Work Shirts for Madmen

July 16, 2007
The latest from Singleton (Drowning in Gruel
) is an engagingly comic but finally underpowered study of Harp Spillman, a once busy avant-garde artist whose metal sculptures dot the cityscapes of the American South. Harp’s heavy drinking has dead-ended his career; his existence is every bit as barren as the landscape of Ember Glow, the desolate patch of upstate South Carolina where he lives with his wife, an in-demand potter named Raylou. Harp gets the chance for a comeback when he is offered, on a tight deadline, a commission from the city of Birmingham. He dries out, and his AA buddies try to help, but sobriety and hard work do not necessarily make the world a less confusing place to him. Singleton has a flair for capturing Southern eccentricity, and Raylou’s imperturbable patience is just as funny in its way as Harp’s self-loathing. By the end, however, the book feels less like a cohesive novel than a collection of vignettes, some of which (particularly a late appearance by Harp’s filmmaker-wannabe mother) seem gratuitous.