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Gasoline

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Gasoline, Quim Monzó's latest novel to be translated into English, opens at a moment of crisis in Heribert's career as a painter: he must paint enough canvases to fill two galleries in time for an imminent double show. Instead of working, however, Heribert wallows in indifference and boredom, wandering the city streets, drinking in random bars, and visiting sex shops. As Heribert's career stagnates, another younger artist--Humbert (bizarrely, almost all characters' names begin with the letter `H' in Gasoline)--steps in to take advantage of Heribert's artistic and romantic slump.

Gasoline explores the joys and pitfalls of creativity and obsession, alternating whimsy and humor with dark moments of doubt. Heribert's dilemma is both heartbreaking and absurd, causing the reader's feelings towards this unhappy artist to vacillate between pity and derision. During one bleak scene, for example, Heribert attempts to turn on every light and appliance in his house to drown out his sorrow over his estrangement from his wife. The touching scene shades into absurdity when Heribert is thwarted in his noise-making by a cassette player that refuses to play both the radio and a cassette tape at the same time, leading Heribert to conclude that the machine is nothing but "a lie."

Gasoline is a sensitive portrayal of artistic creation and its often unstable personalities. Half cautionary tale, half tribute to the limitless capacity of the human imagination, Gasoline is wholly provocative and entertaining.

This odd little novel originally published in Catalan in 1983 concerns the early eighties downtown art scene in Manhattan, or more specifically a single idea much discussed at the time: the ever quickening demands for the new, both in artistic movements and in artists; all bankrolled by an ever expanding world of avaricious galleries. In order to make this single point the author exaggerates every point of the book, creating scenes both bleak and hardly humorous. But by incessantly hammering on just this one idee fixe the concept looses its interest well before the end of the book.

Novelists, like artists, obviously have the right to create any world they desire, and we as readers follow. That world need not be realistic, nor logical, and as this book progresses both characteristics fall away. But nothing besides the one idea and its consequences follow in its wake.

The book is divided into two-parts, each centered on a young Catalan painter living with Helena, a Manhattan gallery owner. To emphasize the incestuous nature of this downtown world, every character in the book who has any interaction with any other character has a name that starts with H. Not a very subtle statement? Nothing in this book is subtle.

The first part of the book takes place in January, the second in December of the same year. In order to pound home the author's one idea, these artists both have an identical commercial success that is a parody of reality. The first artist is discovered by Helena a year before the book starts, yet has had two works in the Whitney for months. A year after a similarly undiscovered second artist is discovered by Helena he is having an exhibit at the Art Institute of Chicago (no, that does not make sense). Each artist, again, within a year of being discovered, has shows simultaneously all over the world where each painting is sold before the show opens.

In order to keep the galleries full with work Helena must receive an increasing number of new works from her artists, and probably knowing that this is impossible, no sooner has she discovered one artist than she is out to seduce a new one. The artists themselves can not possibly survive the pace and demands of this commercial world, and their fragile psyches are soon destroyed. They run on empty for too long, forgetting to fill the tank with gasoline (as in the title of the book). And guess what happens? Yes, you run out of gas and all the fun is over.

Published in 2010 with a new translation by Mary Ann Newman, it is interesting that the extreme exaggerations used to describe the New York art world seem much less extreme than in 1983. Based on the examples of Italian and German artists that appeared at the same time internationally in the early 1980s, when one Catalan artist is unable to fulfill his gallery obligations of course he is simply replaced with another Catalan artist (and there is no comment in this book on the fact that artist means male artist). And instead of artists taking decades to be recognized, it is months. Sounds quite 21st century, doesn't it?

Nothing takes one's steam quicker than being replaced. "Gasoline" is the tale of Heribert, a man grappling with his own artistic block and loss of love for life. Uncaring for his family, for his life, for anything, he watches as another individual by the name of Humbert takes over everything he does, doing it better. A fascinating read of the decline of a great mind and the rise of another, "Gasoline" is a choice and very highly recommended read that shouldn't be missed.