Showbiz

by Jason Anderson

A comedian’s career is ended after a presidential assassination, and a journalist tries to track him down decades later, in this darkly humorous novel In 1963, Jimmy Wynn was the second most famous man in America. The comedian’s uncanny impression of the president made him a star. But when the genuine article died in a hail of bullets on a sunny afternoon in New Orleans, Jimmy’s career met a fate almost as grisly. What happened to the funny man afterward was a mystery no one cared to solve. Nearly twenty-five years later, Nathan Grant, an ambitious young journalist, discovers the trail Jimmy cut through the entertainment netherworld. He soon comes to realize that this forgotten court jester may have played a very serious part in the country’s favorite conspiracy theory. His strange and increasingly dangerous odyssey takes him from a dingy New York record store to the showrooms of Las Vegas, a ghost town in the Mojave Desert, and even a dinner theater in Niagara Falls, in a dark comedy about the cost of fame, a man who became a punchline, and a writer who is desperate to find out how the rest of the joke goes.

330 pages, Paperback

First published October 1, 2005

Reviews

[Michael Potter · Rating 4 out of 5]

[This review originally appeared in Farmhouse Magazine in June of 2005.]

Reading first novels is one of my favorite things to do in the world, a vocation that I would most certainly indulge during every waking moment if I could somehow figure out how to keep the lights on and the rent paid at the same time. But before I outline the glories of Showbiz, all the while keeping the details of the ending perfectly secure, I have a confession to make (of sorts). It is not out of purest literary curiosity that I seek out and devour these books as often as I can get my hands on them, but rather the most virulent form of professional jealousy. Having my face planted firmly between the pages of someone else’s first foray into the wild, and wildly unpredictable, world of publishing allows me to feel productive, literarily speaking, while keeping me from the daunting task of working on my own, as yet unwritten, magnum opus. (Remember, kids: If you never try, you never fail!)

Words to live by, but enough about me...

Jason Anderson has been covering the music and film scenes in Toronto for over a decade for publications such as eye weekly , The Globe and Mail , and Toro , but in turning his talents to fiction he is now better able to tackle bigger questions, like: “Is there anything in the world lonelier than a table for one... on a Monday?”(p. 280) First, and foremost, Showbiz is funny. Wry, even, in its delivery and well aware of the importance of timing. Which makes perfect sense as the book revolves around, in a roundabout way, the rise and fall of a comedian whose specialty was the spot-on impersonation of a JFK-esque American president.

The protagonist of Showbiz is a Canadian twenty-something named Nathan Grant who is living check-to-check in New York City as he dreams of journalistic fame in America. (He does this most often while nursing cheap beer in dark bars like Dazzle Cuts (where the bartender not only delivers really bad service, but really bad “Haircuts Like Mom Used to Give You,” as well.)) All of this boozing eventually pays off for him in the form of his first cover story for a glossy magazine, called "The Betsey," that keeps the mythology of the dead president alive-and-well in the minds of pop culturists and conspiracy theorists worldwide. The research for this as-signment, however, soon proves hazardous to his health as it takes him on a strange tour of North America in the search of the former “comedy commander-in-chief,” Jimmy Wynn.

Prior to President Cannon’s assassination, Jimmy Wynn was one of the most famous men in America riding the coattails of a popular leader to the top of the comedy album charts. His live performances were so legendary in their eerie mimicry that tickets to his shows virtually sold themselves. And then there was a shooting in 1963 in New Orleans and the fate of this man changed in a matter of seconds. Jimmy Wynn disappeared almost instantaneously from the public eye only to resurface in subsequent decades on the occasional straight-to-video release or liner note (and then only under a succession of pseudonyms). As with JFK, the shooter was never caught and the furor over his whereabouts and the reasons for the hit became fodder for heated debate wherever men found themselves lingering too long over strong drink.

The rumors and urban legends begin to take on human form as Nathan chases down Jimmy’s story and he begins to find himself in situations that trip his own internal alarm again and again. Anderson deftly moves from interviews with wise guys (now retired in the Nevada desert) that pay homage to detectives of the hard-boiled variety to scenes of invisible menace in public spaces that call to mind the taut prose of Robert Ludlum. In addition to his knack for dialogue, Anderson has a great talent for evoking a vivid sense of place, as evidenced by Nathan’s following lament about the loss of the Old Vegas to the New Vegas:

“At the address DaVinci [Review’s note: This reference has absolutely nothing to do with Dan Brown’s best-selling atrocity that is soon to be a major motion picture that will feature, prominently, Tom Hanks’s new (and equally-atrocious) hockey hair. I don’t think. I hope not...] gave me was a gleaming low-rise development, built to accommodate busloads of suckers as they entered the city limits from the south. Only the façade of the original waffle house had remained -- behind it was a hectic complex that contained a small casino, a cluster of factory outlet stores, several monstrous restaurants, and a bar called the Sportz Zone.” (p. 74)

Not even his home and native land is safe from cultural criticism as evidenced by this bit of descriptive brilliance about a dinner theater (yes, that’s -er as I’m currently writing from the US) in Niagara Falls, Ontario:

“The Maple Leaf Theatre was on a less crowded stretch of road between the cheeseball tourism epicenter and the casino. The theatre was built to resemble an oversized log cabin. A giant fibreglass beaver in a Mountie uniform stood at the door. A huge Canadian flag flitted in the breeze. A sign on the flagpole read: TOUR GROUPS WELCOME, EH?” (p. 269)

Readers will be swept up in the travelogue of this novel and will, no doubt, find them-selves cheering for Grant as he pursues his story, his career, and his own version of the American dream. As Nathan attempts to stay one step ahead of those who don’t want his story to make its way into print, Showbiz explores issues of fame and identity without sacrificing any of its narrative momentum. As I said, reading first novels is one of my favorite things to do in the world and Jason Anderson is now one of my favorite first novelists in the world. I look forward to his next book, despite the fact that I have no special affection for second novels, and in so doing will have less time to read first novels by other new writers. Anderson is that good. (Damn him.)

[MK · Rating 1 out of 5]

For being so short, this took me forever to get through. The story wasn't that great, the writing was meh. I'm happy I only paid 99 cents for it on Amazon.