American Landscape #55

August 31, 2007

Filed in: The Way We Live Now

I don’t have a book yet, because I don’t have a book contract, because I haven’t written the freaking proposal, but never mind any of those petty details: I have a cover for The 50th State!

Take a look at this. [pauses]

Isn’t it beautiful? Haunting and sad and wistful? I love it. It’s by Jason Brockert. I first saw it on a postcard that came in the mail from the Copley Society of Art, and even across the kitchen, buried under our usual pile of junk, it spoke right to me. It’s the houses, those shining little houses all lined up so optimistically across the top edge. So sweet and sad.

One of the things I’m trying to do with this 50th State project is try to stop hating so much on America, on the parts of America that I, well, hate. Malls, parking lots, the endless buying of crap, cars, the paving over of all the small, private wild places. From Jason’s work, especially the other paintings in this series, which are a lot darker and (to me, anyhow) somehow angrier, and from his bio, it’s pretty clear he’s thinking along the same lines.

But why I’m so drawn to this painting in particular is its hopefulness. Those bright, neat houses looking expectantly forward in their old-fashioned, stalwart way, not a Levittown but a small, modest community with its upright family homes lined up properly along the edge of a field. That field’s been turned into a nasty, generic parking lot, true, but the houses still keep their bones proper and erect.

Anyhow, Jason and I exchanged a round of email (which means in Internet-land that we are now buddies). He very politely expressed interest in my book, and I very solemnly told him I was planning on buying American Landscape #55 just as soon as I gather together $3,700. But if you get there first, feel free to buy it—I’m sure that would make Jason happy—just promise I can come over and have a look now and then, okay?