Work Shirts for Madmen

Come and listen to my story about a man named Harp... Trying to stay on the wagon, Ice sculpting and angry republicans, The Elbow Boys, anteaters, twelve foot tall angels, Raylou... I assure you, it all makes sense in the end!

Reviewed by Janelle Martin "If you can't make sense of life, you can at least scratch your head and laugh at it." -Michael Ray Taylor on how southern writers approach literature, Nashville Scene Harp Spillman has spent lost count of the years spent living in the bottle. He's ruined his reputation as a metal sculptor, joked himself out of a lucrative career as a freelance ice sculptor and is now living off the good graces of his wife Raylou. When a commission of twelve-foot-high metal angels made out of hex nuts for Birmingham, Alabama gets approved (although he can't remember applying), Harp realizes it's time to hang up the bottle and return to the mig-welder. Fate decides he needs some moral support and sends him the Elbow Boys, although Harp wonders if isn't just another of Raylou's schemes. Confused? Don't be surprised. George Singleton's writing epitomizes Michael Ray Taylor's quote from Nashville Scene, this is Gonzo fiction at its finest. In Work Shirts for Madmen, Singleton paints with words using wide brush strokes. Readers may not always know what is going on, but there will be a vivid picture running in your head while you try to figure it out. With novels and short stories chock full of unfathomable characters and surreal situations, Singleton's forte is his uncanny ability to keep readers laughing even while their hearts are breaking. Many of Singleton's characters seem to have just stepped off a film set-I wouldn't be at all surprised to see the Elbow Boys showing up in Tarantino's next movie. And Harp's ice sculpture creations melting at the Republican convention begs to be captured on film. Even though there is such a strong cinematic quality to Work Shirts for Madmen, beneath all the laughs and eccentricities at its heart this is a novel about making sense of life after hitting rock bottom. Whether you're attracted by the title or fiction featuring anteaters, make sure to grab this one for a day when you need a dose of surreal. You'll be awfully glad you did. Armchair Interviews agrees!

Work Shirts, like all of George Singleton's books and stories, is a riot--be prepared to explain to your significant other why you're howling with laughter. The book makes fun of a lot of things, like the cult of AA, Arts Councils, the Republican Party, but never at the expense of its characters, and Work Shirts is filled with great characters. I loved Harp, the sarcastic protagonist who's being manipulated into sobriety by his sweet wife Raylou. I loved the foul-mouthed mom who got a correspondence degree in directing, with a minor in best boy. I loved the crew of eccentrics who try to keep Harp on the straight and narrow. All the subplots and side stories all come together in the end like a great 30s screwball comedy. This is a really fun book.

Told in an offbeat and colloquial style, artist Harp Stillman's account of his attempts to give up drinking and return to a more productive life is by turns a satiric, absurd, and wildly comic romp through contemporary American life. Associating with wacky characters who lead even wackier lives than his own, Harp, always full of self-mockery, tries to overcome some of his disastrous public mistakes and free himself from the control of alcohol so that he can fulfill his commissions to create large public sculptures in a variety of cities throughout the country. It was Harp's calamitous foray into ice sculptures for a $5000 per plate Republican fund-raiser in Columbia, SC, which turned him into a pariah. Commissioned to create busts in ice for all the most famous southern politicians--Strom Thurmond, Newt Gingrich, and the three Presidents (Reagan, Bush, and Bush), among others--the wildly creative Harp produced sculptures within sculptures. On the outside, the busts looked exactly like the men they represented, but as the sculptures melted under the lights, their inner sculptures were revealed. Strom Thurmond melted into Mussolini, the three Presidents became Curly, Moe, and Larry, and Newt Gingrich became Koko the gorilla. And that was just for starters. In rehab, Harp discovers that all the in-patients are wearing work shirts, and since he has just won a large commission for the city of Birmingham, Alabama, to build twelve huge angels in metal, he is delighted to see that one of the participants wears a shirt bearing the logo of a welding company. He quickly hires him, only to discover that all the work shirts are used and that his new employee has never touched a welding torch. Harp's attempts to complete these twelve sculptures and stay sober form the body of the novel, and the characters he meets are some of the most bizarre characters in modern fiction--three characters whose elbows will not bend (the "Elbow Brethren"), a character who gives himself a tracheotomy, a man who lives with four giant anteaters, Harp's own father (who runs a unique scam) and mother (now a film director), a Kampgrounds of America director who is a Native American with a PhD, and even a potential assassin. In keeping with the frenetic activity and crazy characters, author George Singleton keeps his style simple, allowing the sometimes bizarre action to drive the novel. Down-home images add to the sense of place and provide local color, and the voice of Harp Spillman rings true, providing a larger than life, and sometimes satiric, picture of rehab, southern country living, the art world, and the extremes to which a man may be willing to go to in an effort to accomplish his goals. n Mary Whipple The Half-Mammals of Dixie These People Are Us: Stories Novel Drowning in Gruel

Oh how I love Ember Glow. Harp is simply perfectly tuned in this novel, funny and heart wrenching, maddening too because we root for the guy to get it right all along the way. Absolutely flawed, furious and filled with talent, Harp's heart is bigger than his ability to think things through straight. Because of this, Singleton has wrought a character that will live on in Ember Glow and American Literature. If you've ever wanted someone to break the chains of their colossal imperfection (like the patient Raylou) this is the book for all seasons. It doesn't get any better than this folks. Buy it. Read it. Talk about it. Work Shirts for Madmen is crazy, satisfying and truly the truth of what Colbert termed, truthiness. Finally, nowhere can there be found the humor and heartbreak in the work shirts of hard men trying to find a reason not to bite a bullet. Singleton gives them more than plain hope; he provides them (and us) with the real reason we're here: to laugh and remember. It's all cool.