view.

White also has a naivety about him which makes him very appealing. In fact, his awkward and often disastrous attempts to connect with others reminded me of the hero of J. Robert Lennon's novel 'Mailman', and it seems that White himself only narrowly avoided a similar fate. In my opinion, we're all very lucky that he did as this is perhaps the most interesting book by a musician I've ever read - and I would recommend that anyone unfamiliar with his music take steps to remedy that immediately.

[Bill Apgood · Rating 5 out of 5]

The classic question of whether the red you see is the same red I see comes to mind reading Jim White's novelistic memoir Incidental Contact. The question falls somewhere in the undefined region between philosophy and cognitive science, ontologically uncertain. There in fact still isn't a generally accepted answer to the question. (But there are some pretty darned interesting studies.)

What is pretty certain is that we all see things a bit differently. Some of us see things a lot differently. We speak of artists having vision, a singular sensibility, which is reflected in their work. Jim White is such a person. There is personal vernacular that is recognizable in whatever he feels to put his hand to at a given time.
He will find cultural flotsam at a flea market and make it into something to affix on a wall, something like a hybrid of of religious icon painting, vintage sign, and child's toy.
He will write a song, which itself evokes a story that is part Last Picture Show, part Slingblade and part Flannery O'Connor.
Or he will write a book that is like, well nothing else really.
And it is fantastic ride from start to finish.

We speak of artistic vision, and also of those who have visions (the nature of which also remains an unanswered question).
I would guess that Jim White has always had both.

[Matthew Mathis · Rating 5 out of 5]

Not everyone has psychic antennae that either receive, transmit, or even cause undulating waves of happenstance-synchronicity in the recurring regularities of their actual existence, but Jim White does. And he articulates and recounts these chock-a-block adventures in, if it were fiction, what might seem like an over-the-top novel of too-clever-by-half coincidences, like a good dime-store suspense or some X-Files outtake. But he parses his words in such a matter-of-fact style that the reader feels compelled to understand them in as much as an aggregate listing of events that link up spookily if not turn into a camp-fire ghost story. It's not that he lives this gifted life as a curse instead of a blessing, but the fates that sway and swing in and out of his experience have a remarkable way of twisting his head in the winds of his time as a cabbie, a musician and father. You know when something happens to you and you say to yourself later that it was like a dream? Or you tell a friend such a story and it's so strange that they ask you to start over or emphasize the part that's just too weird and outlandish? Yeah, well, imagine this happening again and again and so you have to write this book or go insane.

[R. · Rating 5 out of 5]

As goes the music, so goes the novel. Long time fans of Jim White's music won't have any problem recognizing the quirky, chaotic storylines that can only come from the mind of one of the nation's most underrated quirkiness inciting, chaos inducing story tellers. The time hopping story line meanders through White's early years and early influences which shaped, in part, some of his early trademark music. As an added bonus, White invites the reader into the deteriorating neighborhood that is his mind and shares some of the pivotal moments that spawned some of his most memorable and haunting lyrics.

For those who may have just recently discovered White, or are as of yet, woefully unfamiliar with White's treatment of the English language, the best advice is to push through the slightly over wrought first few pages in a cool, dark room. The narrative quickly smooths out and gets to the business at hand. There is a little something within these pages for everyone.

[Bob · Rating 5 out of 5]

I was mistakenly informed that this was a novel and not a memoir that zig zags across two decades of the author's life. I first encountered Jim White on one of his many tours supporting David Byrne, and knew that prior to being a musician he had been a model, a surfer and also a taxi driver in NYC. All of that is covered, as well as how he became signed to Luaka Bop. Often very funny and thought provoking, White is an excellent story teller.

[Alec Downie · Rating 5 out of 5]

One of the funniest, surreal, OCD storytelling mindfuck of a book ever.

I like Jim White even more now.

[John McKenney · Rating 5 out of 5]

A fascinating book 📖 authentic memoir of an American musician who struggled for years before getting recognized by David Byrne for his musical 🎶 talent. Highly recommend reading this book