Read This: Showbiz
Fiction by Jason Anderson (ECW Press)
REVIEW BY Terence Dick
For those who can’t handle the truth, there are alternate universes much like our own except the names have been changed to protect the innocent. In his debut novel, Toronto writer Jason Anderson protects his ass in recounting one more “fictional” version of the assassination of John F. Kennedy. His tale is told from the Rosencrantz and Guildenstern perspective of bit player, comic Jimmy Wynn (modelled on once-famous JFK impersonator Vaughn Meader), whose entanglement in things conspiratorial resulted in his virtual disappearance from mass consciousness in the present day. Wynn’s story is divulged by the nascent investigative talents of one Nathan Grant, a failing, Canadian freelance writer in New York desperate for a feature article. In a cross-country search for Wynn/Meader, fiction intermingles with fact as Grant encounters a Shaggs-like band, a Roger Corman-esque movie producer and an “extreme” magician who bears a strong resemblance to David “Above the Below” Blaine. Strangely, the only real celebrity in the novel is Lenny Bruce, though this one is still alive and tormenting nurses in an old folks’ home. Despite the author’s reliance on hoary old reality, Anderson demonstrates a powerful imagination and a low-key sense of humour in his “factional” tale of celebrity, failure and the dangers in remembering things better left forgotten.
