Colors Insulting to Nature: A Novel (Hardcover)

~ (Author) "THE FACES OF THE JUDGES revealed, although they were trying to hide it, deep distaste for the fact that the thirteen-year-old girl in front of..." (more)
Key Phrases: lighting booth, Roland Spring, Venal de Minus, Elf House (more...)

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

Authors who write about the entertainment industry often extend promises of wit and edginess to attract an audience. Colors Insulting to Nature, by Salon columnist Cintra Wilson, delivers these qualities because it enters the fray not with a forgettably likeable protagonist predestined for a happy ending, but with an axe to grind. The object of Wilson's loathing is the "ego-porn" Hollywood that turns out formulaic story lines, making hapless, mediocre talents believe that their dreams of fame can somehow come true.

The central mediocre talent in this book is Liza Normal, who first appears in the story as an adolescent auditioning for a spot in a commercial. Imagine the child version of the Bette Midler character in Beaches and you're about halfway to understanding the tragic gaudiness of Liza's persona--though of course she is a sweet girl underneath it all. The novel follows Liza into adulthood, bringing other vividly drawn characters, including her shut-in brother, Ned, her narcissistic, alcoholic mother, Peppy, and a sadomasochistic dwarf named DelVonn along for the ride. Liza's cringingly funny attempts to win fame as an actress-singer never stop--and neither does Wilson's railing against the logic-corrupting, "ultimately demoralizing" messages from film and television that Liza has ingested from infancy. Will our heroine ever turn her life around and figure out that The Media made her do it? Will Wilson succeed in breaking free of formulas, or end up undercutting her own message with a fairy-tale ending? Readers who are drawn to darker comedies will enjoy finding the answers, and find this novel impossible to put down. --Leah Weathersby

From Publishers Weekly

Playwright and Salon columnist Wilson made a name for herself four years ago with her essay collection, A Massive Swelling. In her raucous, hilarious debut novel, she covers similar ground: the ugly side of fame and America's unhealthy obsession with celebrity. The dark Gen-X fairy tale follows the adventures of Liza Normal, a would-be starlet with far more ambition than looks or talent. Saddled with a frightening stage mother, Peppy, Liza—"not a girl ruled by the logic of self-preservation"—endures humiliation after humiliation as she acts in an unintentionally campy family musical, turns punk, dates a drug dealer and a washed-up boy band member, goes to rehab and tries unsuccessfully to make it big in Hollywood. The indefatigable Liza finally triumphs in Las Vegas, creating a stage show based on a character from the softcore slash fiction she's written throughout her travails. Wilson goes out on a limb with her verbal extravagance, and readers may find her post-Eggers postmodern asides to the audience (whom she calls "Young Readerlings") and fancy fonts a bit too-too. But her spirited sendup of celebrity worship is laugh-out-loud funny.
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Product Details

• Hardcover: 368 pages
• Publisher: Fourth Estate (August 10, 2004)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0007154607
• ISBN-13: 978-0007154609
• Product Dimensions: 9.1 x 6.2 x 1.4 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.4 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.4 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (19 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #1,184,432 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

10 of 10 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Painfully funny, August 26, 2004

By	Lisa F. "lisafr" (Venice, CA USA) - See all my reviews

A full frontal assault against celebrity worship and its deletorious effect on the American psyche, "Colors Insulting to Nature" is not a perfect novel. There are a few too many authorial asides restating the theme - yes, we get that basing your life decisions on the movie "Fame" is not a path to personal happiness. That said, this is one of the funniest books I have ever read. The protagonists' staging of "Sound Of Music" is the best kind of parody - one done with affection and understanding of the source material - and had me laughing so hard that I nearly aspirated my burrito. Highly recommended.

7 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Fame is Just a Three Ring Farmhouse in California, November 24, 2004

By	Tracy Oshima (Long Beach, California) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

Peppy Normal is a bit eccentric and she becomes obsessed with the movie "Fame." Somehow, she believes if she could just get her two children, Lisa and her shy brother Ned, into the New York City High School of the Performing Arts, then their lives will he set. So she does the most logical thing, from her point of view, and moves to California to start her off spring in training for their eventual audition for the school.

She buys an aging farmhouse and converts it into a theater with the helps of some gay friends, Mike and Ike. Then she starts up a summer drama camp for kids. Ned hates performing and eventually winds up as a reclusive artist, but Liza takes to the stage like a duck to water, however she isn't very good. Don't tell her that, though, because she's bought into her mother's dream hook, line and sinker.

Liza's life turns into a journey through the subcultures that surround Hollywood and its edges, but close as she might get, she isn't ever able to grab that brass ring called fame. However she manages to keep hope alive, her dream too, for over a decade, despite sex, drugs and rock and roll, she plugs on. Despite horrible performances and the laughter of her peers, she plugs on. Despite the parade of one wrong man after another, she plugs on. Despite it all, she does not give up.

Does she eventually get there? I can't say, that would be telling, but I will tell you this, Cintra Wilson has written a non-stop, laugh a paragraph book stuffed with so many chuckles that you'd think you were kidnapped and being held captive in The Laugh Zone, sort of a Bill Cosby, Jackie Gleasen, Robin Williams version of the Twilight Zone. You just have to read this book.

7 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A unique story by a great contemporary writer, November 17, 2004

By	Sardonica "clandestina917" (Brooklyn, NY) - See all my reviews

The profuoundly gifted Cintra Wilson is the Roland Spring of modern cultural criticism--"rare, supreme and without context, like a zebra born in an abandoned grocery store." Certain writers are so adept at language and acute in their observations on life, and the modern world, you find yourself unconsciously imitiating their form of expression--not because you want to steal their thunder but because their prose is so resonant and inspiring that it's subliminally altered your consciousness. Although very few can do it as gracefully and with such rapier wit as Wilson. I've only read a few essays from _A Massive Swelling_ previously, but I was similarly stunned at the breadth of her pop culture savvy and her strikingly original, eloquent and hilarious writing style. I was so sad when the novel ended, I'll need to begin reading the essay collection as soon as possible.

_Colors Insulting to Nature_ is a scathing yet deeply heartfelt story of a moderately, if unexceptionally, talented teen would-be chanteuse with ambitions of fame bordering on Faustian--willing, in effect, to sell nearly every molecule of self-respect she's been dubiously endowed with by her boozy, self-absorbed and delusional train wreck of a mother. Peppy Normal's parenting skills are questionable to say the least, but she does manage to pass on to Liza the legacy of dreams and values gleaned directly from sappy/"inspirational" movies, a masochistic bloodlust for attention in all its debasing forms, a desire to immerse oneself in the world of artifice, and a taste for garish eye makeup. A class-A vicarious-living stage mom, she tries to brutally impose the song-and-dance act on Liza's brother Ned, who is pathologically anxious, socially withdrawn and hopelessly uncoordinated.

The narrative follows Liza, first wobbling precariously in ridiculous spike heels at 14; stomping defiantly in kickass steel-toed combat boots at 16; fluttering barefoot as a strung-out sprite in a hallucinogenic reverie at 21; and sauntering in dominatrix-lite fetish footwear at 23, down her pothole-addled Yellow Brick Road toward self-discovery (although the character would rightfully roll her eyes and spit out some type of withering invective at that statement).

Her quest for true love is arguably even more tunnel-visioned than her quest for fame--and what is that longing for fame, really, except universal and unconditional acceptance and love?--which takes her through a number of wretchedly compelling affairs, from an adolescent love/hate banter with a wealthy young rogue to a slick hustler with a Pygmalion complex to a fallen boy-band idol, while she pines for her formative Ideal Object, the fantastically talented and magnetic Roland Spring, whose true, effortless star quality she emulates as much as envies.

Liza, a deeply flawed but very sympathetic protagonist (and not just because this reviewer had similar, ahem, Star Search pretentions in the early 80's) suffers humilation upon humilation in her naive pursuit of the Dream, but remains doggedly resilient throughout the story. In Liza's ability to pick herself up and continue the journey against all (painfully realistic, not film-contrived) odds, she ultimately bests the "winners never quit" cliches of her beloved Hollywood tripe.

For one to write so astutely about cultural phenomena large and small (her synopsis of 80's "Streetsploitation" film _Breakin'_ was one of the many, many laugh-out-loud vignettes), one has to have presumably spent a little time deep in the belly of the beast. Wilson would be worthwhile reading even if she only dealt in brilliant, highly detailed deconstructions of movies, sitcoms, bands, and subcultures, but that's the tip of the iceberg. The novel succeeds as so such more than a GenX coming-of-age story because those pop-culture digressions, however ingenuous and funny, embellish larger themes such as the search for one's identity, conflicted relationships with family, the paradox of "being true to oneself" and having no idea what that IS, the mythology created and perpetuated by the media, and the complicated nature of love. The supporting characters are also fleshed-out and interesting, and it's nice to see their lives outside the filter of Liza's basically good-hearted and smart but somewhat self-involved perspective.

My only very minor criticism is that in setting the novel in the not-so-distant past (the story spans 1984-1993), certain details--fashions, slang expressions, cultural icons, technology and the like--are a little jumbled at times, which could have been sniffed out by an obsessive pop-cuture geek/ fact checker. That's minutae, however. This was an excellent read from one of the brightest, um, stars, on the literary scene.