The Haircutter
A Novel
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- $16.99
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- $16.99
Publisher Description
Born in the small town of Ten Sleep, Wyoming, The Haircutter—or H.C.— murders an enigmatic “Jenny” and flees to the glittering anonymity of New York City. Eight years later, after a series of odd jobs and lonely meals, H.C. is charged with driving a wolf from New York back to Wyoming, where it was captured for use in a conceptual art show. While back out West, he has a chance encounter with the girl he could never forget—slightly cross-eyed Carol.
Now shacked up with H.C. in the city, Carol discovers H.C.’s eponymous secret—his compulsion to cut off locks of strangers’ hair in public, archive them on a hidden door in their apartment. Carol declares the bizarre habit to be high art, and sends the work to the eccentric gallerist Leslie Christmas, thrusting The Haircutter into the spotlight of NYC’s art scene. Christmas creates a sensation out of the rube from Wyoming, who is only along for the ride to keep Carol in his bed, but when he is accused of another murder, he must scramble to set the record straight. The Haircutter tells the story of what is gained and lost in H.C.’s pursuit of love and meaning in a fascinatingly absurdist world.
By turns hysterical, disgusting, subversive, and heartbreaking, The Haircutter is a madcap romp alive with cultural provocation and twisted stereotypes. It is an uproarious send-up to fame and the pursuit of artistic expression that fearlessly combines sincerity and debauchery.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
In 1993, Jonathan Reilly, the narrator of Thompson's quirky, satirical first novel, leaves Ten Sleep, Wyo., for New York City after committing what he misleadingly calls a murder. Eight years later, he's alone and friendless, working at a menial job in the basement of a Manhattan law firm. His only activity outside the office is cutting off locks of hair from strangers without their knowledge, taking the hair home, and mounting the locks on a board. Then an acquaintance who works at a bookstore refers him to an art gallery owner, Leslie Christmas, who needs someone to return a wolf, taken from the wild and used as part of an active art exhibition, to the mountains of Wyoming. Jonathan accepts this mission and drives the wolf to Wyoming, where he reunites with Carol, the woman he left behind. Carol returns with Jonathan to New York City, where Leslie, learning of his hair board, turns him into the latest sought-after artist: the Haircutter. Another, more serious death raises the stakes. Thompson explores how fame and wealth change Jonathan, while taking pokes at the modern art world and the society people who support it. Only some vulgarity ("We left Christmas's museum with bellies gurgling the dregs of mostly peed-out wine")strikes an awkward note in this enjoyable farce.)
