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Five Book Friday: In Memoriam
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Every year, the booksellers at Powell’s submit their Top Fives: their five favorite books that were released in 2023. It’s a list that, when put together, shows just how varied and interesting the book tastes of Powell’s booksellers are. I highly recommend digging into the recommendations — we would never lead you astray — but today...
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Brontez Purnell:
Powell’s Q&A: Brontez Purnell, author of ‘Ten Bridges I’ve Burnt’
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Starter Pack: Where to Begin with Ursula K. Le Guin
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Customer Comments
Greg Bottoms has commented on (5) products
Thing about Life Is That One Day Youll Be Dead
by
David Shields
Greg Bottoms
, February 06, 2008
This is one of the more interesting memoirs written in the last many years, and like all the best memoirs it uses autobiography as a way toward investigating a large idea outside the self. It is both cerebral and visceral, touching and fascinatingly brainy. And it is a book about death that is really a cleared-eyed look at life.
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The Colorful Apocalypse: Journeys in Outsider Art
by
Greg Bottoms
Greg Bottoms
, April 27, 2007
Response to Kox: If I accidentally less than precisely described a section of writing on a painting, of course I would fix it if it was deemed an actual factual error. And I?d apologize. Because that would be a real-world complaint. Semantics and perspective are everything here. The artists want an unfiltered presentation of their views, which this is not. I stand by how I wrote about Thompson?s vision because he told me about it and I made careful notes. I went back and asked him about it again, making more notes. No one would understand that section as anything other than what it is, though: a writer?s interpretation of a story told to him. Mr. Kox writes: Bottoms is back-peddling when he denies calling Thompson anti-Semitic, and says he leaves that up to the reader to decide. Look what it says on page 145, of The Colorful Apocalypse, 'Looking down, I notice a swastika tattooed on his [Kox?s] hand that he?s attempted to cover with another tattoo, a rose. The swastika, however, is clearly visible under the red of the flower, a relic of his biker past. I consider asking him about it, especially after Thompson?s anti-Semitic rants and his taking me to the Dixie Outpost, where I was regaled by the most politely delivered racism I?ve ever encountered, but the engrained bigotry of far right white Christian culture is so apparent that I?d like to see if we can?t get beyond that wall, so instead ask, "Were the Outlaws into drugs?"' I stand by this moment in the book. It is, in my view, as truthful as possible. I wouldn?t change a word. When I said ?leave it to the reader to decide? I meant about the post I wrote about Thompson?s anti-Semitism not the book. The above section brings up a good point though. To me, Thompson did indeed anti-Semitically rant. To me, Thompson did say racist things also. That?s my truth. That is, after careful consideration, how I see it. To him, I?m sure he simply delivered his religious and cultural views on subjects. That?s not fiction or fabrication. It?s a writer expressing his own views and interpretations in a narrative of his travels and encounters?happens every day. Now if he didn?t say anti-Semitic and racist things that would be a major issue. I assure you he did. Kox says that he showed me the swastika, but that is in no way how I remember it: The swastika was apparent and I noticed it. This is also not fiction or a fabrication. It is two people remembering and believing something different about a moment. I totally believe I?m right. I?m sure he totally believes he?s right. This also happens every day. The book takes these issues into account?truth, narrative, how we see things, make sense of them, not just personally but also culturally, artistically, religiously. I am only responding, on a public book site?which is strange if not worrisome, but when in Rome, you know?because I am recklessly being called a liar and someone who has willfully distorted the truth when I have never been more concerned about telling the truth as I saw and experienced it. I wanted to be unrelentingly candid, wanted to scrape away delusion, even my own. If Thompson and Kox were saying that I got it all wrong and my interpretation of their stories based on my encounters and interviews was false, awful, a travesty, whatever, and they were going to offer the their own story, I would have nothing to say other than good for them. Kox writes: ?If Bottoms had gone by the tapes he would have had a great book. He tried to paint over a masterpiece that was already painted, and he ruined it.? I used the tapes. What is being said, in other words, is that if I had written the story as the artists see it and speak it with no intrusion this would have been a great book. This is not their book; it?s my book. Kox has many writings people can buy on his site?about the destruction of New York, about who sinisterly changed the name of Christ, about how the word Jesus=666; I think he also has a blog about parallel universes and the possibility of traveling between them, but I haven?t looked lately. That I dare to have my own brain, my own thoughts, my own memories, my own interpretations in what is, once again, a book published as a personal narrative recounting my experiences, encounters, and thoughts as I went around talking to religious outsider artists, well, this is ?fiction.? My views, everything about me, is fiction, everything filtered through me is fiction. Every word out of my mouth is fiction. It has to be this way it seems because there is only the artists versions and wrong versions. Kox writes: ?This terrible controversy that has reared its head like an ugly monster?? I?m pretty sure this ?terrible controversy? is actually just a relatively unknown writer who has written a book that no one is reading and a couple of evangelical outsider artists that are also quite obscure bickering back and forth on a page on a bookstore site that almost no one visits about what is and who owns the truth. I will keep saying my version of the truth, which is that I have been as honest, ethical, and careful as possible. I certainly understand the legal issues and have been cautious. I?ve tried to be more than fair and even generous. And I?m sure the artists will keep calling me a liar because I don?t tell their story the way they would. Another thing this book is about, now that I think about it, is sadness, loneliness, and dislocation, and how that changes people, makes them willing to do strange things, like having arguments in cyberspace about things probably not many people care about.
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The Colorful Apocalypse: Journeys in Outsider Art
by
Greg Bottoms
Greg Bottoms
, April 27, 2007
Response to ioema: *?Yesu and Jesus: Page 70 of Bottoms? book Colorful Apocalypse....quoting Thompson in the book, Bottoms writes ?The name of Jesus....? Bottoms quotes Thompson using the word Jesus. Pretty simple to find. The actual quote from p. 70: ?The name of Jesus didn?t start with a J, you know. It was Yesu. With a Y.? Mr. Thompson said this in 2002, at our first meeting. He was explaining to me, for the first time, his theories about the name change. While wearing a black jacket and slacks. *?AVAM: You can?t wiggle out of this one and AVAM knows it. Maybe the grant grantors will grant defense money.? Wow: Please immediately go send my book to AVAM. Right now. Go on. This is terrific, and makes the issues pretty clear. So a person who makes part of his living as an essayist and critic can?t write his personal opinions or judgments in a personal travel narrative, can?t offer up his views and assessments, can?t interpret things on his own? This just about glows with ignorance and seriously scary notions about speech, and actually assumes that I?an essayist and critic and professor of nonfiction writing?have no knowledge of these issues or of defamation and libel law, didn?t get written consent from these public figures, didn?t understand that written consent almost always protects one from a civil suit, didn?t not only NOT write with ?actual malice??which must be proven--but wrote with actual generosity in almost all matters and did back flips to be decent and to try to understand. It also assumes that the University of Chicago Press has no knowledge of these things?we all just rolled right off a turnip truck. If this were the case Mr. Kox and Mr. Thompson could be sued weekly by Catholics, among others. If this were the case everything ioema has written about me would be illegal, and not just those harassing postings sent to my place of employment and clearly meant to inflict maximum damage, which were of course simply ignorant, spiteful, and ridiculous, but I?m not sure they won?t come back to haunt him. Now a person such as Mr. Thompson making several verifiably untrue statements?which would not be interpreted as ?artistic license? or interpretation of an event or conversation or an opinion?and sending them to a publisher and posting them publicly and all of them clearly done with (let me offer a few legal terms) ?intent to harm? and showing ?reckless? and provable ?disregard for the truth??hmmm, this I?m not so sure about. Actually, I?m being coy. I?m totally sure about it. You?re bored? Not the word I would use.
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The Colorful Apocalypse: Journeys in Outsider Art
by
Greg Bottoms
Greg Bottoms
, April 26, 2007
I told myself I wouldn?t respond to these postings, but Thompson?s post below is not only filled with a misunderstanding of the nature and intent of the book but also with many verifiable falsehoods. The Vision: Mr. Thompson says he was called upon to paint his vision (which I believe): He painted Revelation, several times, in several different sizes. I saw one version attached to the side of a bus. I saw another version on the side of a flea-market building. And there are of course the well-known 300 and 175 ft. versions. He also showed me, at his home, the small painting he did in Hawaii after having his vision in 1989. I took a picture of this painting. He also told me how he carried it, this small painting, home on the plane. He also said, as I quote him saying, that when he began painting he was afraid for his very life. That he doesn?t claim St. John?s vision is perhaps simply semantic?maybe he should say the world on fire or Armageddon more clearly or a revelation to distinguish it from Revelation. My own view of the Book of Revelation is that it is a text written by a person in a particular cultural and historical context, which has of course changed through translations, and I see it as a personal stab at understanding and not in anyway prophetic. Philosophy meets poetry meets serious personal turmoil. That whole sects of the world view this to me clearly mythic and metaphoric book as literally true is an interesting if utterly frightening topic for social psychologists. But back to Thompson?s vision: I do not think he brags about his vision. I asked him about it many times and even called him after our interviews to inquire more about the details of the time and place it happened. It, the vision, clearly means a lot to him and I meant in no way to denigrate that or him, which I don?t think I did. I was in fact quite taken by his passion and his will to paint. Yesu and Jesus: I don't believe I quote Thompson using the word Jesus. Yesu comes entirely from Mr. Kox, as does the idea that the word Jesus actually adds up to 666, according to his bible code study. Mr. Kox?s theories on the coming apocalypse are un-summarizably complicated. Mr. Thompson, in my opinion, would never have arrived at ideas about the name Yesu Christ as opposed to Jesus without Kox. Mr. Thompson?s devoutly Pentecostal family, in my view, was very troubled by Kox?s influence over Thompson in 2002 and 2003 when I met with them. Thompson, as he says, views his relationship with Kox as great fortune. In my view, in my own understanding, based on my visits and interviews, Thompson?s family viewed their relationship, in 02-03, as a very bad thing for Mr. Thompson and something that had altered his views on religion in troubling ways that caused them pain and perhaps even shame. This obviously could have changed over many years. Anti-Semitism Thompson told me, after telling me that the Pope was the antichrist (later he told me that everything that is not Christ is antichrist), that there was a satanic conspiracy (deeply involving the Masons) at the top of which were the Jews because, and I quote: ?Jews control all the money.? It wouldn?t surprise me if his views are different now. And whether that is anti-Semitic is up to a reader to decide. He absolutely said it, though. But, here is where it got tricky: in his view, as he told me more than once and as I tried to understand, the real Jews, the tribes of Israel, God?s chosen people, settled in Western Europe. To the best of my understanding the Jews as we now know them are from the tribes of Esau; in other words Jews as we know them are not the chosen people. People from Western Europe?which is to say white people?are the chosen people. Whether any of this has embedded within it anti-Semitic or racist overtones is also up to the reader. Racism: Mr. Thompson took me to The Dixie Outpost, which is owned by his friend, who was a nice guy. It sells confederate merchandise and memorabilia, as well as political magazines. It was a nice, clean store but many people would see this very place as racist. One of the people working there also worked for the Greenville, SC, school system. It troubled me personally that a person with some power in a school system with many minority students might harbor if not explicitly racist views at least ideologically racist views hidden below politeness. In many parts of our country, including the part I live in, such a place would be picketed, but in the deep South it is still not out-of-the-ordinary. At this establishment Mr. Thompson told me that no good had come from mixing the races and that he was just telling me what he had learned to be true. This is a fact. Whether it is racist is up to a reader to decide. He also bought and gave to me as a gift a sermon on CD called ?The Truth about the Confederate Flag? by Pastor John Weaver. I have it here on my desk. He seemed to agree with the views expressed and wanted me to hear it. I listened to it. Most people I know??pc? liberals, granted?would not only call this racist but perhaps even white supremacist. Again, I offer this only as a verifiable fact, and one I did not put it in the book because the travel essay in which Thompson figures is not in any way meant as an attack but rather as a truthful and honest presentation of my own thoughts and experiences of my complicated personal/cultural encounters with various people in or related to the outsider art world. I would have liked to have written something much more celebratory about Thompson, because I set out with no agenda beyond trying figure out what was going on, but that would have been, in my view, a lie and a fabrication. Again, I feel I erred on the side of generosity. Studio: The door to Mr. Thompson?s studio had a KEEP OUT sign. I took a picture of this door. In this picture, which I have here, there does appear to be something like a lock. Whether it is locked or not, whether that lock is broken, no one, it seems, is allowed in. He worked behind a closed door, with a KEEP OUT sign, when I met with him. Black Suit: When I first met Mr. Thompson he wore?I remember and I wrote in my notebook?a black jacket and a matching pair of black slacks; perhaps he wouldn?t call this a suit, only a matching jacket and slacks. He also wore a grey shirt, open at the collar. He ate, at the Joy America Caf? at AVAM, a Salmon club, I believe. He ate with a fork. He did not eat the bacon, and we talked about health issues. I drank coffee. I believe he drank herbal tea. All in a matching black jacket and slacks, if not a ?suit.? ?Heatherns? Thompson told me that he thought of all non-Christian religions as ?heathern.? All non-Christians, everyone who does not accept Christ, as far I understand it, perish in Hell. I don?t think he would disagree with this even now. AVAM Mr. Thompson misunderstands almost everything about my book and its intentions. I actually think Thompson and Kox really believe it is part of a conspiracy to directly dispute their religious views or, as they put it, ?the true perspective.? I tried to write about him as honestly as possible (from my own point of view, in a book about my own travels and thoughts, which he seems to consider fiction) and also, to an extent, with compassion and understanding, which he does not appreciate or want and which he may also consider fiction. But he seems to misunderstand what I have to say about his relationship to AVAM in particular. He says that I make the museum look like his sales agent. I actually think the museum exploits him, in a way, and dismisses his deep religious commitment and shows his work as an example of something made by a na?ve, untrained artist from the margins of America who harbors eccentric views and a hypertrophic creative will, which all become part of the inherent value of the painting in that context. The relationship between the outsider artists and the museum is complicated, but in my view there is something in it that can be belittling if one reads a little into it. Mental Illness There is great ire from Mr. Thompson and Mr. Kox that I bring into my book the psychiatric origins of outsider art collecting and my own experiences with mental illness. My sense now is that outsider artists don?t read books about outsider art or mental illness, and that the only reason outsider artists have read my book is because they appear in it. If, however, they were to read any?really any?books dealing with the cultural history of outsider art or even any magazines devoted to covering outsider art, self-taught art, art brut, folk art, etc., including magazines in which they are featured, they would see that they are always contextualized in some near or far relation to mental illness and/or thinking considered to be outside of the culturally accepted norm of a society. Thompson and Kox?s ?Idolatry? was only yards from works by Richard Slotkin, a physically and sexually abused schizophrenic who made collages and, I believe, committed suicide, on a day I visited AVAM in 02. Thompson?s work appears in Raw Vision near Henry Darger?s work--Darger being famously ill pedaphilic. That Thompson and Kox had religious visions and have devoted themselves to an obsessive output of art in the service of a private mission with world-altering implications places them in the company of many other outsider artists, many of whom were in fact considered to be mentally ill. Their stories, in their rough surface details, fit neatly into a kind of classic outsider art story. This, too, is simply a fact, and one readily available to them if they were to step outside of their religious missions expressed through art and consider, even for a moment, the systems and institutions in which they function, though it does not imply that these artists or all outsider artists (an incredibly open term nowadays) are mentally ill, which is of course not at all the case. While Kox and Thompson are not mentally ill I do think they are often ?packaged? in the outsider art world as people with ?crazy? ideas, even if ?crazy? can carry with it a tinge of ?cool? and be appreciated and even celebrated. Just my opinion. I also believe that they are deeply committed and passionate about what they do, which is what got me interested in them in the first place. The World of Little Books I don?t wish to write potentially hurtful things about Thompson or Kox. In my book I tried hard to balance fairness with my own memory of my travels and encounters and personal understandings, which I knew were quite different than those of the people I was writing about. I also tried to be respectful. But, as I said, Thompson makes many verifiably untrue statements in his attack on me posted here. I don?t want to call someone a ?liar,? so I won't, but I do wonder how he could say some of these things. Other postings by Thompson?s friends suggest I?m a fraud, all wrong, self-absorbed, uninformed, even pathetic, and that the book and my opinions and judgments are flat wrong and probably ridiculous. Really, I couldn?t be worse as either a writer or a human being (I?ll actually ruin my children). This is fair?I wrote a book some people are not going to like?and they are entitled to their opinions, even when at my expense. I?m a big boy. But to make accusations that I willfully fabricated, was willfully dishonest, and that I willfully wrote ?fiction? to deceive could not be farther from the truth. Again, the narrative is overtly personal, memoirish. I use parts of many, many interviews to make my own story and my own sense--I do indeed, as Thompson has said, "create my own world"--but I am never dishonest about that being what I am doing. And a book like the one I have written is a small thing, largely ignored. It might, if mildly successful, sell a couple thousand copies in our country of three-hundred million. A few months from now, maybe less, you won?t see it in most bookstores. I know. All I write is little literary books about things that interest me. They?re terribly un-commercial. It?s a hobby, like kite flying. The irony in all this is that Mr. Thompson and Mr. Kox and their willing-to-attack friends may have single-handedly sold more copies of this little book than perhaps all of the other advertising and promotion put together. Another irony is that while they hate this book it really is, in many of the ways that matter, in my view?though none of the ways that matter in their view?on their side. Part of what this book is about?absent from their postings and I think absent from their understandings?is the difficulty of representing the lives of others, and how subjectivity is an unavoidable part of all thought and communication. Another part of what this book is about is how we all see a set of facts and shuffle them to make the sense we can with the knowledge we have in the moment we exist and how everybody?s sense is a little or a lot different from everybody else?s. A zealous, unquestioning devotion to a set of beliefs makes it so you must see all sense outside of your own as fiction, all views not your own as ?lies.? I think the book might be about that, too. Greg Bottoms
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The Colorful Apocalypse: Journeys in Outsider Art
by
Greg Bottoms
Greg Bottoms
, April 17, 2007
Note from the author I am the author of this book. Since writing it I've been called "a schizophrenic," "a smut writer," and someone with "multi personalities" who should write for the "national inquiry," among other things (including how I will ruin my children). These are neither here nor there, but being called a liar really bugs the heck out of me. The Colorful Apocalypse is a personal narrative about my interest in the psychiatric origins of outsider art, contemporary Christian "visionary" art, and my visits and discussions with several artists who make work that fits into this latter category. I've been as honest, ethical, and meticulous as possible. I've tried to be fair and erred, I feel, on the side of generosity. Clearly I understand and interpret all of the artists in this book quite differently than they understand and interpret themselves. I also undoubtedly experienced and interpreted our encounters differently. My worldview is vastly different than theirs. This, though, is not a "conspiracy to defraud," a "fabrication," or a fiction. No encounters are "made up." It is, I believe, simply a different view, an unguardedly subjective one, which I make clear from the opening. I have no interest in debating religious ideas, and the book's focus veers elsewhere. I was partly interested, however, in how deep, conspiracy-laden religious thinking, which I may not fully understand or even be able to understand, was obsessively presented by artists in hundreds, sometimes thousands, of works of art. The religious messages, however, once they entered galleries, seemed to me to be dismissed--defrauded? exploited?--for a different message presented by the painting in the new context that had to do with the cultural value of eccentricity, fringe thinking, or "madness." Part of the interest, in my view, became sociological/psychological, even though most artists would not see it this way (they continued to see it as a celebration of their religious wisdom). In my experience no outsider art establishments--galleries, magazines--take this religious thinking seriously (which I at least listen to): it seemed, rather troublingly to me, to be paraded sometimes in a way that made me literally wince. A funny relationship, then, of need/compromise between the "true" outsider (who comes to appreciate and sometimes "need" the gallery), the mostly secular, classically educated curatorial/art establishment, and the mostly middle-(or upper)class viewer/buyer/collector. I had other ideas/curiosities, too, including how my brother, diagnosed as paranoid schizophrenic, exhibited thinking and some obsessive behaviors similar to some "visionary" artists--though I was not interested in explicitly calling anyone crazy (though that is a less-than-subtle implication often in the outsider world) but rather, thoughtfully, I hope, thinking a bit on how pathology itself can change from context to context. Certain behaviors are seen differently in, say, a suburban high school than they would be in a deep-woods religious compound. So I decided, as an essayist, to drive around and read a bunch of stuff and talk to people; eat lots of Hardee's hashbrowns, drink lots of coffee, stay in cheap hotels; and then write a book about the experiences and my thoughts on these things. All books have a slant, and this is indeed partly memoir. I like that, and happen to think the most honest thing to do is go ahead and wear your slant on your sleeve so everyone knows what's what. Though only fools claim perfection, I got permissions and used notebooks, tapes, and transcripts. I worked very hard to be decent and careful. The manuscript went through an editor, two outside readers, a review board, an editor again, a manuscript editor twice, and on to the legal mind of the press, who wrote to Mr. Kox and Mr. Thompson suggesting that they seemed to have a "substantial misunderstanding about the essence of this book." Another letter had to be sent as they continued to attack me and the book, still believing I was somehow trying to debunk their views on the coming apocalypse. Only the most frighteningly zealous among us believe they own "the truth." I don't believe I do, and this book about my experiences, understandings, confusions, arguments, and insights is in no way meant to supplant the artists' own narratives of who they are, what they believe, and what they represent. I believe in their rights to express their dislikes, of course, but this is not a lie or fiction unless "I"--my perspectives, views, counsciousness--is fiction. I encourage interested readers to visit the websites of all the artists who appear in the book--including Mr. Thompsons', where you can view his paintings, read his journals, and visit his art-church; and Mr. Kox's, where you can view his interesting art and read his writings about how the false name Jesus=666, how there is biblical evidence suggesting the imminent destruction of New York City, and other things, all quite articulately rendered. There is also an interview with me at the University of Chicago Press and a commissioned essay about writing the book at the New York Foundation for the Arts. Greg Bottoms
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