Synopses & Reviews
Charlie is a genius violinist, the orphaned or abandoned offspring (probably) of a Cambodian woman and a black American GI, found in baggage claim at JFK. Shortly before the story opens he has endured a ridiculously humiliating incident that put him off his instrumentas part of a string quartet, he was sent unaware by the Musicians Union to open” for a reunion tour of over-the-hill Hessian metal-gods Volstagg (based on Meat Loaf), who threw the classical musicians offstage. Biding his time until he can afford to leave Philth Town (a tweaked Philadelphia), he now works in a deli run by a despotic Dutchman and lives in a boarding house (The Desmon), among whose other residents are Armless Rob (self-explanatory), Yancey Fishnet (dominatrix), Emmylou Mattressback (basically what youd expect), and others. Including Tinsel Greetz, an ill-informed anarchist prone to disaster, and Charlie's best friend.
As the story opens, Tinsel has founded a barter system” economy for the various misfits in the Desmon and its affiliated businesses (The Grain Shack, the dive bar Maxines, a veterinary office) which results in the destruction of the Shack, a huge pack of dogs being left at the Desmon for Tinsel to deal with, threats of lawsuits and bodily harm, and Tinsel hiding out with his inexplicably understanding girlfriend Zelda. Charlie has been supplementing his deli paycheck via the Willard Rounds,” the illegal method Philth Towns Sanitation Department has evolved to deal with its out-of-control sewer rat problem: paying slag-hands” to go down into the sewers armed with pipes and duffel bags and pays them a fee per quantity of dead rats (Willard,” above, and Ben,” as the rats are collectively called, are references to the movies Willard [1971, recently remade starring Crispin Glover] and Ben [1972] in which rats avenge the wrongs done to their human guardians). Tinsel is persona non grata and has lost his gig playing guitar at a bar, so Charlie initiates him into life as a slag-hand, ending in a ridiculously generous haul. To celebrate, Charlie and Tinsel get drunk andunfortunatelytrash Zelda's apartment just as a foreign investor is about to come buy some of her photographs for a French media conglomerate. Furious, Zelda throws them out whereupon they are beaten up by skinheads and end up waking up the next morning worse for wear in a hotel room in one of the poshest hotels in the city, with Louise (the investor,” who's actually a French journalist). Charlie is instantly, stupidly in love with Louise, reduced to stammering incoherence and suddenly relating to the lyrics of Total Eclipse of the Heart.” And strange as it might seem, it appears to be mutual.
Over the next forty-eight hours, Charlie is on a hellbent journey from disaffected, self-destructive, downwardly mobile slacker to redeeming his former creativity and maturity, as Tinsel and Louise vie for his loyalties. Along the way there are hilarious scenes where the two cleaned-up slag-hands attempt to navigate the stressful environment of a nice restaurant (complete with compulsive table-crumbers and a schmaltzy table-side troubadour who receives his comeuppance when Charlie takes his violin and bears down with classical fury, getting a standing ovation); the three play a vicious game of Death Match culminating in watching a Felix Trinidad-Hector Camacho fight at Maxines; and a final denouement in which fallen cinematic genius Delvin Corollo is shooting a vapid costume drama outside the hotel (based on Martin Scorsese and The Age of Innocence) and Tinsel and Charlie conspire to destroy the shoot.
Brewing under the surface, Charlie is being forced to confront the hate” part of his love-hate” relationship with his extremely trying friend. Louise has offered to take him with her when she leaves townto cover an uprising in New Guinea, and whatever comes next. Tinsel shows no sign of abandoning his hare-brained schemeshes planning to rob a bank nowand Charlie has become disgusted with himself for putting up with Tinsels behavior, which includes not only a lack of hygiene and normalcy, but more seriously a streak of casual misogyny and xenophobia that Charlie has always assumed was a joke, but now is not so sure. In a final scene both hilarious and poignant, Charlie takes his revenge on the evil Dutchman who persecuted him at the deli and gives Tinsel the means to attempt the bank jobin other words, enough rope to hang himself.
Synopsis
Author of the internationally acclaimed Lord of the Barnyard, Tristan Egolf has established himself as one of the most audacious and inventive young writers in America. With Skirt and the Fiddle, Egolf has given us a novel that is equal parts headlong plunge into the joys and absurdity of infatuation and a love song to the maddening folly of friendship. Charlie Evans is a brilliant violinist who, embittered by a truly horrendous gig, has kissed the fiddle and the entire straight world good-bye. He lives in a flophouse among misfits like Armless Rob, Emmylou Mattressback, and Tinsel Greetz, an ersatz anarchist and 200-proof charlatan. Mutually antagonistic and joined at the shot glass, Tinsel and Charlie nevertheless make a great team, and when they get a highly illegal, extremely lucrative gig killing rats in the sewers, they are a deadly, unstoppable force. The morning after dissipating their hard-earned money, the boys wake up in a strange (five-star!) hotel room with the worst hangovers of their lives. And when Charlie meets the bewitching Louise, who's offered them shelter well, then he's in trouble of a whole new sort.